Rockstar Responds to GTA IV PC Problems

[Keane Ng]

Rockstar Responds to GTA IV PC Problems

Grand Theft Auto IV [http://www.rockstargames.com/][/I].

"We are aware that a small number of fans are having problems running GTA IV on their PC's and we would like to assure them we are working to help solve these as quickly as possible," Rockstar said in a technical support [http://ve3d.ign.com/articles/news/43355/Grand-Theft-Auto-IV-PC-Rockstar-Statement-Offers-Little-Hope], via their regularly updated FAQs page and through tech support hotlines.

Widespread reports of multiple game-breaking bugs have troubled the release of GTA IV on PC. Users claim that textures are missing in-game, the game regularly crashes at the main menu and during play, and the consumers [http://socialclub.rockstargames.com/] quickly discovered and compiled their own fixes.

Users complaining that they can't adjust certain graphical settings or run the game well on high-end PCs, however, seem to be left in the dust, document [http://www.shacknews.com/onearticle.x/56212] states "the higher settings are provided for future generations of PCs with higher specifications than are currently widely available."

I understand that building games around future hardware specs is not uncommon in PC gaming, but if I built an expensive rig that can play Crysis [http://www.ea.com/crysis/] on high, I'd be pretty peeved if I was forced to settle for medium in GTA IV.

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[eugenix]

I built my rig, running Vista 64bit on an Intel Q9450 O.C.ed to 3.2 ghz, have Corsair dominator DDR2 @ 1066mhz, Biostar T-Power I45 mobo, 300 gig Raptor Hard drive, and a Radeon 4870 x2 w/ 2GB of GDDR5 ram. (this is not 2 different 4870's in crossfire, but the $500 single card)
At 1900x1200, with autoconfigure settings, game sputters with frame rates dropping down to 6 and 7 fps at moments, then at other moments, hovers around 23-32 fps. Even the opening sequence can't run smoothly without sputtering. Ridiculous. I even turned the resolution down to 1280x800, which upped the frame rates to 60 in some instances, but still had little difference in the low, debilitating dips in frame rates at other spots. Turning the texture and detail settings to medium helped a little, but it doesn't seem to be an issue with hardware but rather the game loading certain elements.
Another thing that is annoying is that it fails to recognize my 2 GPU's and only reports 1 gig of video ram present.
What is laughable is Rockstar's Video Troublshooting, which seems to focus on turning off background services via CTRL+ALT+DEL. They should have added a: Have you verified the computer and monitor are turned on and working? section.
Game crashed multiple times for no apparent reason. The first time I loaded it up, for some odd reason, it ran well at 1900x1200 with everything on high, minus the few lags during the intro and transition moments onto the streets. Game is amazing when everything is running, I mean it's the most incredible virtual city I've ever been in. Haven't been able to duplicate the experience again.
Really hope either ATI or Rockstar address some of these issues either via patches or drivers. Also heard there is no SLI support for nVIDIA owners. I, myself, will continue to try to find some workarounds. Would be interested to hear some specs for Core i7 owners. I personally think claiming that the "higher settings are provided for future generations of PCs.... " is big cop out for rushing the port out before christmas. Fallout 3 and Far Cry 2 look much better and run like butter, whether they have that much less going to justify these glitches is debatable in my opinion.

 

[Battlefrank]

How about pay people back on their games since you pretty much used them as unpaid beta testers?

 

[eugenix]

Update:
I got it to run decently making some adjustments to ATI's catalyst. Settings are as follows:
AA- application settings
Adaptive AA- Performance
Anisotropic - application settings
Disable Catalyst A.I.
Mipmap Detail - Performance

Game settings:
1920x1080
Texture: Medium
Render: Highest
I can then set the other options as high as they'll go and get a smooth game with frame rates 30-60 averaging high 30's, although I can watch some distant objects get drawn as I move around the higher I set the the other options
had to tweak some BIOS settings as well, turning off most CPU options like speedstep, virtualization etc..which I should have done anyway. Will try getting texture to run on high in the near future.
Just really wish the game would take advantage of the 2 GPU's and 2 Gigs of Ram, and more advantage of multiple processing threads. I would think "future" generation of PC's would still embody these technologies.

 

[Dommyboy]

Captain Obvious here to point out that Rockstar has obviously been lazy with this port. GTA 4 would run well on a present day computer but due to Rockstar not bothering to optimize the game and just do a plain port, PC users get a version that runs well when it looks like GTA: San Andreas.

 

[Dremandred]

""We are aware that a small number of fans are having problems running GTA IV on their PCs and we would like to assure them we are working to help solve these as quickly as possible." -

Judging by the sheer number of complaints and issues I've seen on the net and experienced myself it's way way more than a small number of players.

The lack of SLI support on release is appalling I have the NVIDIA GeForce 7950 GX2 which is a single card but uses a variant of SLI technology between the two cards. In game the graphics do not render a couple of meters past Nico.

Very disappointed in R* on this release.

 

[GoldenShadow]

I will wait a few weeks to buy another console port/multiplatform game on PC so I can determine what problems and issues are present. I have a Wii, PS3, and a higher end gaming PC. (Core 2 Duo 3.1Ghz, 4GB RAM, Radeon 4870) I already have GTAIV for PS3, so I am relieved at my purchase. I bought that PS3 on a whim before the PC release of GTAIV was announced. I am a PC gamer first, but I can't stand how buggy and glitchy new software that comes out today. Its quite a pleasant surprise when you install a game and it just works.

Steam is my platform of choice. Recently, Left4Dead just works, no serious tweaking needed to tune it to your system, i just set everything to maximum detail and started gaming. I also bought TombRaider Underworld from Steam preorder to get Legend for free. I was nervous, because it is multiplatform. Luckily it plays perfectly on my PC, and with my Xbox360 wireless control pad, works like a charm.

The last GTA game I had on PC was San Andreas, the experience was less than great, but the only redeeming factor was mouse and keyboard controls. I wanted to grt GTAIV on PC so badly, but my impulse decision earlier this year paid off. Now I've already completed the game, and I won't have to find further time to devote to yet another game I don't have time for.

PC Games I still need to play that I already bought.
STALKER Clear Sky(haven't finished yet)
Fallout3(finished it once, need to replay it)
FarCry2(not even a quarter way finished-Thanks Fallout3)
Left4Dead(playing this game day and night isn't helping anything)
DeadSpace(only done the first couple of levels)
Gears of War(bought this last year for PC and never got very far due to other games coming out)
Mass Effect(beat it once and need to play for alternate endings)
TombRaider Underworld and Legend(fun games that take too much patience-ie too much time-and havn't finished either or them)

and I have a measely 3 games for PS3, GTAIV, SW:Force Unleashed, and LittleBigPlanet. I still play all 3 of them from time to time when my PC is busy doing something like downloading or recording.

Its the Curse. When you have no job, you have tons of free time to play through everything you own twice over but no money to buy new games. When I do work, I have tons of money to blow on them, and no time to fully play them.

 

[Redback911]

"We are aware that a small number of fans are having problems running GTA IV on their PCs"

Are they serious? These guys are becoming politicians. When will people accept their responsibilities. The game runs like utter crap on even the newest PCs. I have the PS3 version, but still went out and purchased the PC version. My PC is a few months old and can be considered "high spec". Even on the lowest settings, the best FPS I get is 17. I cannot log into the social network and windows live crashes every time I try to log in, which means I cannot save any progress even if I wanted to play the game. I have spent days trying to resolve the problems. This is a complete waste of time of the game was released too early. I opened a trouble ticket with 2K Games and the poor support engineer told me they are overwhelmed with GTA IV PC customer problems.

 

[searanox]

I absolutely hate it when developers do this. Spend time polishing the game as much as possible for the current generation of PC's rather than spending time and money trying to make sure that future generation PC's will be able to run the game prettier than what's possible at the present.

Funny, most PC fans would prefer games that scale up for the future. Of course, that also means that the game does have to run well on current machines too, but considering that the game's "low" settings are actually more or less on par with the console versions, I think a lot of the issues are exaggerated by people who just crank up everything to high out of habit and assume that the game is broken when they can't run it. "High settings" are not the same across every game released; has anyone ever considered that maybe even the game's low settings are equivalent to most other games' high settings?

That said, I also know Rockstar has a history of shit PC ports and I doubt that this is an exception.

 

[Redback911]

"We are aware that a small number of fans are having problems running GTA IV on their PCs"

Are they serious? These guys are becoming politicians. When will people accept their responsibilities. The game runs like utter crap on even the newest PCs. I have the PS3 version, but still went out and purchased the PC version. My PC is a few months old and can be considered "high spec". Even on the lowest settings, the best FPS I get is 17. I cannot log into the social network and windows live crashes every time I try to log in, which means I cannot save any progress even if I wanted to play the game. I have spent days trying to resolve the problems. This is a complete waste of time of the game was released too early. I opened a trouble ticket with 2K Games and the poor support engineer told me they are overwhelmed with GTA IV PC customer problems.

 

[Jursa]

They took all that friggin time to actually release the thing for PC and now this? It's almost like they woke up one morning 2 days before release and said, ok let's start working on the PC version. Ok there are a lot of things I can forgive, graphical glitches - I can life with it, bad porting - survivable, but there's nothing that makes me pull hairs out of my head more than frequent random crashes.

 

[SenseOfTumour]

From what I've heard about the GTA IV install, with all its associated extra things, and the alleged boasting about how serious their DRM is, I can't help but think they'd have sold more if they'd spent the $200,000 or so creating a small demo to let people know if they could play it, and some more bug testers.

I do also feel it was rushed out to get the xmas market however. Rockstar have always enjoyed their rock n roll, rebellious image, with GTA, Manhunt, etc... and it seems they're now moving towards EA.

 

[MartiniOCP]

Right. I've got a rather old PC (gtx 8800, athlon x2 6000, 4GBs) but still something that runs crysis or far cry 2 in high (the former makes a bigger challnge but completing it several times didn't frustrate me at all). If it comes to gta4 the only glitch that really annoys and devastates the user is the constant "hick up" thing. Not sure what's the reason for it. Lowest settings do not help, hickup's still there. Funny thing thah when I start playing the game everything's ok, framerate's reosonable. It's only after some 2 minutes that it all turns bad. Moreover, I don't recall this to be happening when i was running the game before the patch. Maybe someone had it figgured out?

 

[L33tsauce_Marty]

They took all that friggin time to actually release the thing for PC and now this? It's almost like they woke up one morning 2 days before release and said, ok let's start working on the PC version. Ok there are a lot of things I can forgive, graphical glitches - I can life with it, bad porting - survivable, but there's nothing that makes me pull hairs out of my head more than frequent random crashes.

It reminds me of how Yahtzee was talking about Rockstar, "...As soon as someone wakes them up". Looks like no one has yet.