GTA IV on M1530

Hi guys,

just wondering do you have the same problems like me ? I have to turn all details on low and it looks like shi*. Really pis*ses me off that I never get more than 18 FPS.

I have the M1530 2,4GHz 8600M GT 4GB RAM, Windows XP SP3

I know that the M1530 is not a killer gaming machine but it cant be that bad or what do you think ?

 

Haven't tried yet, but this game looks to be the new benchmark of PC gaming. Move over, Crysis

 

From the looks of it, it should be extremely demanding...but 18fps on everything low (hopefully you turned down the resolution as well) may mean it is more of a driver issue. I see you are running it on xp, this shouldn't be the issue, but after dealing with Far Cry 2 and all of its odd issues, I don't think the idea should be dismissed entirely. P.S. Did you purchase it through Steam?

 

No i bought it today from JB Hifi for $79 bucks.
The Driver is usually working fine with everything. Version 178.08
Resolution was 1680x1050 but that was not even 18 FPS so its running now on 1440x900. If thats still to high for my laptop I bring the game back tomorrow because thats bullshi*. For what did I paid $2000 when I cant even play games ,released 7 month later, on low details ? Crap...

 

try 1280 by 800

 

Please try on 1280x800 and 1024x760 and post your results and screens.

 

I tried it on 1024x760 and it works fine. The only problem is that my LCD here is a 22" 16:9 so it looks like crap but at least it works.

1280x800 doesnt exist in GTA IV...

 

Well, too bad. The minimum GPU required to play is the 7900 GT, roughly equivalent to the 8600M GT. Youre expecting too much, 18fps at WXGA+ is the best you'll go.

 

low res, low details - best to be hoped for.
I don't see why peeps expect more, You bought what was a mid range laptop a year ago, yet you expect games that realistically require decent gaming desktops to run, to work on it.

Seriously - lower the expectations.

 

@F1r3ball: fine means how many FPS ? Does the game look really terrible ? Similar to console version ?

 

Obviously alot worse than console versions. The 360 and PS3 have average GPUs but absolutely awesome Multi core CPUs. Thats how they are running thw game at medium or high settings, which will look much better than low on 1024 by 768.

Seriously, a 4870 cant play this game well on 1280 by 1024 high, what are expecting for low 1440 by 900 for a 8600M, about 6 times slower?

 

"I don't see why peeps expect more, You bought what was a mid range laptop a year ago, yet you expect games that realistically require decent gaming desktops to run, to work on it.

Seriously - lower the expectations."

Crap, because I bought my M1530 in the first week of May this year (2008) which is just 7 month now and not a year but I didnt know that Dell never updated the M1530 and that they still put the 8600M GT in.
And yes, for $2000 for a gaming laptop I expect that a game which get released 7 month after I bought the laptop is running at low details with more than the 29 FPS on a crappy 1024x768 resolution.
2,5 years ago I bought a Dimension 9150 from Dell for $1400 and wow even games coming out 7 month later are running without any problems. For what do I have a gaming laptop when I cant play games ?
Because I want to play when I travel ? Yeah bullshi* because the battery survives maybe 30 minutes and PowerMize reduces the performance anyway...forget it.
The old games ? Good luck with Vista. I installed XP because the old games are working better on that laptop than new games.
Install XP ? No official driver support anymore.
New games ? Dont work because even on low details it looks like shi* and if you want to have a widescreen resolution it goes down under 10 FPS. Same with Crysis,Call of Duty 4,Gothic 3 (after years and community patch 1.6 it works now...amazing).
Just playing Need for Speed Most Wanted, Jagged Alliance 2, Civilization 4 and Counterstrike because its easy for the laptop to work with games which are years old...wow thats why I bought a gaming laptop half a year ago for the same price as what you pay for a pretty good gaming PC.
Just wondering why these PC magazines told us here that the dell XPS series are very serious enemys for the desktop PCs...bad joke and definetly my last gaming laptop so far because this is a bad joke.
After that big cry lets go back to the facts :
1. The game works "fine" but looks like shi*. I had a look over the pictures from console and the laptop one is just crap. Makes fun to play the story but the bad graphic destroys it.
2. Game goes back tomorrow

 

dude the problem isnt that ur laptop is bad in the gpu dep( i can run cod 5 on high eventhough i bought my xps a year ago) its just that the game is insane and badly optimized!!

 

Dont tell me, tell yomamasfavourit who wrote that I have to lower my expecations because the laptop is average and over a year old

 

Have you tryed reducing traffic density ? I have read this helps a lot...

 

Its on 10. Maybe it helps to put everything on 0 but then I dont need to play it if everything looks like crap and nothing is there, no details, no car, no life...amazing game. Game goes back to JB and I stick to the old stuff which works.

 

When the 8600 was released a year and a half ago it wasn't that much of a power house. It could run most games then on medium settings and get a decent fps. Now this card is approaching the end of it's life on most high end games coming out. Back then that card made a decent, not great, gaming machine. Now, don't even consider it for any future games.

 

Can anybody post benchamrk results of XPS and screenshot of the settings it was run in ?

 

i heard the game runs really bad even on good machines.. there must be a problem with the game.

 

But what's surprising: people get quite good framrates on 8600GT. For examlpe on this forum someone had average 27 fps on 8600M GT 256 DDR3

 

What will more than likely happen is that they will release a patch and then a new set of optimized video drivers will be released to help out. Anything less than a 8800M should really be running at or near low with a lowered resolution. 30fps or so is not great, but playable. I have read that the consoles are even seeing frame rate issues, just a next-gen game.

 

Ah.. Where to start?
This laptop is not a gaming powerhouse, it never was - yes it has an xps name badge, but that doesn't mean anything.

Whist I can symathise with you being pissed over it not being capable of running games, so soon after you purchased, you do have to take responsibility for your decision to purchase.

For $2000 dollars there are plenty of other laptops that you could have bought that would have beaten the 1530.
And yes I know that for a fact - when I was choosing my laptop, It wrecked my head that there were laptops much more powerful, for less in the US. The only reason I chose the xps over others was that I would have been screwed on import taxes to europe.

So I assume you had your reasons also for purchasing.

However when I purchased mine, I took the time to research the components, I knew before purchasing that the graphics card was at best, midrange and I accepted that. I didn't expect it to be a high end card capable of doing anything at max res, because I knew I wasn't paying the high end price required to obtain such a laptop.

Hence I'm not currently supprised the 1530 can't run gta4,
regardless of how much I would love it to, it can't and thats it .

 

Well i guess different people have different expectations for their laptop's performance.
When i bought mine like less than half a year ago i didn't expect it to be able to run modern games at high details/settings and good fps. I was really supprised when i realised i could run Fallout 3 on mid-high settings with playable fps (which is more than 10 for me) on 1280x800 (and i achieved it with crappy drivers that led me to think my graphics card was failing). I'm gonna check GTA 4 out pretty soon but i'm kinda used to playing everything on low and getting low fps cuz i do not upgrade my computers very often - i buy new computers like every 5-6 years and i always go for the mid level PCs that have optimal price/performance ratio (yeah this laptop is my first and i'm lovin' it).

So i've got just one advice for you: Get used to it(playing on low with low fps) or start thinking about buying a desktop PC and upgrading it often (yeah desktops "eat up" a lot of green). Modern technologies are improving with a great speed so i guess u'll be lucky if after 1 or 2 years you can run the games at all.

Cheers!

ps: i guess GTA 4 is like GTA:SA when it came up for PC - very demanding and not running properly.

 

game is working pc spec:

4GB DDR3

quad core 3.8Ghz

GTX260 216

and its REALLY laggy...

theres def something wrong with the game.. lol

 

If that rig is lagging, then our 1530's havn't a hope!

 

well usually console games that are ported to PC lag a lot
and we're using laptops ... which puts us in a worse situation

i'm pretty sure we're gonna be able to run it but probably at everything low
just like GTA: San Andreas when i played it but for some people it's not gonna be worth it to put so much money in a game that doesn't look right

 

Just installed it - after all the ridiculous, set up live, set up social club crap - I finally got to run it (at bottom setting 800*600 I might add) and there's nothing, nothing at all.

The texture's don't work so I can't actually see anything on screen other than light points. This is crap, I'm gonna see if changing drivers has any effect though I doubt it.

R* would seriously wan't to get off their asses and come up with one hell of a patch, otherwise I'm returning it.

 

jus tso you know, this game runs on 720p on xbox 360 and 640p on PS3, which, if i'm not mistaken, 1280x720 for 720p and 640p is like 1138x640 or something

 

AND, contrary to popular belief, resolution isn't everything, you can run a very low res game and still look good due to better antialiasing, try lower res and higher antialiasing

 

Hey, I've got something you might not have tried:

I'm constantly flipping vista's "power plan" between "power saver" and "high performance". If you leave it in power saver then 3D graphics just got horribly laggy (even a 10 year old game: Quake 3 was getting 15fps). Be sure you're running in "high performance".

 

Got it fixed - wasn't a lagging problem, the game was running(sound playing etc) but there was nothing coming up on the screen. installed 180.48 (according to various forums this one works best) and it works, been playing for the last two hours and I LOVE this game!

I was always a big gta fan (have every single one of them)
So I was always going to be getting it, even if it did run crap on this 8600, but it doesn't, it runs very smoothly - I haven't seen any lagging/stuttering so far, and the visuals are pretty decent.

 

Which driver you were using before :? 176.44_vista :/ searched by PCI\VEN_10DE&DEV_&SUBSYS_

And they were the latest. Do i need to download 180.48 ?

 

Hey yoma, what kind of settings are you running to get what kind of fps range? I would also assume your are ocing your gpu as well.? Also, it is good to hear the 180 series is working out. Some of us Asus guys have had sleep issues (me included), or I would jump right over to them. Thanks for the info.

 

I was running 180.7 initally but when the game started the card didn't actually render anything, which was why I was a bit miffed.

bty - Theres a post up on the laptopvideo2go main page about how to fix the texture rendering issue - apparently if you change a setting in rivatuner it fixes the issue.

Yes I'm ocing the card, I haven't really played around with the graphics settings, it looks pretty well so I'm content for the moment, I'll prob mess about with them later.

I would post a pic of how it looks, but I haven't a clue how to take one in game .

Getting about 25-30 fps on low setting. (whilst running intenet explorer - streaming music)

Nb this game is pretty hungry as regards memory, currently using around 2.7-2.8 gigs of ram. (I think though, there is supposed to a memory leak in the code so maybe that explains it?)

 

2.7 GB of ram? , I thought 2GB Per-app was the limit in 32-bit OS's... (Unless your running x64 Vista xD)

 

Well 2.7-2.8 of the 3.5 thats visible to the system.
I have 4gigs, vista uses 1.1, gta is thus using 1.7 - 1.8.
Its not that bad I suppose, I just thought it was a lot to be using.

 

Yeah, it is. that's close the the limit... xD, When I get around to buying GTA 4, I'll run it on XP, Vista uses too much ram... Does GTA 4 require DX10? Good thing, I Dual-boot XP and Vista. xD

 

yomamasfavourite, you run gta 4 on your xps m1530? I cant run it on mine. I've tried to intall 180.48 but it show that drivers are not compatible with mine 1530. When i run the game everything is in dark, only some light spots. I use vista sp1 and 7.15.11.7644 drivers version

 

Did you follow the guidelines on the site about inserting the modded inf file into the driver file?

Mine didn't work initially either (no pic just lights)
The only thing that I did was to re-install the drivers and it worked.

 

No i havent. Can you give me the link?

 

I've just tried to install them manually and it showed me gpu to choose : 8800, 9500gs and etc. but i didnt find 8600m gt and so i didnt want to risk.

 

Dudes, im pretty sure GTA4 will be running smoothly on M1530, just be patient and wait for the game patch and driver updates, im getting 12-15 fps on 1280 x 800 resolution on everything lowest. I didnt overclock my card, but ppl in this forum getting ~27fps when they overclock their card.

 

yomamasfavourite,

maybe u shud teach us about the insane cooling DIY device u made for ur lappy, so we can further overclock it, may be with the cooling device m1530 may stay a year longer for running next gen game.

 

How can you play it at 12~15fps without it wrecking your head?

That sort of stuttering would just drive me up the wall.
BTY this game isn't in any capacity gpu limited as far as I can see its VERY much cpu limited.

Hence OCin the gpu honestly doesn't have that much of an effect, though having any applications running in the background kills frame rates.

For me everytime the virus checker starts an auto scan the fps goes from perfectly fluid, to a slideshow.

As regards the external cooling system, I don't really use it anymore, My laptop seems to hit freakishly lows temps all on its own.

 

I install that new drivers from 8084, but i still the same. Lacks textures, just dark screen and feww details. Dell XPS m1530 T9500, GF8600M GT DDR3. I use GTA 4 Razor cracked. Can anyone say what is the problem?

 

At last it works, but when i play it every minute it starts lagging and after lag it works fine. And it repeats from time to time. The same with Crysis, MOH Airborne and other.

 

could anyone post a few pics and settings with the new drivers.

 

hey yomamasfavourite,
whats ur resolution.. and i guess u can take ingame screenie by using fraps or something..

 

I can say 26FPS, on 1024x768, low render and texture, but that lag

 

Here's a few pics of gta4 on the 1530.

http://i455.photobucket.com/albums/qq279/yomamasfavourite/GTAIV2008-12-1020-34-39-45.jpg
http://i455.photobucket.com/albums/qq279/yomamasfavourite/GTAIV2008-12-1022-23-08-65-1.jpg
http://i455.photobucket.com/albums/qq279/yomamasfavourite/GTAIV2008-12-1022-27-38-17.jpg
http://i455.photobucket.com/albums/qq279/yomamasfavourite/GTAIV2008-12-1022-41-45-46.jpg
http://i455.photobucket.com/albums/qq279/yomamasfavourite/GTAIV2008-12-1022-42-43-77.jpg
Graphics settings: medium
Resolution: 1024*768
Fps: 22-26

Also attached pic of Crysis for comparison.

http://i455.photobucket.com/albums/qq279/yomamasfavourite/Crysis2008-12-1020-22-42-51.jpg
Graphics settings: medium
Resolution: 1024*768
Fps: 35+

As you can see Crysis is much better both visually and performance wise, than gta.

Conclusion: this a bad console to computer port, very bad.
Rockstar has had all the time in the world to optimise this for pc users.
Who they know have better gpu's than cpu's, not like the consoles which have better cpu's than gpu's, yet they didn't.
So there is no excuse for this game running poorly .