GTA IV - Quad or Core i7 needed!

[bowman]

The game is certainly a very lazy port job although I doubt there's an emulator hiding under it. :p It uses three threads, no more, just like its proper home, the Xbox console. It reeks like a straight recompile with some slight changes to make it look not entirely retarded (although the obligatory sloppy port reminders like 'saving game, please don't turn off your system' are still there).

[RaZz!]

That's because when you optimize for PC or porting if you like that name better (which is the same as optimize for Core 2) you need to avoid bottlenecks. Maybe they need to have a margin for the FSB also because they want the game to run smooth. of course there are other things to think of also. If the processor doesn't have bottlenecks it would be much more simple to port the game.

I have trouble to understand how sensitive some people are to criticism for the core 2, all things about that processor isn't super

i'd say the problem gta4 is suffering from is the fact that it's not optimized for the pc platform at all it runs crap on everything.
but as me and other people already said, it ran crap on the consoles as well - with inferior graphics etc...

and IF a developer notices that it's running into bottlenecks of the pc platform then they should get their asses straight and completely recode it for pc architecture instead of releasing a poorly ported game. period.

other games run well on the pc as well, so why should gta4 be a "victim" of such a "weakness" a specific cpu arch has? if this "weakness" really exists (i have to admit, i have no idea ) then why aren't other games having problems as well?

[bowman]

Oh christ, gosh is at it again with his anti-FSB evangelism?

gosh, the issues are the same whether or not the game runs on Core 2, Nehalem or AMD systems. The game runs like no matter which system bus we may be talking about. Please, just give it up. I'm struggling to understand how you can still be here given that basically all your posts consist of this FSB bottleneck trolling. On a UP platform it is negligible. In games doubly so. JumpingJack, with way more patience and knowledge than me, tried to explain this to you over several pages in several threads with loads of real-world tests and it's still not getting through, is it?

If the FSB was the bottleneck here the quads, with more traffic aggregated across the FSB and communicating between core pairs over the FSB certainly would be overwhelmed, wouldn't they? But no, they perform better than C2D systems.. Not to speak of the AMD systems. How you can keep this up and not laugh at yourself is beyond my comprehension.

[STaRGaZeR]

Don't feed the troll. If you do so, he'll come again and again...

[gosh]

Question to those who thinks I am troll and say that GTA isn't optimized for the PC but that it isn't a FSB problem.

Could you please explain what you need to do for the game so it will run good on PC? What is the problem with PC if you need to optimize it?

[bowman]

Question to those who thinks I am troll and say that GTA isn't optimized for the PC but that it isn't a FSB problem.

Could you please explain what you need to do for the game so it will run good on PC? What is the problem with PC if you need to optimize it?

There isn't a problem, the console is a completely different machine than any desktop PC on the market which is why you can't just recompile a console game and expect it to run perfectly (which is what they did as evident by the game only utilizing three threads, not, say, one, two, four or more). Tri-core in-order design with two execution pipes and SMT (which they apparently didn't use for this game), it's basically three 3.2GHz Intel Atoms on a die. And it's PPC. It's a sloppy port job, of an engine written specifically for the consoles (unlike say Unreal 3 which is truly multiplatform), and it needs a complete overhaul to function optimally on the PC. They didn't bother.

Given that all other console ports run better and look better compared to their console counterparts on lower specced hardware than this game I'd blame the game before I blamed the hardware. But given that your only purpose in this world seems to be to find fallacious arguments against the front-side bus I'm not surprised you're completely unable to see the facts.

[gosh]

There isn't a problem, the console is a completely different machine than any desktop PC

In what way is it different? What do consoles do that a PC can't do or is bad on?

[ownage]

Question to those who thinks I am troll and say that GTA isn't optimized for the PC but that it isn't a FSB problem.

Could you please explain what you need to do for the game so it will run good on PC? What is the problem with PC if you need to optimize it?

Do you have any idea what FSB is?

[gosh]

Do you have any idea what FSB is?

It's a parrot

Here is the main problem: http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/...&postcount=164

[Sly Fox]

So do you have any actual evidence for this or is conjecture now fact?

[gosh]

So do you have any actual evidence for this or is conjecture now fact?

No it isn't a fact but is one possible explanation. Most people just say it is badly optimized but no explanation on what could be bad.

If it is using three threads and each thread works against same memory.
Nehalem will the load the memory once, because each thread can access same L3 cache. C2Q needs to load the memory twice. C2Q = 2xC2D = no communication between caches on each C2D. That could also be one explanation why C2Q need to work that much more compared to Nehalem

[BenchZowner]

Don't feed the troll. If you do so, he'll come again and again...

Unfortunately I have to agree.
It's like talking to a wall... or even better a mirror.
Every time you cover something properly, it just reflects something else...

A global ignore button... yay that would be so nice

[Adonay]

Then why do all other multiplatform games run so nicely on the x86 be it two 2 or 4 core one word "optimised" engine. fallout3,crysis"look at the crappy ps3 port",Farcry 2, Bioshock,Call of duty .. Do they all need 6 threads to work ? No they dont the gta4 game engine suck period . And if you think GTA4 is the most technically game ever made you are sadly mistaken.. The game does not utilize the GPU as it should either ..

[ghost101]

Well from what I've tested so far, the game is very cpu limited. I get similar frame rates between 720p and 1000p resolutions with medium textures. Apart from the draw distance, the others have minor effects. The biggest boost to performance I found was going from 2.5ghz q9300 to 3.2ghz.

[Clairvoyant129]

No it isn't a fact but is one possible explanation. Most people just say it is badly optimized but no explanation on what could be bad.

If it is using three threads and each thread works against same memory.
Nehalem will the load the memory once, because each thread can access same L3 cache. C2Q needs to load the memory twice. C2Q = 2xC2D = no communication between caches on each C2D. That could also be one explanation why C2Q need to work that much more compared to Nehalem

You and your FSB issue again. Is that why GTA 4 runs much better on a C2Q with its FSB than Phenom?

[bowman]

In what way is it different? What do consoles do that a PC can't do or is bad on?

It has nothing to do with capability or whatever, it has to do with the design philosophy, instruction set and microarchitecture. Of course I can't expect you to understand how they work and what the difference is, and even if you did you'd play dumb just to piss people off and for the sake of creating an argument.

This is the last post I'll ever make in response to your senseless baiting posts.. Get a hobby.

God bless the ignore list.

[Clairvoyant129]

It has nothing to do with capability or whatever, it has to do with the design philosophy, instruction set and microarchitecture. Of course I can't expect you to understand how they work and what the difference is, and even if you did you'd play dumb just to piss people off and for the sake of creating an argument.

This is the last post I'll ever make in response to your senseless baiting posts.. Get a hobby.

God bless the ignore list.

Yea, JumpingJack showed Gosh tons and tons of data (run on his AMD and Intel systems with a HD4870X2) to show that FSB isn't an issue in these games and to show that bottlenecks don't exist. Of course, Gosh ignored all of the evidence shown. It doesn't matter how many times you tell him, he will always just play dumb to piss people off. I'm sure deep down, he knows FSB isn't an issue.

[BenchZowner]

You and your FSB issue again. Is that why GTA 4 runs much better on a C2Q with its FSB than Phenom?

[gosh]

Yea, JumpingJack showed Gosh tons and tons of data (run on his AMD and Intel systems with a HD4870X2) to show that FSB isn't an issue in these games and to show that bottlenecks don't exist. Of course, Gosh ignored all of the evidence shown. It doesn't matter how many times you tell him, he will always just play dumb to piss people off. I'm sure deep down, he knows FSB isn't an issue.

OT
I pay attention to things that are right, In that thread I think that there was something to learn for everyone. I didn't know that games didn't adapt to resolution, that was my error. None in that thread explained that the cpu and gpu runs asynchronously. English is my second language so I have a problem to defend myself because it takes time for me to express it and that will of course make it look like I ignore the information.
On topic
If you have one explanation that makes sense for why GTA runs badly on the PC then I will listen. I do not listen to people that just say "bad optimize".

[gosh]

You and your FSB issue again. Is that why GTA 4 runs much better on a C2Q with its FSB than Phenom?

Comparing Phenom and C2Q using GTA and other games you will se that phenom handles GTA very well. C2Q has higher Hz and bigger cache so even if cache coherency is bad it gains on other areas.

GTA isn't the last game that will run bad on Core 2, the market is shifting so I think ther will be more facts about this issue for games in the future. It is a lot easier to create threaded applications if you don't need to allocate separate memory pools for each thread to get good scaling

[Jowy Atreides]

Does anyone think that GTA4 might be using an emulator to run on the PC?
I know it's a stupid and random thought which just crossed my mind, but in previous GTA incarnations (since GTA3) bits of the game contained data which was only relavent for the consoles.

Yes, it does contain xbox 360 code and gui settings.
This port is indeed a partially emulated version of GTA IV for the 360.

Not in the traditional emulator sense though as the game is coded without many 360 bios calls.

As of now, only one true xbox 360 emulator exists. Kaizen360

[Clairvoyant129]

Comparing Phenom and C2Q using GTA and other games you will se that phenom handles GTA very well. C2Q has higher Hz and bigger cache so even if cache coherency is bad it gains on other areas.

GTA isn't the last game that will run bad on Core 2, the market is shifting so I think ther will be more facts about this issue for games in the future. It is a lot easier to create threaded applications if you don't need to allocate separate memory pools for each thread to get good scaling

Wanna bet that a 2.4GHz C2Q would run GTA 4 better than Phenom 9950?

Why do you keep insisting that FSB is an issue in desktop level applications? FSB will never be an issue, period.

and no, JumpingJack in that thread CLEARLY showed there is no bottleneck at whatever resolution and settings. You on the other hand just ignored him and kept insisting that a bottleneck existed. Once JumpingJack knew you were thick as a rock, he gave up.

[gosh]

Why do you keep insisting that FSB is an issue in desktop level applications? FSB will never be an issue, period.

Good point!

[ubuntu83]

I need a GTA4 benchmark whit a penryn CPU at 3.6Ghz and 4870 X2 or same VGA.

whit this setting :

1280 x 1024
high
hightest
view distance 22
distance detail 70

Please

For a PhenomII comparison?

[purecain]

@gosh.... this isnt a personal attack, this forum is used by many people across the world as a valuable resourse when researching anything pc related....

i'm afraid that most of what you write is absolute garbage.... so dont spoil the forum with inacuracies....

on topic.....

when i installed this game after reading about all the problems people were having, i was initially impressed.... even running dual 4870's i didnt expect the game to run well at all,

given texture quality is locked at medium (with only having 512mb of gpu memory), the rest of the settings were reasonably high....

with a q6600 at 3.6ghz i averaged around 52fps and am actually enjoying the game.....

i have experianced quite a few crashes but they only occur after hours of play....

so it looks like having a quad finally paid off and 'may' of made this game playable....