Grand Theft Auto IV: The Complete Edition - AMD GPU Settings

This guide has been put together to be tailored for AMD GPU's.

Special Thanks

Special thanks goes to Punkamania on Steam for the main bulk of the work.

I've modified it to work for systems equipped AMD GPU's as i found there wasn't any and have spent way to long finding a solution that works and documenting everything.

You can find their guide for the bulk of the work and settings for Nvidia GPU's here: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2387882370

Before we begin

• Sapphire Card Owners with Dual BIOS make sure your GPU is set to "Graphics or Gaming Mode" and not "Compute Mode"
  The switch in question is the Dual BIOS switch physically on the card.
  If you own a Sapphire card with Dual BIOS these usually come with these switches.
  I cannot comment on other manufactures of AMD Cards but again only if you have a Dual BIOS GPU.
  Out of the box the switch can sometimes be set to "Compute".
  
  Here is an image of what I'm talking about:
  https://forums.macrumors.com/attachments/e459bc40-336f-43b4-a22d-1df54a9e7ce1-jpeg.789286/
  
  
• Update your drivers to the latest recommended version

Please note: The settings your about to follow was tested extensively for 3 days on a system that is not high end running an:

• Intel Core i5-3570k 3.80GHz (Overclocked)
  
• 16GB of RAM set to XMP mode
  
• Sapphire Radeon RX580 Pulse 8GB Hynix GDDR5 (Overclocked)
  
• Windows 11 22H2 Professional
  
• MSI Afterburner for detailed system stats for monitoring purposes
  
• Grand Theft Auto IV: The Complete Edition (Latest Version Non-Modded)

If you are comfortable with overclocking your GPU make sure you understand what you are doing!
Auto Overclock in the Adrenalin Software is fine for beginners but is not full proof as it does not tweak your fan curve and may lead to instabilties with your system.

*Updated 22/02/2023*

Setting up Steam

Launch options in steam:
Right click Grand Theft Auto IV: The Complete Edition and go down to "Properties"

In the launch options section on "General" post this but making sure you change the "XXX" parts of the launch options (See the example):

-availablevidmem XXXX -norestrictions -percentvidmem 100 -noprecache -refreshrate XXX -novblank -heapsize 2097152 -popupwindow

Example:
The video memory on my GPU is 8GB or 8192 MB therefore -availablevidmem for me is 8192.

For optimum performance set your refresh rate like this: -refreshrate 60. This will lock the game to 60FPS. Any higher and the game may not perform as expected in the guide!

Steam ini setup

Open File Explorer and go to your steam directory or right click the game, go to "Manage" and select "Browse Local files"

In the main directory of GTAIV, create a txt file and name it "stream.ini" without the quotations if there isnt one already.

Note: Make sure your explorer settings are set to show file extensions so it doesn't end up as stream.ini.txt.

Open the steam.ini file and paste this:

virtual 409600
physical 409600
virtual_optimised 409600
physical_optimised 409600

DO NOT EDIT THE VALUES! JUST COPY AND PASTE AS IT IS AND SAVE

Command Line Setup

If you enter the game now and your stuck in 600x800 resolution and you cannot change it in the settings menu follow this:

Create a txt file in the GTAIV main directory and name it "commandline.txt" without quoations.

In the txt file paste this:

-width xxxx -height xxxx

Example:
A monitor that has the highest resolution of 1080p, then the values are -width 1920 and -height 1080

dxvk - vulkan wrapper

This is to tell GTA IV to use Vulkan instead of DirectX

First download the wrapper: https://github.com/doitsujin/dxvk/releases/

If you have any issues with the latest version use this version: https://github.com/doitsujin/dxvk/releases/tag/v1.7.3

Extract it and then Extract the .tar file then Extract that.

Go into the 32 bit folder (dxvk-1.7.3\x32) or in case of the latest version (dxvk-2.1\x32) and drag & drop "d3d9.dll" and "dxgi.dll" into GTA IV's main directory (Same folder as the steam.ini and commandline.txt).

DON'T USE THE 64 BIT VERSION AS THIS WILL GIVE YOU A BLACK SCREEN WHEN LOADING THE GAME AND LEAVE YOU SCRATCHING YOUR HEAD.

IF YOU ENCOUNTER ANY ISSUES WITH THE WRAPPER PLEASE REVERT TO VERSION 1.7.3 OF THE VULKAN WRAPPER.

*Updated 22/02/2023*

AMD Adrenalin Settings

This section is the main bit! So follow very carefully.

Not only are these setttings good for GTA IV but they are good for every game you play.

Note 1:
If you are advanced enough and know how to set specific settings to specific games within the software these settings are just the same but for this we are just going to do it globally so feel free to skip to the actual settings.

Note 2:
Ensure you are on the latest Driver Version I cannot stress that enough!

Open the Adrenalin Software

Go to the Settings Cog

Select "Graphics"

Now do the following:

⦁ Anti-Lag - Disabled,
⦁ Radeon Chill - Disabled,
⦁ Radeon Boost - Disabled
⦁ Radeon Image Sharpening - Enabled
⦁ Sharpness % - 20
⦁ Radeon Enhanced Sync - Disabled
⦁ Wait for Vertical Refresh - Off, unless application specifies

Select Advanced and do the following:

⦁ Frame rate target control - Disabled
⦁ Anti-Aliasing - Use application settings
⦁ Anti-Aliasing Method - Multisampling
⦁ Morphological Anti-Aliasing - Enabled
⦁ Anisotropic Filtering - Disabled
⦁ Texture Filtering Quality - Performance
⦁ Surfance Format Optimization - Enabled
⦁ Tessllation Mode - AMD optimized
⦁ OpenGL Triple Buffering - Disabled
⦁ 10-Bit Pixel Format - Disabled
⦁ GPU Workload - Graphics

In-Game Settings

Once you've loaded in to the game you can play around with the Graphics Settings.

For Optimal performance I recommend this:

⦁ Aspect Ratio - Auto
⦁ Texture Quality - High
⦁ Reflection Resolution - High
⦁ Water Quality - Very High
⦁ Shadow Qaulity - High
⦁ Night Shadows - Off
⦁ Texture Filter Quality - Anisotrapic x4
⦁ View Distance - 40
⦁ Detail Distance - 31
⦁ Vehicle Density - 51
⦁ Definition - On
⦁ VSync - On

Note:
If you experience world popping basically things like boxes, buildings, Trash Bins etc popping in or fuzzy when approaching them then tweak the "View Distance" I found 40 to be the sweet spot but your experience may vary.

If you find you are dropping frames by water specifically in the ocean drop the "Water Quality" down to "High" and so on.

Final Thoughts

That's it, hopefully this guide helps those with AMD GPU's play the game with little issues!

You may experience FPS drops of maybe a few frames which i found in testing for 3 days but we are talking drops to 57 to 58fps then back to 60fps within seconds if your watching your FPS counter that is but it is not even noticeable and does not happen very often.

You do have to remember this is an old game and not as optimised but it can achieve 60fps on AMD GPU's with little issues from my experience.

As the game updates and with new driver updates I shall test these same settings as it is what I use and update the guide where applicable and make amendments.

Feel free to comment suggestions below on your own AMD settings of your specific card running this game at 60fps as everyone's systems vary.

[tim33tt]

@Jonny, Have you seen this guide "GTA 4 on Windows 11 with AMD Radeon", have you had this problem on RX 588 ?

[Tori]

What can I do for the Adrenalin settings if I'm on Linux? Cheers

[Jonny]

I'll try to answer your questions the best I can.

The switch in question is the Dual BIOS switch physically on the card.
If you own a Sapphire card these usually come with these switches.
Other manufactures tend to vary but again only if you have Dual BIOS.
Out of the box the switch can sometimes be set to "Compute".

Here is an image of what I'm talking about:
https://forums.macrumors.com/attachments/e459bc40-336f-43b4-a22d-1df54a9e7ce1-jpeg.789286/

In terms of the Vulkan wrapper In my testing the latest version fails for me hence why I recommended 1.7.3, If the latest version works for you then all is good but it's all about experimenting hence why I stated at the end to comment your own.

I have updated the guide to be more clear on this!

Thanks for the comments

[juicebytappy]

"If your card comes with a little switch" means "if." "If" yours doesn't, then that part doesn't apply to you--what the CRUD

That aside, AMD user here, trying to get the best mileage out of my RX580--some surprisingly helpful tips I didn't know about in this guide, thanks!

[CyDragonV2]

ALSO ONLY USE VERSION 1.7.3 OF THE VULKAN WRAPPER ANY OTHER VERSIONS WILL CAUSE YOU MASSIVE ISSUES.
ok what?? I have been playing with the latest build of DXVK with the latest GTA IV CE and haven't encountered issues

[CyDragonV2]

Your GPU is set to "Graphics" and not "Compute"
(If your card comes with a little switch on it make sure it is set to Graphics, see your cards instruction manual on how to do this and where to find it) You'll unlock more performance of your card doing this.
The CRUD do you mean by this my AMD Radeon RX 460 2GB has no such switch