Tech Tips and Reviews
Tech Reviews on a budget. Reviewing new budget products, used products and faulty products to tell you how it can be used to make it better or even used toprove it’s full value, some stuff can be tweaked and that will be posted also.
Website reviews, download reviews of opensource products and free programs.
If you have been trying to learn how to use the Commandline.txt
For GTAIV, just right click that file there and save the file to
your hard disk. Open the file and look at the content.
copy the file to your GTAIV main Directory and boot the game.
EXAMPLE
You will be playing the game at very low settings. I myself enjoy it
windowed.
The reason to use half memory instead of what everyone says about setting it twice memory
Is so that you are not maxing your resources. It makes more sense to me. You can edit as you wish.
but at least try it.
I just ctrl esc and use the mouse to drag the sides out and the corners out
enlarging the visual area. You can now actually play across two screens now.
-windowed
-height 600
-width 800
-refreshrate 60
-minspecaudio
-viewdistance 1
-detailquality 1
-shadowdensity 1
-renderquality 1
-texturequality 1
-availablevidmem .5
Once you get your pc version up and running feel free to swing by at gtaclans.com
Feel free to ask any questions.
Playing Grand Theft Auto IV I was having the issue of images vanishing after just minutes of gameplay. The more the stuff I had going on, the worse it got. I looked online for the capacities of my motherboard. I found that the native memory I was using, What the manufacture says on the box that my motherboard came with is 667mhz. No where on the box did it signify that I could go any further. So I Googled my motherboard. What I found was lots of people like myself did what I did. We all bough what we thought was the max memory for the board. 2 Gigs of 667mhz ddr2. but others experimented and found that it can handle greater than 800 mhz ddr. So I headed to the electronics store and bought 4 gigs of pc 6400 800 mhz ddr2 memory. Then when I got home, I tried to find teh forums that I saw earlier. By that time I found a handfull sites selling the same motherboard, the specs they had on those sites showed greater than 800 mhz..Dang. but I did the install.
You would not believe the speed increase I gained from this. The game has no lag issues. I stay at 30 fps min, and never have any stutter, never have any vanishing items. just that small step up and doubling my memory, the game plays like a gem.
The canned air in the heatsinks didn’t hurt me . So I think I am well on my way. See you online. I will be at gtaclans.com when I am not actually in game.
I just got done rebuilding the tech forum.
My hopes is that we will help each other find solutions to their tech issues. so please sign up and check in from time to time. Maybe someone will ask a question you can answer. I know you guys out there have plenty of witts about you in the computer and electronics field. Not everyone is as good as you guys.
So come to http://iworkwithtech.com/forum/
Sign up. Leave a greeting somewhere or start a new thread, or heck make a request.
If you have a computer and plan to play Grand Theft Auto iv on pc.
People are reading forums on how to resolve issues with their game. They are gathering information from people who do not know what they are talking about. I will help you with just a couple steps. First you have to understand that the person who claimed GTAIV pc has a memory leak, has no clue what he/she is talking about and should clearly be labeled the planets biggest idiot. All planets need an idiot.
The fix, is the same fix for all games using a new architecture/engine. Here is the fix.
Go to the website for the manufacturer of your motherboard. Download all drivers for your motherboard.
Go to the website for the manufacturer of your video card.
Now before installing the new drivers, you must uninstall all the drivers you currently have installed. I usually disabled the plug and play option in Control PanelAdministrative Toolsservices. Of course I do this on Vista because it keeps trying to install some crummy drivers when I reboot after an uninstall. You really shouldn’t need that, but if you do, you know how.
Ok after the uninstall reboot your computer, and now install your drivers one by one, rebooting after each driver installed. On the final driver install, instead of rebooting, shut down your pc. When the pc is off, unplug the power to it. Clean up all the dust in all of your heatsinks (cpu,gpu,northbridge,south etc) clean your memory sticks. Remove all dust out of your pc. Make sure your air flow is heavy through your case.
The way I do that is, at the back of the pc where you see the 80 mm fans. There is like a grill around those. Since I don’t have a 2 year old kid in my house, I snip those grills out. This drops my temperature by about 2-5 degrees C . Here’s more on the subject.
And the last thing for you. DON’T OVERCLOCK YOUR MACHINE, unless you know what you are doing.
I am a regular user at the gtaforums located at gtaforums.com. 100% of the memory leak complaints there, have been resolved with driver issues,heat issues, or the moron tried to overclock and did not want to face the fact that his computer was the issue, not the game.
In the end, this help post will get you playing Grand Theft Auto IV, that simple. The game works fine. Maintain your rig or go back to the console gaming. The cause is not overclocking it’s self, but poor overclocking could be a factor. If your machine is overclocked, set your o/c items back to default and give the game a go. If you can get the game running with your parts clocked to normal, gradually work your way back up in o/c until you reach a stable setting.
How? As if you are overclocking your video card, move each slider (depending on the tool you are using) up by 5mhz, test the game, move up 5 more, test the game and so on till you get a crash. After crash, move sliders back three. When it stables out, move forward one, if it crashes move it back one. and so on. Helpful posts
Same with bios / cmos settings with memory and cpu. Except not with sliders of course. Yes it is tedious but it resolves your issue.
Here is a lesson in how to adjust your settings for smooth video play
And here is the whole help page from Rockstar.
Note: You must have Vista Service Pack 1 or Windows XP Service Pack 3 installed PRIOR to installing and running
Grand Theft Auto IV PC.
Right-click ‘My Computer –> Properties’ to see if you have the latest Service Packs installed, and if not check Windows Update and download before trying to install the game.
To help you understand that. It means that if you installed the latest service pack for your operating system AFTER you installed GTAIV. It would be wise if you uninstall the game and delete all folders now. and reinstall the game.
Somewhere there was talk of resetting your registry but I haven’t had to study that. I will look into it if needed. Yes it sounds like a hassle, but it does tell you on the box what the required service pack would be. Fyi windows xp 64 , you have to have service pack 2, or it will tell you it’s an incompatible operating system. 64 is not listed in the req area :-(
It does work though.
Messing witha sempron I have.
Not really trying to break it, just don’t care much for it right now and really want motivation toevolve to the newest cpu and motherboard combo. Despite what everyone says should be issues right now, I have not had any issues and all games I play, play smooth fast and fine.. but the new stuff is so cheap right now.
Ok done trying to reasomn with you :-P
sempron 3400 cranked fsb from 200 to 205
changed from auto to 200
Nvidia 7600 512 mb agp from default 420/275 to 437/321
Bench scores are up by 500 on madonion and future mark .
http://truxtertech.com/talk/viewtopic.php?f=32&t=50
After benching, after playing in game.
I have to say, it plays a ton better without o/c
I played all the games I normally bench with
and saw that draw distance was greater while
in game, but detail was bland and there was stuttering.
It’s new , it needs you.
I just built a tech support and rumors forum with a video game and console section.
I hope you people like it.
I will be adding moderators as I see the users with morals sticking around.
I will be banning all clowns as fast as I can and as often as I can. who knows maybe I will redirect them to forums I hate 
The goal is to get information and news about tech to the world. and what the hell, to hang out and talk to others like myself.
I don’t see any out there with the same stuff as what I have envisioned so I am making it myself. yes there will be a fight room. Because hey, we all do need to get it out of our systems.
But no fighting in main rooms.
There is avatar and all other options we all have been missing through the past few years as these places seem to get invisible these days.
Yes you can upload your own images to my server, I can handle a fricken lot .
bbcode welcome, html code welcome (for now)
Start a thread and break ground with me.
Off the bat, I have to tell you, I do not have the fastest or the best machine in the world.
I have a machine that is at the max processor and ram for the motherboard’s capability.
Here are the specs for the machine I am using.
Sis 755 A-2 Motherboard
Sempron 3400+ 64 bit Processor
Nvidia 7600GS 512 mb
2 Gigs kingston 3200 ddr Memory
Sony cd/dvd burner
500 watt power supply
Ok for the past 7 or 8 years, The way I have benchmarked computers and operating systems Would be by playing Grand Theft auto III.
Of course I have since then added vice city and San Andreas to the mix. But GTAIII Is the benchmark for me. If you do not like the game sorry
But please hang with me on this.
For a long time I fought trying to make my computers strong and sturdy enough to handle the demands this game calls out. Computers these days are actually strong enough to handle these demands.
After the install of just straight vista drivers I went to pcpitsop and did my first benchmark of my machine. The score was pathetic. I kind of knew what would happen after I installed gtaIII, But I go ahead and start the game. Before the load screen I get a notice saying that there is some sort of dll missing (sorry all, I did not write it down) . I then hear the game start up but minimized in the task bar. I click the notification and the game takes over the screen. I see this look that took me back to the days of 256 megs ram and nvidia 440 on a 800 meg processor. This game looked wretched. But what do you expect with o/s drivers and not vendor drivers? Well since it’s a newer o/s than XP, I would expect better results than xp, not similar to win 98 on a crap machine. Very pixilated simi laggy but not as laggy as you would think with the way it looked.
After the drivers had been installed I start GTAIII again. Again it gave me the notice of missing dll. When the unnamed player in gtaIII walked out of his hide out I noticed artifacts. The garage was covered with imaging from the walls adjacent to the Entry to the garage. The player had openings so you could see through him in many places. I moved on and walked into the garage and drove the banshee down the ocean blvd to check how the game (typically) lags (with bad bad drivers or bad hardware) as you drive under objects, like the over head train, and trees and bridge. The game was very jaggedly laggy and objects where not being displayed properly.
After the gtaIII test I tried the other two Grand Theft Auto games and got the same mess. I swear the game looks better and plays better on linux with just the linux basic drivers, but the lag is way worse on Linux.
So I did searches for help forums and the like. I found that allot of people with the 7000 series nvidia video cards had similar issues. I never found a solution that worked. No, using older drivers did not help. Until sis/ecs releases more than one gart driver I am pretty much stuck in the same spot.
I did notice that the fonts on websites looked a bit bigger than when on xp.
As much as I enjoyed the looks of Aero (makes me think of Ubuntu) I decided to try turning it off. I used Black Viper’s tips from his tweak site .
The game did not change. and my bench score on pcpitstop only went up 10 points from the first test with base drivers.
Vista test was done 3/29/08. So please wait a few months before you tell me they fixed the operating system. I did try all online update and nothing got better that I could witness myself.
I am now back on xp and my machine runs three times a fast. using the same direct version as I used on vista.. 9.0c