My god, it's amazing the number of people that are whining about this game!

Firstly I went out and got myself two GTX280s just after christmas (and how pi$$ed am I now that they've just released the next ones already!) so I could SLI and get cool framerates etc etc. I was a very early adopter of the 8800GTXs two years ago, and so it just felt right to treat myself.

So yeah, I was disappointed that GTA4 doesn't support SLi yet. Yeah, I was also disappointed that Rockstar's claim of 'optimised for 64-bit' was a cunning bending of the truth. Being a developer I know that you can squeeze a lot more performance out of the 64bit CPU than the 32bit one. And, well.... yada yada...

However...

The number of people I've read moaning about the performance of this game, all over the web, expecting to be able to crank up the detail sliders and resolutions just because they've got 'the greatest PC ever - 2.6Ghz @ 4Ghz running on water mate innit' - and then throwing their teddies out of the pram, and in some cases being downright abusive, just because a low framerate has threatened their manhood!

I was initially surprised too, I won't lie: My machine murders Crysis - delivering around 50fps in game @1680x1050 everything maxed out (and I've only got one of my 280s working cuz one had to be sent back as faulty - grrr) - but even then I have turn those sliders on GTA 4 down below half way on most things in order to get an acceptable framerate.

As we all know - PCs rule over consoles for practically most of the time in terms of maximum quality and performance that can be achieved - that's not to say that consoles aren't great value for money, because they really are awesome. 

The PS3 was the most powerful thing you could buy for your front room, until about 5 minutes later when the G80s were release, and now with the next series - a GTX280 provides close to 1 TeraFlop of power.  One of those babies can run protein folding @ home 4 times faster than the PS3.  So PC owners tend to expect more from a port of a game from the consoles to the PC - especially when you've spent a couple of thousand or more on your rig like I, and many others, have over the years.

But do I feel let down by Rockstar? No - not at the moment. They will release a patch that addresses the SLI issues (how long did it take for Crysis to be fixed!? Perhaps the issues here are also OS and Driver related as well as game-code related?) In terms of whether I have been duped into buying the PC version instead of the console one - this document provides much respite:

www.rockstargames.com/support/gta4pc/docs/GTAIV%20Graphics%20Settings.doc.

This puts things into perspective a little bit.  When you've got the rudest rig on the block, you're kinda used to turning everything up to 11 and smiling as you watch the pixels ooze with loveliness.  With GTA4 you can't do that - because Rockstar have made one of the most gruelling gaming environments - from your PCs point of view - ever seen.  It's designed to scale - something that we used to praise developers for doing (oh how much did we praise Valve for doing so when HL2 came out!) but instead with this game, Rockstar are getting lambasted for no reason whatsoever.  It doesn't matter that most of the whiners appear to be teenagers who don't know any better (I've seen some insanely flawed logic over the issue of Graphics Card memory etc - it's amazing what people think they know just from having read a magazine!).

Back to the doc - if you're running at above 22 view distance then you're getting a better experience than the console players; Medium render quality is already superior to the console players; Detail distance of 10(!? wow - in my opinion it was those console gamers that got stiffed!) and you're equal to or above their experience.

For me, then, the fact that I have to drop mine to 40-50 draw distance, 50-60 detail distance, 11 shadow density @ high render quality actually pleases me - even though I know the game can do a lot more. I know that I'm getting a better gaming experience, one which I wouldn't be getting if Rockstar hadn't bothered. 

I wish it could do more, but I have to accept that it won't. I do know, also, that when I next upgrade my PC I can fire it up again and turn up the detail a bit higher and get an even better experience - that's nice to know, as far as I'm concerned!

Try switching all the settings down to the console equivalents - if you've got a recommended spec PC I bet it'll run really well. If it doesn't, then there's something wrong with your box. I've actually found that most of my performance problems have been primarily caused by

A) The Awesome Clip capture feature (finally, something that's better than the movie-making features in the old classic, "Driver"!) - which is mentioned in the instructions as being a potential performance killer and
B) Settng the Vehicle density too high

This game is the first one I've played to truly rag a multicore CPU (I know Supreme Commander did too - and in those terms it was ahead of the game) - that's because there's a shed-load of stuff happening all the time. The Euphoria engine itself will probably be killing one core most of the time, and then there's all the AI for all the vehicles etc.

We just have to accept these things - as games get more sophisticated, they will consume more resources. So the game uses 1.4Gb system RAM? So what!? Doesn't seem so unrealistic to me given the ****of the playing area and the fact that there's no loading pauses after you start your game. Unless you write assembly to do matrix maths on a daily basis, and know how to write visibility checking algorithms etc, you really have no ability to bite the hand that feeds and say that the developers haven't optimized their code!

So it swallows up 1Gb of VRAM for breakfast? Well, the last time I looked those reflections look pretty sweet, and there's an awful lot of textures on screen at once, and an awful lot of polygons flying around. I'd rather have those and be able to turn things down a bit to get the acceptable framerate, rather than have a game that flies like poo off a shovel but which unfortunately also looks like it too.

So, in my opinion - yeah we all want a performance-enhancing patch, I want SLi to work, I want to get a bit more out of it with my PC. But, in the meantime I will play it knowing that it's a damn good game that has had a lot of thought and effort gone into it.  I have faith that the problems will be solved eventually.  If we're still waiting a year down the line then perhaps I might change my tune - but I doubt that'll happen.

So, play the game and wait for the patch - feel a bit agrieved, but take it out on the innocent Hot Dog man on the street corner with the baseball bat, and smile (disclaimer: because it's not real - it's in-game I'm talking about there people!); don't play the game and slag the hell out of it at the same time - that's just childish. It's not their fault your PC isn't good enough to play it on the settings you've selected.

Those detail sliders are your responsibility - not theirs!