GTA IV lag spikes..

[Hartmain93]

Hello Computerhope

I got some problems with playing the game. I've had it installed before and it ran with no problems at all.. Now after i reinstalled Windows on my computer and reinstalled the game, I keep getting sort of lag spikes everytime i rotate the camera or turn left or right in a car or something.. I know that it's not my computer that's too old, first of all because I've completed the game once already on the same computer and I had absolutely no lag at all.. The only difference is that I upgraded from Windows Vista 32 bit to Windows 7 32 bit.. But I mean, that shouldn't be the problem?

Operating System: Windows 7 Ultimate 32-bit (6.1, Build 7600) (7600.win7_gdr.100618-1621)
Processor: Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Quad CPU    Q6600  @ 2.40GHz (4 CPUs), ~2.4GHz
Memory: 3072MB RAM
Available OS Memory: 3070MB RAM
Graphic Card name: NVIDIA GeForce 8600 GT




Any solutions are appreciated! :-)

[Azzaboi]

I highly recommend upgrading your graphic card - NVIDIA GeForce 8600 GT.

Don't trust the minimum required settings for GTA 4, your'll have no end of issues. I can tell you how to tweak it, etc, for better performance, but this game is a graphic card memory hog. Your'll notice it runs like a nightmare on low end graphic cards, glitch and tear rip, etc. The game itself will attempt to lock on low settings, etc.

On a higher end graphic card with a lot of onboard (not shared) memory, all those issue disappear.

Experience with 8800GTX 320MB (returned the game as a buggy lag nightmare, locked low graphics) vs a 275GTX 896MB (it works @ max graphics smoothly).

Also note the original DVD is riddled in bugs like performance issues and not being able to bowl, etc. Download the updates.

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[mroilfield]

I highly recommend upgrading your graphic card - NVIDIA GeForce 8600 GT.

Don't trust the minimum required settings for GTA 4, your'll have no end of issues. I can tell you how to tweak it, etc, for better performance, but this game is a graphic card memory hog. Your'll notice it runs like a nightmare on low end graphic cards, glitch and tear rip, etc. The game itself will attempt to lock on low settings, etc.

On a higher end graphic card with a lot of onboard (not shared) memory, all those issue disappear.

Experience with 8800GTX 320MB (returned the game as a buggy lag nightmare, locked low graphics) vs a 275GTX 896MB (it works @ max graphics smoothly).

Also note the original DVD is riddled in bugs like performance issues and not being able to bowl, etc. Download the updates.

Why do you just about always start off telling people to upgrade something as a means of fixing a problem? Did you not see the part where the OP used to play the game with no problems using their current hardware configuration. The only change made from when it used to work and when it stopped was an upgrade to Windows 7.

[Azzaboi]

Okay then (I'll probably just get yelled at by the MS lovers)...

The difference between Win7 and Vista is that Vista uses more system resources. (source: Microsoft)
Vista loads to system memory and then maps to graphics card memory, basically duplicating resources and uses almost double the memory. Win7 fixed this issue by loading directly to the graphics card. Vista loads all background process at startup, Win7 loads only the ones which are needed and only when they are needed. Win7 also uses less hard drive caching.

GTA 4 is also a memory hungry game, which relies a lot on the graphics card. It detects how much memory is availible and attempts to set the graphics accordingly (settings are locked to the available memory size). Upgrading to Windows 7 would of changed this setting as it saw more memory available to use and tried to increase the quality, but fails as the graphics card can't keep up. It works better with graphic card memory, not system memory (which is has found more of).

You can either set it all to low graphics and try run it smoothly again, attempt to tweak the settings, or update the graphics card.
Your'll probably find it's attempted to increase the draw distance and added shadows, etc (reduce those). If you set them back to low it should run the same or better than it did on Vista. A new graphic card would however let you increase the graphics (you will notice a huge difference with quality and performance of this game).

However, for a few GTA 4 performance tweaks, see my post here:
http://www.computerhope.com/forum/index.php/topic,110081.msg741214.html#msg741214

Happy gaming, hope it works smoothly again for you!