Posted January 11, 2009 Hello Guys and Girls. I just brought GTA 4 for the PC and my graphics card will not allow me to play the game in fullscreen which is very annoying, so i wondered what type of graphics card my pc can handle and what the best graphics cards are out at the moment. Basically my set up at the moment is that i have a Dell XPS 420 With 3 Gig of RAM, I have had a look on the internet but i am unable to see what graphic cards are compatiable with the motherboard. Also i do not know what the best ones are at the moment. Any Advice will be appricated. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Posted January 11, 2009 http://www.cpuid.com/download/cpuz_149.zip Click that and run CPU-Z, if you can post a screenshot of it on the first tab and the tab that says Mainboard. If you can't get a screenshot, tell us what it says at Graphics, bus. Or check our GPU-Z which does the same as CPU, but won't tell the motherboard. Also, GTAIV is bad PC port and needs a fair bit of power to run, and the more cores the better (ie quads are better than Dual) Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Posted January 11, 2009 Alrighty, you have PCI-E x16. That basically means that any modern card will be accepted by your motherboard. I don't know about spacing though, the top cards take up two slots and are quite long. A top card can also run you £400+ Luckly you don't really need to go that route. There are much better options. Before I go off making recommendations I'd like to know your price range. Also you need to consider that your Power Supply isn't going to be upto snuff for a high-end card. To find out your PSU you have to pop open the PC case and look at it and find out the Wattage output (it's probably something like a 425W) Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Posted January 11, 2009 Thanks for helping mate. The PSU is a 375W, and my budget will be around £150 - £200, but it will be possible to go higher if there is a good deal around Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Posted January 11, 2009 Here seems to be a decent PSU http://www.ebuyer.com/product/141006/show_product_overview And this Video Card is the best bang for the buck. It won't be maxing GTAIV, I don't think, but it shoult play it at least as well as consoles. http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/512MB-Palit-HD4850-PCI-E-20(x16)-1986MHz-GDDR3-GPU-625MHz-800-Cores-2x-DL-DVI-I-HDTV-HDCP Together they come in about ~175 There are ways to drop that lower if the need arises. A Radeon 4830 is 10-20 cheaper. And only performs slightly lower than the 4850, and can be Overclocked to approx. 4850 performance. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Posted January 11, 2009 I take it then a new PSU is a must? That's a decent price the the Video Card was expecting it too be a bit more then that. Thanks for your help mate, been awesome +1 to you lol, but one more quick Q, would my PC be able to run a 64Bit OS? Cheers Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Posted January 11, 2009 Yup, you can run 32 or 64 bit. That's dependant on the CPU and afaik all modern CPUs have 64 bit capabilities. And yea, 375W won't cut it, well it may but not for long and it could fry things if taxed too much. 650W is more than plenty, but it doesn't hurt to have extra, and it gives room for later expansion. Happy to help. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Posted January 11, 2009 To play the game in fullscreen, try pressing Alt+Enter, that usually does the trick. Here's a set of parameters you can run the game with. Command Line Parameters Tools -benchmark: Runs the benchmark tool and immediately exits game. -help: Display list of all command line options Graphics -renderquality: Set the render quality of the game. (0-4) -shadowdensity: Set the shadow density of the game. (0-16) -texturequality: Set the texture quality of the game. (0-2) -viewdistance: Set the view distance of the game (0-99) -detailquality: Set the detail quality of the game. (0-99) -novblank: Disable wait for vblank (No Vsync) -norestrictions: Do not limit graphics settings -width: Set width of main render window (default is 800) -height: Set height of main render window (default is 600) -safemode: Run the graphics in the lowest setting possible -frameLimit: Limit frame to interval of refresh rate (ex If refreshrate is 60HZ –frameLimit 1 = Locks down to 60HZ) -refreshrate: Set the refresh rate of main render window – Warning - Monitor must support (ex. –refreshrate 60) -fullscreen: Force fullscreen mode -windowed: Force windowed mode -availablevidmem: Set amount of physical Video Memory(ex. –availablevidmem 0.9) -percentvidmem: Percentage of video memory to make available to GTA Audio -fullspecaudio: Force high-end CPU audio footprint -minspecaudio: Force low-end CPU audio footprint System -noprecache: Disable precache of resources -nomemrestrict: Disable memory restrictions Create a file in your GTA4 directory called commandline.txt (I think you don't even need the .txt extension to make it work) and add all the parameters you want in a seperate line. In your case I'd advise to put in something like this: -novblank-norestrictions -fullscreen -nomemrestrict You can get a 64-bit OS although that will be of little use since you don't have more than 3 GB RAM. What kind of graphics card do you have? (find out with GPU-Z) Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Posted January 12, 2009 From Ash's info and a bit of help from Google. I'm guessing this is the config. http://www.google.com/products/catalog?client=opera&rls=en&q=Xps+420&sourceid=opera&oe=utf-8&um=1&ie=UTF-8&cid=10307403177879862791&sa=X&oi=product_catalog_result&resnum=3&ct=result#ps-tech-specs Which would mean a 2400 Pro.... Of course if it's newer, looking at Dells site and the three q6600 builds. One them can only have a 3650 another can only have a 3450 and a third can go 3450 2600XT 3650 9800GT That on starts with 3450 and is the only one that mentions the PSU, which is listed at 375. :/ If ash had the 9800 GTAIV would run, so I doubt that's whats there. the 4850 is an upgrade from any of those, especially the 3450/2600/3650. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Posted January 12, 2009 The graphics card that's is in the system at the moment is a 2600xt, it also has 4gb of ram. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Posted January 12, 2009 Yup, the 4850 is a fine upgrade from the 2600XT, by a very long shot. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Posted January 13, 2009 Get a 4850. Don't worry about upgrading the PSU if you're only going to have one card. People always vastly overestimate PSU requirements, I have a Core 2 Duo @ 3.5GHz, Radeon 2900XT, 4GB RAM, Matrox G450, Voodoo3 3000, 2x 250GB HDD and it pulls like 200w DC The problem/myth occurs because cheap, nasty PSUs simply flat out lie about their ratings and in truth can often never achieve what they say they can. Having a PSU rated far too high for your low power draw can often infact be less efficient than using 50-60% of the PSUs rated capacity tl;dr: Buy a Radeon 4850 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Posted January 13, 2009 Indeed, I own a 4850 and it really does kick some serious ass. Also, Roadkill is right about the PSU issue. Cheapy 500-900W PSU's can never produce the power they claim. A Dell PSU that comes with the system is usually more than enough. I mean, I have a 450W Antec PSU and I don't think I get anywhere near the maximum power of it. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Posted January 13, 2009 Well I have gone ahead and brought a 4850, on the last bit of advice I have been given I have gone against buying a new PSU, fingers crossed that I won't ruin my system or anything lol thanks for allthe advice and help guess you been awesome. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
