Wow... they couldn't even work out how to stream to video ram?

Drift · 10-22-2011, 08:52 PM

This game runs fine now that I bought a new computer, but I never realised before how badly this engine has been built. Seriosuly, how the hell can you be using up that much video ram?

It would appear from the settings menu that the guys over at rockstar have loaded all the assets into video ram at once. It's not even like the textures or assets are that detailed, infact they were pretty poor for the time. It's just that even a texture thats used, say over the ending credits, appears to be constantly loaded.

It does though explain why everything looks rubbish yet runs badly, they simply couldn't store higher res textures using this trashy engine.

ChiefLink · 10-22-2011, 08:58 PM

How much VRAM do you have? My EVGA NVidia GTS 250 has only 512 and the game reads it as 490. I turned everything as high as it would let me (or as high as I dared in the case of view distances) and I still get 30+ FPS, even in some demanding situations.

Drift · 10-22-2011, 09:06 PM

I'm running a GTX570, had a choice between that and an ATI 2GB card, the GTX570 has... 1350mb I think?

The game runs fine, I'm just shocked how closly a game from 2008 scratches against that limit, when most people were running between 512mb and 1GB back then, yet looks this poor. There's just... no excuse for that, professional developers at a professional company should have the ability not to just waste a whole ton of system resources in that way. Compare these textures to a game like crysis which came out a year earlier, and check how little resources that required in comaprison...

JK_DC · 10-22-2011, 09:14 PM

I wish I had enough RAM to put the game on a RAM drive. It would run fairly decent I imagine.

ChiefLink · 10-23-2011, 10:03 PM

It's a matter of dedication, I suppose. Rockstar is generally console focused. I mean, there are companies who port games to PC and give them limited to no graphics options. id Tech, a decidedly PC focused developer, launched Rage on PC with no user configurable graphics. Crytek is very PC focused and the DX11 patch for Crysis 2 was something of a swan song for PC.

Looking at GTA 4, knowing how it's progressed from version 1.0 to 1.0.7, I think Rockstar put a fair amount of work into it, considering they have more console games.

Ace Quat · 10-24-2011, 01:17 AM

interesting read indeed! but how did you figure out that all vid memory is entirely clogged up with precached textures? is there some technical article i missed out on?

i think the vid mem number in the gfx options menu just tells you how large the upper memory limit has to be in order to play the game with the respective settings, not how much textures has already been precached in your memory.

10-22-2011, 08:52 PM	#1
Drift Join Date: Dec 2009 Reputation: 4 Posts: 49	Wow... they couldn't even work out how to stream to video ram? This game runs fine now that I bought a new computer, but I never realised before how badly this engine has been built. Seriosuly, how the hell can you be using up that much video ram? It would appear from the settings menu that the guys over at rockstar have loaded all the assets into video ram at once. It's not even like the textures or assets are that detailed, infact they were pretty poor for the time. It's just that even a texture thats used, say over the ending credits, appears to be constantly loaded. It does though explain why everything looks rubbish yet runs badly, they simply couldn't store higher res textures using this trashy engine.

10-22-2011, 08:58 PM	#2
ChiefLink Join Date: Mar 2010 Reputation: 0 Posts: 9	How much VRAM do you have? My EVGA NVidia GTS 250 has only 512 and the game reads it as 490. I turned everything as high as it would let me (or as high as I dared in the case of view distances) and I still get 30+ FPS, even in some demanding situations.

10-22-2011, 09:06 PM	#3
Drift Join Date: Dec 2009 Reputation: 4 Posts: 49	I'm running a GTX570, had a choice between that and an ATI 2GB card, the GTX570 has... 1350mb I think? The game runs fine, I'm just shocked how closly a game from 2008 scratches against that limit, when most people were running between 512mb and 1GB back then, yet looks this poor. There's just... no excuse for that, professional developers at a professional company should have the ability not to just waste a whole ton of system resources in that way. Compare these textures to a game like crysis which came out a year earlier, and check how little resources that required in comaprison...

10-22-2011, 09:14 PM	#4
JK_DC Join Date: Jan 2009 Reputation: 222 Posts: 2,199	I wish I had enough RAM to put the game on a RAM drive. It would run fairly decent I imagine.

10-23-2011, 10:03 PM	#5
ChiefLink Join Date: Mar 2010 Reputation: 0 Posts: 9	It's a matter of dedication, I suppose. Rockstar is generally console focused. I mean, there are companies who port games to PC and give them limited to no graphics options. id Tech, a decidedly PC focused developer, launched Rage on PC with no user configurable graphics. Crytek is very PC focused and the DX11 patch for Crysis 2 was something of a swan song for PC. Looking at GTA 4, knowing how it's progressed from version 1.0 to 1.0.7, I think Rockstar put a fair amount of work into it, considering they have more console games.

10-24-2011, 01:17 AM	#6
Ace Quat Join Date: Jul 2006 Reputation: 190 Posts: 3,149	interesting read indeed! but how did you figure out that all vid memory is entirely clogged up with precached textures? is there some technical article i missed out on? i think the vid mem number in the gfx options menu just tells you how large the upper memory limit has to be in order to play the game with the respective settings, not how much textures has already been precached in your memory.