Need Help Improving FPS for GTAIV

Hello,

I am a fan of GTAIV online. The issue is that the game is extremely demanding, and my computer hardware is slightly outdated.

After some tweaking and overclocking with the help of an online friend I was able to run the game at approximately 25-32 fps at the lowest settings.

This solution only works when there is no action on the screen. Once I start to encounter other players then my fps will drop to 10-20, or even freeze for a few seconds. The game will also crash a few times every play session depending on my "luck". Sometimes this crash error messages states a "Fatal error".

The GTAIV forum my friend and I were using to help tweak my PC also has a guide with seemingly drastic solutions (at least for me). The guide mentions installing a fresh OS, defragging the drive afterwards, and installing new drivers among other steps.

I have never installed an OS or defragged my hard drive so I am unsure how to go about this. I understand the taking such actions will wipe my hard drive's memory clean. This along with other uncertainties have led me to write this post.

1) Can I avoid deleting all my memory when installing a fresh OS?
- either through a partition, or transferring the memory to
another hard drive first.
2) Is my PC the inherent issue, and which parts should I upgrade to save $?
- in this case I choose performance over quality (no problem with
low settings).
3) Could I also be experiencing latency due to the fact that the other players
I encounter online are in Europe, while I am in the US West?
4) Would buying the disc of the game increase performance?
- I am currently running the game through steam

I attached two screenshots below which show my PC's specifications.

Thank you for taking the time to read my post and providing any assistance.

k

 

Fresh OS install to tweak a game is crazy, it is not going to give you a major performance increase at all, the only thing I see it doing is running slightly better because your PC is totally clean.
IMO thats a whole lot of work for minimal results.

Updating your drivers may help but you don't need to format to do that.
Download new drivers, uninstall old ones then install new ones. Don't just install over the old ones.

The reason the game runs sluggish is nothing more than your hardware is not capable of running it well.
GTA4 is well known for it's power hungry engine and has always been a little glitchy.

It is also a CPU hungry game, your CPU is not powerful enough to run this game at any kind of higher settings, nor is your graphics card.

My CPU is a few steps up from yours but still a dual core, my graphics is a lot higher than yours and I have more ram than you and I can run it on med settings at around 25fps, when it gets busy it will frequently drop to 15 or lower and thats single player, when I went online I had to turn many settings down just to get above 25fps consistantly.

I suggest you use "Game Booster" available free from Majorgeeks software section.
This little prog will shut down processes that you don't need running while gaming and defrags your ram.

I honestly think a format is massive overkill and since you seem to have little knowledge of how and what to do when formatting I strongly advise against it, especially given the difference will be only very slightly noticable at best.

To get GTA4 running well cosistanly on med settings you need Game Booster, a Quad core or very high end dual core CPU and a heavy duty Graphics card and preferably a minimum of 3GB ram, reguardless of what the box says.

Of course this is my opinion, if you want to format your drive then so be it, but you will have to back up (either on disk or seperate HDD) EVERYTHING you want to keep, when you format your drive it litterally wipe s EVERYTHING.
There is a point in the process after format and before OS install where your HDD is nothing more than a metal box with some spinny stuff in it. ZERO information or files.

I have based this information on many years of PC building and gaming and a fair amount of expierience with GTA4.

Edit:

Here are the specs, minimum means you will be able to run the game but not well. Reccomended means you will be able to run the game fairly well on medium-high settings.

When it boils down to it, if your hardware is simply not powerful enough, all the tweaks in the world are not going to magically make your hardware twice as powerful, you only have what you have.

 

Upgrading seems to be the way to go then. I was skeptical over the fresh OS, etc. working much to begin with.

I will download "Game Booster" as a temporary solution. Otherwise I will make a hardware thread to start the upgrade process. Thank you for your reply.

P.S. my Games for Windows Live tag is: Hank Kingsley92 if you want to play GTAIV sometime.

 

Yeah Game booster is helpful, don't expect miracles but it will help.

If/When you want to buy new hardware and want some advice, post you needs and buget in the hardware section and we can help point you in the right direction

 

have you tried lowering the resolution to say 800 x 600? that worked for me on my old PC to run GTAIV

if not, then a new vid card, maybe some extra RAM and a new CPU would do the trick

 

GTA 4 is a bit of a hog of a game alright.

I'm only getting maybe 30 - 35fps (dipps into the 20's now and then) on the following specs.. with everything apart from draw distance/detail distance at the max:

Core2Quad Q9400@3.2Ghz
4GB DDR2 800
GeForce GTX 460 1GB
750GB HDD with Win7 64 Ultimate SP1

Every other game I've played I've been able to max out and get easily double if not more frames than GTA 4. Good game but it wants way too much to just to run right.