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So, there's no way to run GTA IV on PC well in 2022, is there?

brandnewcardock

brandnewcardock

Member
Oct 25, 2017
663
Got a bit of nostalgia and bought GTA IV during the last Steam sale. I've heard the horror stories but figured I'd give it a go. It does not run well, at all. I have a modest set-up (1650 Super, Ryzen 5 1600AF, 16GB of RAM). Here's what I've tried so far:
  • GTA IV Definitive Edition mod (DX9 and DXKV)
    • This use FusionFix
  • Applying FusionFix, Ultimate ASI Loader, Col.Accel
  • GTA Downgrader to 1.0.8.0 (DX9 and DXVK)
    • This uses ZolikaPatch, which is apparently better than FusionFix
  • GTA Downgrader to 1.0.7.0 (DX9 and DXVK)
    • Same as above, but was apparently supposed to run better in Vulkan (it didn't)
The mod tools are pretty extensive, they apparently fix a lot of issues in the vanilla game, make it run better and restore graphic issues + the radio stations they cut. That being said, none of them seem to affect performance. I've set up launch parameters to tell the game to use 4GB of VRAM, not restrict memory, etc. I've modified the 'stream.ini' file to make it use 4GB of RAM.

A lot of people suggested using DXKV, which did make my frametime graph much smoother, but made stutter much worse any time I moved (I assume it has something to do with how it loads stuff).

I just want to make sure I've exhausted all options. The issue is that the framerate is just all over the place, even with caps. I'll go as high as 100fps in some sections, and drop to 40 for seemingly no reason.
 
smurfx

smurfx

Member
Oct 25, 2017
10,628
does it run well on the series x? its the only gta game i never managed to play. don't even know why i skipped it.
 
Taco_Human

Taco_Human

Member
Jan 6, 2018
4,240
MA
I bought another ps3 complete copy, something about that motion blur at night that reminds me of early next gen from back then

Edit: I have it on Steam as well. My specs are kinda old so it runs okay on default settings. I haven't tried any mods. I leave it stock as it's still better than the console version.
 
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Dice

Dice

Member
Oct 25, 2017
22,732
Canada
Greater Toronto Area đź‘Ť

review-turning-red-is-a-pixar-movie-that-stays-true-to-horny-toronto.jpeg
 
Axon

Axon

Banned
Mar 9, 2020
2,397
I dont think GTA 4 will do well at the box office, no matter what the reviews may say. It has tough competition and goes up against Morbius, which resetera predicts will have the highest opening weekend since Endgame.
 
doops.

doops.

Member
Jun 3, 2020
2,561
Having just played it on PC, I managed to get it working and looking relatively smooth, however I think it took a large part of my 30 hour playtime to achieve this.
 
dalq

dalq

Member
Feb 13, 2018
1,115
I never understood this whole GTA4 runs like shit on pc. I played it fine way back in the GTX 600s with 0 need to tewak anything.
 
Rodney McKay

Rodney McKay

Member
Oct 26, 2017
12,280
Apparently it can run pretty well on Steam Deck which surprised me.

Not at full settings or anything, but 60fps seems doable.
 
Hoggle

Hoggle

Member
Mar 25, 2021
6,127
smurfx said:
does it run well on the series x? its the only gta game i never managed to play. don't even know why i skipped it.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

I started the DLC yesterday and it was completely smooth, but I have VRR enabled. It looks absolutely awful though. To the point I can't believe RDR1 and GTAV released on the same gen. The draw distance is awful which is too be expected, but the textures are atrocious and the game is just plain ugly.
 
DeepBlueDay

DeepBlueDay

Member
Jan 10, 2020
378
smurfx said:
does it run well on the series x? its the only gta game i never managed to play. don't even know why i skipped it.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

It's 60 FPS and therefore runs verry well ! Resolution and IQ on the other hand ...are pretty rough. But you get used to it.
You should definitely give it a try !

Liberty City feels like a breathing, living city. In some aspects it's a lot more immersive than GTA V.
 
FinFunnels

FinFunnels

Banned
Oct 27, 2017
5,610
Seattle
I played it last year on PC at 4K and it ran really well for me.

The framerate would occasionally dip below 60 FPS while I was driving around, usually when crossing bridges and such, but the game was fully playable and certainly ran a lot better than it did when I played it on PS3 all those years ago.

I didn't use any mods/fixes, either.

My specs:
RTX 2060S
Ryzen 7 3700X
16GB DDR4 3600 RAM
500GB 970 Evo NVME SSD
 
caff!!!

caff!!!

Member
Oct 29, 2017
3,033
The game has very poor threading, so anything with a lot of stuff happening or high resolutions would eat your FPS alive.

Also the studdering with dxvk is due to real time shader recompile, which should go away once you return to an area. It's worth checking the in game settings menu so see if it actually uses that much vram or thinks it has barely any VRAM.
 
Aranath

Aranath

Member
Jan 15, 2018
315
I tried to play it on my 5900x/3090 rig last year and just gave up - it just ran like absolute garbage and nothing I tried could get it running smooth.

I'm playing it on my Steam Deck now and it's smooth as butter. Just ridiculous. I'd much rather play it on my main PC since I feel the Steam Deck's screen is a bit too small for appreciating the complexity of Liberty City, but hey-ho. At least it works.
 

brain_stew

Member
Oct 30, 2017
4,755
smurfx said:
does it run well on the series x? its the only gta game i never managed to play. don't even know why i skipped it.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

It's blurry (due to 720p resolution and a blur filter applied) but it's a locked 60fps in gameplay on both Series S and X. It's probably the most hassle/stutter free way to play it but it's not exactly pretty.
 

brain_stew

Member
Oct 30, 2017
4,755
dalq said:
I never understood this whole GTA4 runs like shit on pc. I played it fine way back in the GTX 600s with 0 need to tewak anything.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

The technical foundations are incredibly shaky, to the point that better hardware can often lead to worse performance. The engine is a mess. It can often look stunning at times but feels like it's built on sand.
 
Iichter

Iichter

Member
Oct 29, 2017
1,369
Stable 60 fps on my Deck, so using Proton/DXVK I had 120+ fps too on my Linux desktop.
 
dmix90

dmix90

Member
Oct 25, 2017
1,885
Do you have Steam In-Game Overlay disabled? If so, enable it( just for this game) and use vanilla DX9 renderer... yeah i know it's weird.
 
Yudoken

Yudoken

Member
Jun 7, 2019
812
Depends heavily what you're expecting and running.

4k 120fps with max settings? Not possible even with the best hardware.

1440p 60fps? That works.
 
RivalGT

RivalGT

Member
Dec 13, 2017
6,439
As long as you don't set everything to max settings, the game ran fine for me. I don't remember which setting it was, but there was a specific one that tanks the frame rate, or just makes the game run extremely inconsistent 30-60 fps.

The game looks terrible at high resolution btw, the game badly needs a modern TAA solution. I don't think a lot of the art assets were made to be seen at high resolution.
 

LCGeek

Member
Oct 28, 2017
5,895
Yudoken said:
Depends heavily what you're expecting and running.

4k 120fps with max settings? Not possible even with the best hardware.

1440p 60fps? That works.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

You're not getting this in a lot of games if we are talking native old or new.

There's not much in this game that does much besides getting as much crap off your main two threads from windows bloat and not jacking up the view distance or car density settings too much.

RivalGT said:
As long as you don't set everything to max settings, the game ran fine for me. I don't remember which setting it was, but there was a specific one that tanks the frame rate, or just makes the game run extremely inconsistent 30-60 fps.

The game looks terrible at high resolution btw, the game badly needs a modern TAA solution. I don't think a lot of the art assets were made to be seen at high resolution.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Get mods the texturing and lightning can be made a lot better.
 
xGrizzly

xGrizzly

Member
Dec 3, 2017
1,150
Atlanta
brandnewcardock said:
Got a bit of nostalgia and bought GTA IV during the last Steam sale. I've heard the horror stories but figured I'd give it a go. It does not run well, at all. I have a modest set-up (1650 Super, Ryzen 5 1600AF, 16GB of RAM). Here's what I've tried so far:
  • GTA IV Definitive Edition mod (DX9 and DXKV)
    • This use FusionFix
  • Applying FusionFix, Ultimate ASI Loader, Col.Accel
  • GTA Downgrader to 1.0.8.0 (DX9 and DXVK)
    • This uses ZolikaPatch, which is apparently better than FusionFix
  • GTA Downgrader to 1.0.7.0 (DX9 and DXVK)
    • Same as above, but was apparently supposed to run better in Vulkan (it didn't)
The mod tools are pretty extensive, they apparently fix a lot of issues in the vanilla game, make it run better and restore graphic issues + the radio stations they cut. That being said, none of them seem to affect performance. I've set up launch parameters to tell the game to use 4GB of VRAM, not restrict memory, etc. I've modified the 'stream.ini' file to make it use 4GB of RAM.

A lot of people suggested using DXKV, which did make my frametime graph much smoother, but made stutter much worse any time I moved (I assume it has something to do with how it loads stuff).

I just want to make sure I've exhausted all options. The issue is that the framerate is just all over the place, even with caps. I'll go as high as 100fps in some sections, and drop to 40 for seemingly no reason.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
I used this and got nearly 4K 120fps when i played it early last year.

Two things to note, going over 60fps messes up the handling of motorcycles and those distance/density sliders dont need to be maxed to 100.
 
Wesley

Wesley

Member
Jan 10, 2018
321
I saw Andy Kelly do a piece on this not long ago.
  • Download the latest version of DXVK
  • Copy d3d9.dll from the \x32 folder into your GTA 4 directory
  • Find out how much display memory you have. Press the Windows key + R to open the Run window and type in dxdiag. Navigate to the Display tab and note down the number next to Display Memory
  • Right click on GTA 4 in Steam, go to properties, and under Launch Options put -managed and -availablevidmem X, where X is a number slightly below your available display memory. For example, I have 8010 MB, so I put -availablevidmem 7850
  • Go to your Steam settings, navigate to the Shader Pre-Caching menu at the bottom, and uncheck Enable Shader Pre-Caching
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
 

Manta_Breh

Member
May 16, 2018
2,554
I had the worst time running it and tried a few tips and tricks people suggested, but none of it worked. Game ran like ass on my 2060 super/ryzen 7 3700 .... Ended up refunding it.
 
OP
OP
brandnewcardock

brandnewcardock

Member
Oct 25, 2017
663
inner-G said:
I don't have a ton of personal experience with it recently but this RGHD video may help

Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

I actually gave DSR a shot like this video suggested, and it actually gave me a little bump for a while, but then things went back to normal. Something I've noticed is that a lot of these "fixes" seem to work well for a short period of time, but then it goes back to normal. I wonder if it's some memory leak or something similar.

Ultimately I'm getting above 60fps across the board on DX9, downgraded with ZolikaPatch. Runs better than it did with the GTA: DEP mod pack, but still not well. The cutscenes zoom in issue is still super persistent. Does anyone know if I can use the ZolikaPatch and FusionFix at the same time? FusionFix capped the cutscenes at 60fps.

The biggest issue is the FPS swings, it'll be 90fps and drop to 60fps for seemingly no reason. Setting a 60fps cap doesn't help, that causes it to drop below 60fps. I also can't seem to get the settings menu to say to have 4096MB of VRAM, despite setting that launch parameter to that. It still says 2048, but I doubt that really matters. I don't have View Distance, Detail Distance and Vehicle Density set to max, I put them all at about 40.

dmix90 said:
Do you have Steam In-Game Overlay disabled? If so, enable it( just for this game) and use vanilla DX9 renderer... yeah i know it's weird.
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I haven't tried this yet, I'll give it a shot. When you say use vanilla DX9 renderer, are you saying as opposed to Vulkan?
 
Serpens007

Serpens007

Well, Tosca isn't for everyone
Moderator
Oct 31, 2017
8,135
Chile
I play it from time to time on PC, RTX 3070, Ryzen 7 5800x, and it runs at 4K max settings pretty well. It has some ocasional dips but nothing major really.

It's funny how much it takes to run it like this though lol
 
dmix90

dmix90

Member
Oct 25, 2017
1,885
brandnewcardock said:
I haven't tried this yet, I'll give it a shot. When you say use vanilla DX9 renderer, are you saying as opposed to Vulkan?
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Click to shrink...
Yes. There were two ways for me to fix unbearable stuttering and hitching, first is DXVK, but i did not like that solution for reason i don't remember probably shader compilation stutters… the other i discovered while trying to make game playable, that is enabling steam overlay… for some weird reason that smoothed everything right away and game became playable like it was in 2008. I tried turning it off and stutter hitching came back so it was repeatable.

Just use vanilla game, radio downgrader and fusion/zolika patch on top, oh and 60fps cap. I think that is all that is needed.
 
SeeingeyeDug

SeeingeyeDug

Member
Oct 28, 2017
3,012
It's an interesting game to walk around in with the first person mod. There's some jokes that you never see because of the third person view because the writing is so small, like beer names, magazine covers, etc.
 
Linus815

Linus815

Member
Oct 29, 2017
19,993
Serpens007 said:
I play it from time to time on PC, RTX 3070, Ryzen 7 5800x, and it runs at 4K max settings pretty well. It has some ocasional dips but nothing major really.

It's funny how much it takes to run it like this though lol
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

the game doesnt really scale well on modern hardware because its not threaded well at all. a bit like crysis i guess. The performance is very cpu bound but throwing extra cores will do nothing to help it, and so throwing 20x more powerful gfx cards at it than what was available on release will not do much either.
 
OP
OP
brandnewcardock

brandnewcardock

Member
Oct 25, 2017
663
dmix90 said:
Yes. There were two ways for me to fix unbearable stuttering and hitching, first is DXVK, but i did not like that solution for reason i don't remember probably shader compilation stutters… the other i discovered while trying to make game playable, that is enabling steam overlay… for some weird reason that smoothed everything right away and game became playable like it was in 2008. I tried turning it off and stutter hitching came back so it was repeatable.

Just use vanilla game, radio downgrader and fusion/zolika patch on top, oh and 60fps cap. I think that is all that is needed.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Do you know if Fusion/Zolika patch can be used at the same time? Fusion had a nice cutscene framerate cap but Zolika doesn't. I switched over to Zolika when I downgraded the game.

Linus815 said:
the game doesnt really scale well on modern hardware because its not threaded well at all. a bit like crysis i guess. The performance is very cpu bound but throwing extra cores will do nothing to help it, and so throwing 20x more powerful gfx cards at it than what was available on release will not do much either.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Yeah, which is why I find it weird/funny when people claim it ran well for them. It's clearly broken, hardware doesn't really matter. Even the RTX 2070 posted above shows drops below 60fps...on a $700 2021 GPU. There always seems to be people who claim that universal tech issues don't affect them with all these poorly optimized games I suppose.
 
dmix90

dmix90

Member
Oct 25, 2017
1,885
brandnewcardock said:
Do you know if Fusion/Zolika patch can be used at the same time? Fusion had a nice cutscene framerate cap but Zolika doesn't. I switched over to Zolika when I downgraded the game.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
I think i only used Fusion since i did not want to downgrade game itself to previous version(just radio) for Zolika, so can't really say anything there.
 
caff!!!

caff!!!

Member
Oct 29, 2017
3,033
Just tested with the latest dxvk, I get average fps drops to about 60-70 FPS on my 5800X/3080 in busy areas, but I also run max settings with 50/63/35 on the sliders at 1440p UW, use some mods that certainly don't help with my FPS, and can see the CPU limitations with my own eyes. Framerate elsewhere is determined by a dice roll, but interiors at least run at my monitor's FPS cap
brandnewcardock said:
Do you know if Fusion/Zolika patch can be used at the same time? Fusion had a nice cutscene framerate cap but Zolika doesn't. I switched over to Zolika when I downgraded the game.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
yes you can, I use both for my 1.0.7.0 patch install
 
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SweetBellic

SweetBellic

Member
Oct 28, 2017
4,449
You can't max it out. Need to lower view and detail distance, as well as shadow settings, to mitigate the framrate drops you get in more dynamic areas. I played in 4K on my 3080 and averaged about 90fps driving around iirc. But drops here and there are pretty much unavoidable. Highly recommend playing with gsync/VRR display for the best experience.
 
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