GTA IV PC - patches comparison and visual glitches

Channel:

THU31

Subscribers:

686

Published on April 6, 2011 11:56:58 AM ● Video Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aqa9qC-Iw4A

Game:

Grand Theft Auto IV (2008)

Duration: 6:39

29,389 views

197

This is a comparison of three GTA IV PC versions - 1.0.0.0 (retail), 1.0.3.0 and 1.0.7.0.

The main differences are in shadow quality.

Version 1.0.0.0 looks exactly like the console versions, especially in terms of shadow and water quality. It has better textures and higher view distance, but generally it doesn't look good.

Version 1.0.3.0 is the best one in my opinion. It offers the best performance, the highest shadow setting looks really good, especially at extreme resolutions like 2720x1536 or 3840x2160. Water and reflections also look a lot better than the retail or console versions.
Version 1.0.5.0 is pretty much the same, but I found it to be a little slower, while not fixing anything important.

Versions 1.0.6.0 and 1.0.7.0 (and all versions of Episodes from Liberty City) have been really screwed up in my opinion.
Shadows set to Medium look disgusting. Even with the High setting, the reduced LoD is very noticeable. Very High shadows look awesome, but they cripple the performance. The game isn't playable on anything less than a GeForce GTX 570/580 (textures on High, View/Detail distance at 50, the rest maxed out). Very High shadows reduce the performance by more than 50% compared to the High setting.
There are also tons of visual glitches in this versions, like shadows being drawn as we drive along, or objects LoD problems. Also, shadows aren't rendered behind us. If we look back very quickly, we can see shadows appearing in a blink of an eye.
These versions also aren't fully compatible with the ENBSeries mod. I only use it for antialiasing (downscaling), and it doesn't work. I mean the game itself is being downscaled, but the HUD or the menu aren't, and they go off the screen (we can only see 1/4 of the HUD or menu).

Boris resumed work on this mod, so hopefully the next version will bring full compatibility with the latest patches for both GTA IV and EfLC.

All versions suffer from one more problem - objects popping. This is easily noticeable as we quickly rotate the camera, or simply look behind us. I thought this was just a video memory issue (tha lack of it), but it happens even at the lowest resolutions with textures set to Low. It seems to be an engine issue, it's present in all console games using RAGE, and Rockstar didn't make any effort to improve this on the PC.

Right now I recommend playing GTA IV with the 1.0.3.0 patch, and using ENBSeries for downscaling.
I have a Phenom II X3 @ 4.0 GHz, 2x4 GiB of RAM and a GeForce GTX 460 1 GiB.
This hardware is enough to play the game at 2720x1536 (downscaled to native 1360x768 of my TV). Any higher than that, and the lack of video memory is starting to show.
I'll capture some downscaling videos soon.

One more recommendation - system RAM is very cheap right now, so I suggest buying a total of 6 or 8 GiB of memory, creating a ramdrive, and putting the paging file on the ramdrive. It practically eliminates all the stuttering in this game, as it uses the pagefile very intensively (the latest patches even more than the older ones).

I hope you like this video, and that you benefit from my suggestions.

Higher quality video can be downloaded here - http://www.sendspace.com/file/lklzy7
Contact me if the link dies, I can always reupload.

Check out my other videos and website - http://www.hearselands.com/THU31/

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