GTA IV issues on MSI GX620

[noirdusoleil]

Hi,

I'm having some graphics/frame rate issues (as many seem to have had) with GTA IV.

I have tried the main steps (checklist) oulined in THIS THREAD (http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=762088) with no luck. I have also installed the latest patch from Rockstar and tried the -memrestrict command line. Nothing seems to work.

The frustrating thing is that it seems as though it should run fine on my computer. HERE (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HWTLUHhHV5Q) is a youtube clip of it running beautifully on the exact same laptop as mine - MSI GX620
Intel core 2 duo 2.4ghz
Nvidia 9600m GT GDDR 3 512 MB
4GB DDR2 RAM
Vista 32-Bit

I am also having issues not only with slow frame rate but things like shadow textures look terrible.

I have a few other games on this laptop like Bioshock and HL2 that all work fine (and look a lot better than GTA IV actually).

I would really love some help with this. I have still been playing the game - and it's great - but I feel like I would like to finish off the rest of it the way it's meant to be played (also I'm finiding that as the missions get tougher they are exceedingly frustrating to play with a slow/laggy frame rate).

Any help or suggestions would be greatly appreciated!

[trek554]

I think that youtube video is BS. a 9600M GT is about like a desktop 8600GT which is pretty darn slow for a game like this. no way could that card run the game smoothly on all high settings even at 1280.

it sounds like part of your issues are driver related but again theres no way you can run high settings smoothly on that laptop anyway. Bioshock isnt all that demanding and HL 2 could be run on a 5 or 6 year old pc so theres really no comparison there.

[Cammalerie]

on this video seems like he turned off shadows option
have you tried that already?

[noirdusoleil]

@trek554
Perhaps the video is BS about being on high settings, though it does seem to be running smooth no matter what settings. At the moment I've got everything set to "low" and it's still running terribly. If I push them up to medium or high (which is what GTA IV recommended) it still runs exactly the same.

@Cammalerie
I don't think I have tried that yet... I'll give it a shot.

[noirdusoleil]

I've tried turning off shadows as Cammalerie suggested with no luck.

The game really feels like it's running at around 3fps.

Any more tips to get it running smoothly (as it seems to in the video I linked to in my initial post) would be really appreciated!

[michael89]

Hi,
I have a few other games on this laptop like Bioshock and HL2 that all work fine (and look a lot better than GTA IV actually).


You really cant compare Bioshock's and HL2's requirements with GTA4, since its way more demanding than those two.

[blue_commet]

Have you tried overclocking your graphics card and also GTA 4 requires a quad core processor so that may be the problem your having.

[spyrochaete]

GTA 4 requires a quad core processor

No it doesn't. Read the requirements on the store page.