GTAIV for PC is "Future Proof" so says Rockstar

[bochen360]

GTAIV for PC is "Future Proof" so says Rockstar. I have played both GTAIV PC and GTAIV for the xbox 360 and someone please help me understand something... Maybe this should go in the gaming section instead of computer science but the question I have was not answered by the Rockstar Support and totally ignored and laughed at on the unofficial GTA forums... So maybe someone good will computers will help enlightenment me...

 

So goes the excuse that Rockstar gives for the bad framerate performances of GTAIV for PC is that they FUTURE PROOF -ed it... I don't buy it... But I want to get others opinions... A game that always future proofs itself that I like to play is Flight Simulator by Microsoft. But I don't think GTAIV PC can use the same excuse and here is why..

 

My xbox360 has a total of 512RAM that is shared by both the videocard as well as the system itself. So why is there a 1.5GB requirment for playing essentially the exact same game on the PC? (nevermind that I have 4GB of ram, but still one wonders...)

 

Why is it the the XBOX360 version is "ONLY" 6GB in size (the DVD-9 capacity is technically closer to 8.5GB but Rockstar didn't max out the capacity and the GTAIV on 360 is only 6.5GB) when the PC version is closer to 15GB and needs another 25GB to install and play on harddrive?

 

The funny thing is the graphics on the 360 is BETTER/Sharper than on the PC, (so no lame excuse of including HD higher res textures that causes such a big filesize in the game on the pc platform compared to 360..) and runs at a much smoother and faster frames per second!

 

Why do I need MORE harddrive space, and MORE CPU power, and MORE GPU speed and MORE RAM just to play a game that looks worse and slower than the 360 counterpart that uses LESS HDD (actually it doesn't even need a HDD), LESS CPU, LESS GPU, LESS RAM???!!!!??

 

Now the really funny thing is Rockstar CLAIMS to have "future proofed" this game... Oh is THAT RIGHT????

 

Is that why I recently discovered that the PC version of GTAIV has a built in 20ft cap on rendering peds and drivers in CARS??? Even on the most power system today with all settings maxed out in the PC version of GTAIV peds and drivers in cars don't appear until you are as close as 20 feet away from them!!!! And there seems to be no way around this!!!

 

 

So let me get this right, the PC version is permanently HANDICAPPED for NO REASON AT ALL!!! and it has worse graphics at worse framerates YET needs exponentially more RAM, is more than twice as large in size as the 360 version, more harddrive space, more CPU and GPU cycles and they said they have made it future proof??? How is it future proof? The way I see it the 20ft ped-in-car-cap will still exists in 2088, except by then the activations servers for Live and Rockstar Social Club would have went offline and there would be no more support from R*, MS, or Sony the Securom makers so what is a quantum computer to do???

 

How is it "future proof" when it has already been proven by millions of gamers that the same GTAIV game runs perfectly well on a vastly inferior system with better graphics and better framerates than the top of the line pcs can do today??? This game is over 6 months old, it is already "aged" in the gaming world, it played just fine on a console system that was realized back in 2005 and they do a half *** sloppy port to PC and put a crap load of DRM and rootkits on the game and slap it with a hefty price tag plus ridiculous going through hoops and it runs slower and looks suckier even on state of the art PC that is 100X more powerful than xbox and they have the audacity to call these optimizations "future proof"

 

Maybe in the future all our games will render peds in cars at 2ft radius at the rate this is going???? A game that was released well over half a year ago that has already been proven by millions to run perfectly well on a far inferior console system released way back in 2005 now comes out on the pc and runs slower, with poorer graphics even on the most state of the art computer systems that overpower any next-gen console by orders of magnitude now needs more ram, more cpu, more gpu and more hdd on even so renders slower and poorer than ever before! This is progress???? This is future proof???? Maybe if I code a FPS that looks like crap with graphics worse than the original Rainbow Six by Tom Clancy and is so horribly unoptimized and ridden with bugs and crap that it runs 1fps on a hypothetically NSA quantum computer I could sell it for $500 million bucks because it is FUTURE PROOF????

[freeztar]

One word:

 

Microsoft

[alexander]

3 things:

Static flying model in microsoft flight sim sucks, if you want a real, faa certified flight sim, look at x-plane...

 

There is no such thing as future proof, its a catch phrase coined by microsoft. Microsoft did not do anything out of the ordinary in either one of their "future proof" games, its a brilliant promotional stunt that gets kids like joo to buy their games. Reason GTA runs slow is because of the amount of data it processes and the way that it processes it, there are major problems when you get under 20fps on a quad core machine with a dual core graphics card, that's not future proof, its a bug. It's a bug that will be fixed in the future as far as i can read, for now, you get to put up with bad frame rates.

 

360 is made to be a hardware on which games are rendered, executing the game is the only function of the console, there is minimal anything else going on at the time, and hardware is specifically geared for it, and game accesses it almost directly. On your computer, your game runs on top of a clunky OS, and it makes software calls to a video rendering library that then calls hardware, extra step=inefficiency thus the game looks seemingly worse. Also your monitor res is most likely way higher then anything then that 360 can push, so you have to render a larger picture, which takes more ticks too.

 

lastly how do you figure that your PC is 100X more "powerful" then the x-box, justify your claim, yes you can just outline your math, whatever you may mean by "powerful"...

[harmonSmith]

System Requirement for GTA 4

 

GTA 4 Minimum System Requirements

 

* Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo 1.8Ghz or equivalent AMD Athlon X2 64 2.4Ghz

* Memory/RAM: 1GB for XP and 1.5GB for Vista

* Video Card: 256MB NVIDIA 7900 or 256MB ATI X1900

* Hard Disk Space: 16GB free

* Operating System: Windows XP SP3 or Windows Vista SP1

 

GTA 4 Recommended System Requirements

 

* Processor: Intel Core 2 Quad 2.4GHz or equivalent AMD Phenom X3 2.1GHz

* Memory/RAM: 2.5 GB for XP or Vista

* Video Card: 512MB NVIDIA 8600 or 512MB ATI 3870

* Hard Disk Space: 18GB free

* Operating System: Windows XP SP3 or Windows Vista SP

 

I think they are not bothered about making game for PC. Their requirement is even higher then crysis.

[GAHD]

try this:

 

run gta

 

alt+tab out

 

ctrl+alt+del to acces device manager

 

process tab

 

find GTA executeable

 

right-click, select "set affinity" and uncheck core 0

 

right click again, set priority to high or real time.

 

right click explorer exe

 

set affinity, uncheck every core EXCEPT "0"

 

you game no longer shares cycles with the cluhnky os, performance should improve.

 

 

I'm also going to be an *** and 'SUME that you have allready gone to your graphics card's website and downloaded the newest drivers, and well as serching for "known bugs" and "required hotfixes"...