Grand Theft Auto IV

Template:Infobox Grand Theft Auto (series) Key points

Reports indicate this title is a poor port.

General information

Steam Community Hub

Rockstar Support

Availability

All versions require Games for Windows Live.

Improvements

No introduction movies

Instructions

Performance improvement

When running the game, you can use command line modifiers to optimize performance:

Instructions

Patches

• Patch 1.0.7.0 - Latest version, includes a number of fixes.

The 1.0.6.0+ patch no longer requires Rockstar Social Club to be launched in order to run the game.

Steam automatically updates the game with the latest version available so you are not required to manually install patches.

Modifications

• GTA4-Mods - Extensive mod database.
• GTA Garage - Extensive mod database.
• iCEnhancer - Notable graphical enhancement mod.
• GPM - Extensive, high quality modification database.

It is strongly recommended to make a backup of any files modifications may replace or amend in case of corruption.

XLiveLess

If you want to be able to add modifications to your GTA IV base game you will need to proceed with the steps below.

Instructions

XLiveLess will disable all multiplayer functionality to prevent cheating.

An invisible fonts glitch may occur which involves game menu text disappearing, follow the instructions below to resolve it.

Instructions

Game data

Save game location

Both folders constitute the save game, as the save data is bond to the GFWL profile.

Video settings

File:Gta4 settings.jpg

Video settings menu.

Tweaks

Command Line

By creating a file called commandline.txt and saving it to your root game folder you can alter the way your game runs. If you are using Steam; go to the game in your library, right-click and click Properties, select Set Launch Options... and enter the commands separated by spaces.

The table below describes the majority of commands usable in the command line file.

Command Line	Definition	Example Usage
width	sets the horizontal resolution	-width 1280
height	sets the vertical resolution	-height 720
texturequality	changes texture quality low/med/high (0-2)	-texturequality 1
shadowdensity	adjusts shadows thrown up by car lights (0-16)	-shadowdensity 3
renderquality	adjusts the render quality of the game (0- 4)	-renderquality 3
viewdistance	adjusts the view distance (0-99)	-viewdistance 25
detailquality	adjusts the detail distance (0-99)	-detailquality 30
norestrictions	removes memory restrictions on graphic settings	-norestrictions
novblank	removes good ole v-sync	-novblank
safemode	runs GTA 4 with everything set to as low as you can go	-safemode
fullscreen	runs GTA 4 fullscreen	-fullscreen
windowed	runs GTA 4 windowed	-windowed
availablevidmem	allocates some system ram as additional vram	-availablevidmem 1.5
percentvidmem	how much vram of your gpu GTA 4 can use, 1.0 will be all of it and 0.5 will be half	-percentvidmem 0.5
frameLimit	limits your framerate to the refresh rate	-frameLimit 1
refreshrate	adjusts the refresh rate (oddly enough) be careful do not set a refresh rate your monitor can't do	-refreshrate 60
fullspecaudio	enable high-end cpu audio	-fullspecaudio
minspecaudio	enable low-end cpu audio	-minspecaudio
noprecache	turns precache off	-noprecache
nomemrestrict	turns all memory restrictions off	-nomemrestrict
benchmark	starts the in game benchmark and then quits the game	-benchmark
help	lists the commands and usage but doesn't look as snazzy as this	-help

PS3 Controller Buttons

If using a PS2/PS3 controller, you might want to change the Xbox 360 buttons to the PS2/PS3 buttons. In order to do so, download

Instructions

Issues and fixes

Memory Leaks

There is a series of tweaks by Rockstar Games to resolve some memory leaks. If you encounter stutter and other performance issues after running the game for a while consider trying one of these in your commandline.txt file previously mentioned, depending on the texture quality you have selected in the game settings:

• Low textures: -memrestrict 209715200
• Medium textures: -memrestrict 314572800
• High textures: -memrestrict 629145600

ATI Rain Effects Glitch

There is a problem with ATI 69xx (6950, 6970, 6990) cards and drivers at the moment. (And there has been for some time.) The rain shader in GTA IV causes spontaneous red, green, sometimes white starbursts while it is raining. Don't worry! These aren't really artifacts, but a shader bug.

There is a quick workaround. It involves disabling the lighting shader on rain.

• Open your GTA folder (Usually C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Grand Theft Auto IV\GTA IV)
• Navigate to common\data\visualSettings.dat and open it with your favorite text editing software.
• Scroll down to line 20 or so under "#Values for rain GPU particle effect" and change "rain.UseLitShader 1.0" to "rain.UseLitShader 0"
• Play your game!

ATI Radeon Water Fix

There is a problem where the water loses its features and details after a while. Follow the instructions below to resolve this.

Instructions

Algonquin Bridge lag issue

If you're experiencing significant FPS drops only on the Algonquin Bridge with an Intel i7 processor, try installing Process Lasso, open it, launch GTA 4, alt-tab out, right click then set the affinity of gtaiv.exe to "Avoid Non-Physical Cores", as well as setting the "Priority Class" to High.

Game Fails to start

There is an issue in which the Steam Version of the game (And possibly non-steam) will fail to start. The Rockstar Social club login pops up, but after you sign in, or go offline, the game fails to start. This is caused by an out of date Games for Windows Live Client. You can download the client here. You may have to start run this program each time you want to play.

Unfortunately, however, updating the client may not be the only issue preventing you from logging in to Games for Windows Live. It could also be a problem with your MTU size. To determine what your MTU size is, open a cmd window (click Start, type cmd, press enter). Once in the cmd window, enter the following command:

C:\>netsh interface ipv4 show interfaces

This will show you the MTU size currently set for all of your network interfaces. For your account to be able to log in, the MTU size must be set to 1500. If it is not, a quick fix is to just force the change in with:

C:\>netsh interface ipv4 set subinterface "Local Area Connection" mtu=1500 store=persistent

Assuming, of course, that "Local Area Connection" is the name of your network interface. Note that even though we set "store=persistent", this change will not be permanent and will be lost on reboot.

If the game loads as a process under Task Manager, but disappears after a while, run GTAIV.exe under compatibility mode for Windows XP SP3 or higher. In Windows 7, this can be found under the Programs tab of the Control Panel.

Game will load with minimal graphic settings and won't let you change them

For some video cards the game will run and won't let you change the video settings to anything better. In order to force the game to allow the changes, load the .exe with the extra parameter: -norestrictions

For steam right click the game in your games library and select properties, choose "set launch options" and enter the above parameter.

Games for Windows Live Crash

The error code WTV120 is a crash to desktop issue. Updating to the latest version of GFWL Marketplace does not solve the issue, as the program produces errors of its own for many users, apparently lacking a fix. Xliveless (scroll up) does seem to solve the issue.

System requirements

Online play requires log-in to Games for Windows Live.