How to remove lag and gain FPS on GTA IV

[Leon_Mokomaki]

What does this actually do? And does it change the way the game looks?
Im running an Athlon II x3 @ 3.3ghz with 4GB of 1420mhz ram and also a 9600GT.
Im playing on medium and get about 30-45 fps.

The biggest factor is your resolution. I could probably play on ultra graphics if i used 1024x768. Im using 1680x1050.
Dropping from 1920x1080p to 1024x768 doubles your fps in almost any situation.

[Devin]

Basically this will replace all of your graphic textures with new ones, it will look the same but the advantage is, there is no delay for them to load.
It also makes everything within the game looks far clearer and more crisp images, including FPS gain and smoother gameplay.

[shitaka]

yo devin i installed lag fixer, and in the installation is asked me to overwrite 2 read protected files, and i did, and when i went to GTA IV folder i clicked on Contig, then a Small black screen poped up for a second then disappeared, what did i do wrong?

[Devin]

That is most likely a commandline box which opens when you do that, did you follow all the steps exactly as they have said?
It could be that something was missed/skipped which is now causing the problems. Try opening the singleplayer via "LaunchGTAIV" and see what happens.

[shitaka]

i did follow all the steps, i even left the pc on all night to defrag, then when i installed the lag fixer i went to gta iv folder clicked on Contig and the window wont stay open, it just disappears, and what does single player has to do with fixing contig?

[Pude]

i did follow all the steps, i even left the pc on all night to defrag, then when i installed the lag fixer i went to gta iv folder clicked on Contig and the window wont stay open, it just disappears, and what does single player has to do with fixing contig?

You defragged whole hard drive, so there's no use for contig now. Contig.exe is just a defragger itself, published by Microsoft. In this case it defrags only gtaiv directory.
And if you follow the steps clearly, you were supposed to make a shorcut of it and add -S to it! And if you still want to use contig, after making that shortcut, and it still just flashes: Reason is that it cant evaluate it (you dont have a permission). Run it with administrator rights (right click that shortcut - run as administrator)

[shitaka]

i am on admin user, and i did -S to the copy on the desktop, still flashes... =\

[Pude]

i am on admin user, and i did -S to the copy on the desktop, still flashes... =\

Copy? You mean shortcut, i hope.
Do you have win XP or Win7? If it's win7 that you're running and even if you're logged in as an administrator, you still need to rightclick that shortcut and hit 'run as administrator'.

[shitaka]

Yeah shortcut.. my bad
and no i got win xp, and also tried what u said... still flashes =\
is it neccecary to use the Contig thing? or i can pass this step?

[Pude]

Yeah shortcut.. my bad
and no i got win xp, and also tried what u said... still flashes =\
is it neccecary to use the Contig thing? or i can pass this step?

Like i said previously, it's just a defragger itself.
You said you've already defragged your whole hard drive(s), so there's no use for contig for you right now.

[Karmps.]

Buy a new pc/mac.

[shitaka]

Okay the Contig thing works now, but i still didnt understand u on step 9 asking to change the settings to performance.
heres a pic of what i get after clicking on Nvidia control panel : http://img200.imageshack.us/i/nvidiacontrolpanel.png/
couldnt find what u were talking about, if it helps i got geforce 220 gt

[Leroy_Kolta]

alright, i wanted to ask this question. Is 32bit better than 64bit when playing gta iv? and is windows 7 better than windows xp?

[Devin]

It all depends on your PC, if it is a really high-end system I would say 64bit, but if its average rather use 32bit, as 64 uses and needs far more system power.
If its an older PC, XP would probably run better, but then again Windows 7 doesnt use that much more system power than XP does.

[Alessandro]

Check out to turn off useless stuff like Shadows/Night Shadows and Water Quality Also,turning off vsync would give you more fps. Same thing about Texture Filter Quality.