GTA 4 Settings Max Vs Min

[[DRuG]Rassilon]

According to the following link, apart from textures the differences are very are almost nonexistant between maximum settings and minimum GFX settings, if true im very relieved

http://www.pcgameshardware.com/aid,6692 ... ts/?page=1

After trying GTA4, I can say maximum and minimum GFX settings have next to no effect on performance, this game is a CPU hog.

Time to save up for a new cpu as well as the motherboard and ram im gonna need along side it

[[DRuG]Mortal]

Well, it is true, when looked at like that, but it's not really being looked at the right way in the first place for them to even come to that conclusion.

The game was built to scale up, rather than to add bells and whistles. You can imagine how demanding the game is on most mainstream hardware, so this is just the way things are. It's not as bad as it seems.

The settings are like this: If you're running the game Below 1280x720, you should be setting most things to low. The only things you'd try and experiment with high settings with a low resolution screen setting would be shadows and reflections, but even those can only be "noticed" for their quality to a certain extent below 1280x720 (IE 1024x768 is fekkin tiny - those 2hundred pixels make the height advantage worthless againts the width shrinkage from 1280 to 1024).

At 1280x720, you may want to move up the view distance to 15-21, details to 30-40ish, and the rest of the settings medium and again mess with the other settings for quality (since those effects mentioned are sort of low resolution - like reflections are sort of pixelated even on very high and a low screen resolution)

The reason the view and detail increase is because all of the sudden the added pixels give you a further line of sight. The high settings are for keeping the huge view distance realistic.

If you go play San Andreas at 1680x1050, you can watch so many things in the distance with too much clarity, but if you bump it down to 1280x1024, it looks way better, because by the time cars switch to their LOD (for example), they are made of so few pixels at that far away, you really can't tell. IV was made to scale up and not have those ugly noticeable changes at any resolution, up to 2560x1600. High settings for IV are not noticed at low resolutions because low resolutions do not have enough pixels to accurately show what is being improved. In fact, you end up degrading the picture very badly by going low in resolution just to "hike up the other settings" - you create the myth of "bad looking jaggies in GTA IV". Play at 1680, it's great. Lower settings if you need to and go back to GTA SA like fade outs in the distance - it will look way better than seeing far at 800x600, you know what I mean?

A perfect way to completely illustrate what I am on about is to take a screenshot of any GTA game running in full screen mode at 640x480 (we're using the extremes here for the most clarity) and then blow it up to the largest size your monitor supports that GTA at and notice how utterly assish it looks. It looked ok when it was being played, but blowing up that picture shows how much is actually missing. GTA IV was built to scale up and combat that kind of stuff, rather than lock out the lower to middle end systems in favor of a few extra bells and whistles.

To cap off the part about settings: From 1280x1024 up through 1400x900, medium to high settings. Once you hit 1680x1050 you can start going as high as 50-60 in detail and 31-40 in view distance and anything more would, again, just be a waste of resources that you don't even notice anyway. High Textures are truly useless at anything lower than 1280x1024, and even that is not a high enough resolution to do them justice enough to make it worth the problems it creates in the distance. Better to keep them at medium so the level of mips that appear in the mid-range of the line of site blend and smooth the view, rather than twist and distort it. Really, 1680x1050 is when you turn on high textures, and medium looks it's very best at that resolution. As you go higher, medium starts to appear lacking, and high is a necessity (and will actually run faster because it won't be upscaling the lower level of mips that are "medium and low textures")

It is very admirable design, tbh. Basically, GTA IV was made to not look like GTA III looks at 1680x1050 (go launch III at that resolution and look at the radar - things like that. Then watch vehicles in the not-very-far distance. Once you see the problems, back off to like - literally - 1024x768 or lower. Suddenly, the game is actually prettier with regards to the things similar to what I just mentioned [rather redundantly, so on that note, I'm ending this mess ass post here hehe])

But yea, brilliant design, and Built To Last, for certain. The settings I suggest in this post are generous, as well. If you pay close attention to the in-game preview behind the settings options while you tweak (do your tweaking at night for details, day for view distance!!!!!!), you'll notice you can go quite lower. But when we all have awesome monitors and we're playing IV and IVVC again while we wait for IVSA, we will be sooooo glad it was prepared for the leap. Not only the leaps ahead in how computers run, but these kinds of up scaling in standards for resolutions.

Like, pretty soon your Start Menu's and taskbars are going to be 2x the size of the current ones. And double-sized resolution standards on monitors that are the same size in physical dimensions (IE: 20 inch monitors pushing 2560x1600native and the same price you are now paying for one that pushes 1400x900) are going to put them into new levels of crisp, high fidelity goodness. This will happen between now and the third GTA IV game. Built to Last through the Things that Will Be Different.

So, basically, by looking at the assumed game-plan that GTA IV will do Vice Next as Next Gen Brown fades out of the latest gen of consoles and it is time to now wow the public with REAL color pallets, Vice City is perfect for the job, just as much as Liberty, based on dreary gray New York was perfect for the bland color schemes that come with making sure you don't air-out your possibilities on the consoles with the first batch of games you make. It's so complicated. I can go on for days and days, and if anyone needs clarity on anything, ask away, I am totally into this kind of stuff and I possess a pretty firm grip on the next few years in triple A gaming + computer hardware revolutions (the latter I have a weaker knowledge of than the former).

[AFX]

With the new gta iv patches there is a fairly big difference.

[[DRuG]Shane0]

Atm i have the following:
e6600 @ stock
2gb ram
8600gt
and it gets a bit sluggish at times

my new pc which im installing windows on tomorrow or in the next few days is:
e8400 @ 3.6ghz
4gb ram
4870X2

i will tell u what its like then.

However i think that it will make a big difference mainly due to the big jump of all parts not just one