Hello guys, GTA IV has been available for some time now on Playstation 3 and XBOX360. Recently the PC version has been released as well. First reviews show some problems regarding the steep system requirements, the copy protection messing with your system and some bugs letting the game crash and causing graphics failures. I could not get ahold of the game yet, but reserved a copy that is due to arrive this week. Anyone already had the pleasure to try the PC version of this game? Since I do not own a Playstation 3 nor an XBOX360, I did not get to play this episode of GTA yet. That is why I am really looking forward to play this, even though my MacBook Pro will probably not run it at great resolution and high visual settings. Any input, reporting about your experiences is highly appreciated. Regards, Steve (csc2ky)
So finally I picked up my copy of GTAIV for PC today at Datablitz and spent over one and a half hour to install everything and to get it to run. As many other people on the Interwebs are reporting the performance is not the best as of now. Rockstar already responded to this and said they will provide a patch soon to get things going a little smoother. To get it running without a graphics driver glitch I installed the latest custom drivers (180.84) that could be found on laptopvideo2go.com. I just tried a few different resolution as well as detail settings and somehow it is just not capable to get beyond 20 frames per second (FPS). I think it is really a driver issue, because lowering the details as well as selecting a low resolution did not change much about how smooth the game is running. It is playable, but far from perfect. I am hoping that the adjustments that the patch will bring, will take care of some of these issues. I will try to tweak the settings tomorrow a little more and see, if I can get this game running well. I already finished a few missions in the beginning and have to say this game is really nice. I never checked out the console versions so this is really something new to me. If you got a good gaming rig, but no PS3 or XBOX360, you should definitely look into this. Make sure you have enough time and patience to survive the lengthy setup process. (Almost 16GB on the hard drive!) Good night for now... csc2ky
Looks like I am the only one interested in this game so far. All of you interested probably finished the PS3 or XBOX360 Version already. Nevertheless I will keep up being annoying and report about my experiments and experiences with the PC version of this game. Rockstar has released the first Patch for this game now: http://www.rockstargames.com/support/IV/PC/patch/index.html Problems being addressed are as follows: - A fix to the crash after legal screen that some German customers were reporting. - Numerous improvements to the video editor: Smarter naming of videos, improved rendering quality, better fx during replays. - Fix to bowling while using certain sensitive mice. - Fix for ATI 1900 shadows. - Overall savings to memory. - Graphic improvements to particle systems and mirrors. - Multiplayer character settings are preserved. - Support for DirectInput controllers. Later I will give it a run and see if the performance got better and the game became a little smoother to run on my MacBook Pro (Early 2008) with its 8600M GT / 256MB RAM graphics card... (still going strong, no signs of faulty chip yet... knock on wood)
Game looks nice though I'm wondering if its going to work on a virtual windows on a mac aluminum. Thanks for the inputs by the way.
Oh, someone interested. Hi byt_898! To answer your question. I would not even think about trying to run this within a virtual machine. I run it on a games only Windows XP SP3 install. The partitioning was performed via Mac OS X 's Boot Camp. This has the simple reason, that within a virtual machine you are sharing your hardware with the host operating system. The hardware would not perform good enough when the game has above low to average system requirements. The system requirements for GTAIV PC are pretty steep: Minimum Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo 1.8Ghz, AMD Athlon X2 64 2.4Ghz Memory: 1.5GB Free Hard Drive Space: 16GB Video Card: 256MB NVidia 7900 / 256MB ATI X1900 DirectX 9 compatible Stereo Sound Card Keyboard Mouse Recommended Processor: Intel Core 2 Quad 2.4Ghz, AMD Phenom X3 2.1Ghz Memory: 2GB (Windows XP) 2.5GB (Windows Vista) Free Hard Drive Space: 18GB Video Card: 512MB NVIDIA 8600 / 512MB ATI 3870 DirectX 9 compatible Surround Sound Card Keyboard Mouse So I applied the patch late in the evening yesterday, after finishing my work and just gave it a spin for a short time. There are definitely some improvements in the frame rates and the game becomes more playable. When it is daytime within the game, everything runs pretty smooth. When it is becoming night, it slightly gets choppy here and there due to all the lighting effects I suppose. The only time it becomes a little too laggy for my taste is when the rain starts pouring, nevertheless it is still playable though. I am still experimenting with the resolution and different detail settings to find the perfect balance for my MacBook Pro with its 256MB nVidia 8600M GT. I am also hoping that nVidia will release a new set of drivers that will give this game a little push.
Hi bmsantillan, You definitely should try this game, if you could not get your hands on it as of now. It is great fun to explore Liberty City and to do some bad or godd stuff... ehm... mostly bad stuff.. Great game. I already forgot who awarded it, but GTAIV became Game of the Year 2008. Anyways, make sure you keep children and minors away from this. This game is definitely for adults only, because of the heaps load of violence and more disturbing stuff. My wife hit me on the head, when she saw me stealing the car of someone while the owner was still sitting inside. Enjoy.
Hi csc2ky, How was the game so far? I wanted to try this out myself on a bootcamp windows as I’ve seen some videos uploaded in youtube is quite playable on a mac aluminum. How much and where did you get your copy ? Will it also work on an XP SP2? TIA
Hey byt_898, Sorry for the late reply, I have just seen your post. The game is definitely fun. I can recommend it. I got my copy from Datablitz and they are selling it for 1,400 Peso. Definitely a good price for this game. You need to have either XP SP3 or Vista for this game to run well and of course it needs to be a Bootcamp environment since the requirements are pretty steep. Enjoy!
Hi csc2ky! thanks for posting this... new to mac but not GTA, finished both PSP GTA games, and went very far with GTA San Andreas until i got tired! hehehe Planning on installing this game on my shiny MBA 2.4GHz!
Hopefully malaro ko tong game na to..hehe. natapos ko na kasi san andreas sa ps2. It took me 3 months (playing around 5 hours a day) to finished the game. Gusto ko malaro for ps3 are grand theft 4, resident evil 5?, and fight night round 4..hehe
