GTA IV Graphics Settings

What do the graphics settings in GTA IV change, and how do they impact your performance?

Intro

GTA IV is not the best PC port, and runs slow for it's age. However, the correct settings can make a huge difference (although do expect slowdowns regardless), don't just turn all the settings to their highest!

Quick Tips

» Keep the View Distance and Detail Distance relatively low.
» Shadows have a huge impact on performance, lowering the quality from Very High to High gives a good increase in performance.
» If you are experiencing strong stutter, try reducing the Texture Quality.
» Turning on Adaptive VSync for GTA IV from within your graphics center or limiting the FPS some other way can help when you're experiencing issues with the camera zooming/stuttering a lot in cutscenes.

Detailed Explanation of all the Settings

Rockstar's official explanation can be found here.[www.gamefaqs.com]

Video Mode (Performance impact: High)

This decides the screen resolution of the game. There might be much more Resource Usage (VRAM usage) from this than the game implies. Lower resolution generally results in better performance.

Aspect Ratio (Performance impact: Medium)

Changes the horizontal Field of View and menu objects so things do not look stretched. In most cases, Auto does the job. But if you find that your game looks stretched, feel free to fiddle with it. Set the Aspect Ratio to 5:4 if you are really desperate and want to squeeze out a little more performance.

Texture Quality (Performance impact: Depends)

This makes detailed surfaces look nicer. The performance impact should be negligible, if you have enough VRAM. You should have no issue raising this setting on modern systems. If you notice strong stutter or objects fading out, lower this setting.

Reflection Resolution (Performance impact: Medium)

This decides the resolution of reflection textures used on cars and some misc objects. You can turn this to low if you want some extra performance, it's hard to tell the difference between low and very high.

Water Quality (Performance impact: Medium)

Higher settings make the water more detailed.

Shadow Quality (Performance impact: High)

Changes resolution and range of shadows. This has a huge impact on visuals and performance. Turn off for a nice fps-boost.

Night Shadows (Performance impact: Medium)

This causes lights (including headlights and lights placed in interiors) to throw dynamic shadows. This also works while it's day, so take care. The higher this setting, the more dynamic lights can be displayed at once. Low should be almost indistinguishable from the higher settings visually.

Texture Filter Quality (Performance impact: Very Low)

Anisotropic Filtering makes distant textures look sharper. This can be turned up to x16 without much performance impact at all.

View Distance (Performance impact: High)

Changes view distance of large objects, cars and people. Can have a considerable impact if set to high values.

Detail Distance (Performance impact: High)

Changes view distance of smaller props and vegetation. Can have a considerable impact if set to high values.

Vehicle Density (Performance impact: Medium)

Sets the amount of cars on the street. This can have a large impact if cars crowd.

Definition (Performance impact: None?)

Turning off definition adds motion blur and depth of field. This can help with flickering objects which are far away, but makes the game rather unsharp on lower resolutions. Turning this setting to on makes the game sharper. You can toggle this setting on and off in-game by pressing P, too.

VSync (Performance impact: Depends)

This locks your FPS to your screen's refresh-rate. This eliminates tearing, but can cause some general slowdown. This setting is broken, and slows your game down more than it should. Although limiting your frame-rate helps with the physics and VSync with the jittery cutscenes.

My recommendation: Use the adaptive VSync (or regular VSync if you have no adaptive variant, but beware the performance impact) from your AMD/Intel/Nvidia graphics-center and set the resolution ingame to one that is 60 Hz. This will give you the intended experience.

If you are struggling with performance: You may want to turn VSync off. It won't benefit you much. Adaptive VSync should not hurt your performance a lot so it should be fine to turn on, but if you only have the choice between regular VSync or none, definitely choose none.

Closing

I hope this guide was helpful. If you need any more help, leave a comment and I'll do my best.

[🅰🆂🆃🆁🅾]

Dr.Doctor ild say 500$ gets you something from 2012 or intel intagrated graphics

[OOGA BOOGA BOOGA!!!!]

or just get 2023 gaming rig for $500 and play this on max settings with 60 fps

[CarCrasher]

also you can open stream.ini (its in the pc folder) and change all the 204800 to 409600

[unigi.platform.sdl2]

Try using DXVK with the game.

[onurguzel16]

Very useful guide, however, whatever I've done, I still get stutter on powerful PC. I have version 1.0.8.0, lowering distance levels did not help.

[time]

Dont forget to force Antialiasing via the "Nvidia Control Panel" or its AMD counterpart. Makes a hell of a difference.

[sharp]

i play on medium/high setting 4k on an rtx 2080 and only get around 80 frames, sometimes dipping down to less than 50 xd

[Eric Peng]

I just want to add that if the video mod is not set to 60 Hz, the game may break when you want to replay some of the missions for achievements. For instance, the Momma's Boy in TBOGT.

Weirdly I can finish all the missions without problem for the first time following the main line. But once I finished the main game and want to replay some of the missions for achievement, the game crushes every single time. Changing the video mod to 60 Hz is the only solution I found working.

[unigi.platform.sdl2]

congrats

[The average honey tea enjoyer]

thank you so much i burned my whole house down, it should've included it in the guide but thanks anyways buddy. :)))