Interesting FPS tweak.

I have made an Interesting discovery on my system which lead too a good 10FPS
increase in GTA 4. This will most likely only work for single & multi nVidia GPU
user's. I haven't confirmed this with actual FPS comparisons but my tweak makes
such a noticeable improvement I didn't feel the need too. Anyway I can't promise
it'll work for everyone but HEY what's the harm in trying! lemme know how ya's go.

First things first I have an nVidia SLI enabled setup, but I noticed it worked for
both Single or SLI (Better on SLI of course). Also I run GTA 4 under Windows XP
32bit.

Current Drivers: Forceware 180.84 Beta

(http://www.nzone.com/object/nzone_gtaiv_downloads.html)

STEP 1:
nVidia Control Panel Settings:

* Anisotropic filtering = App-Controlled

* Antialiasing - Gamma correction = Off
* Antialiasing - Mode = App-Controlled
* Antialiasing - Transparency = Off
* Conformant texture clamp = Use hardware
* Error Reporting & Extension Limit = Off
* Force Mipmaps = Trilinear
* Maximum Pre-rendered frames = 2 (KEY ASPECT IN THIS TWEAK)
* Multi-Display/mixed-GPU acceleration = Single Display Performance Mode
* SLI Performance Mode = Force alternate frame rendering 2
* Texture Filtering - Negative LOD Bias = Allow
* Texture Filtering - Quality = High Quality
* Threaded Optimization = On
* Triple Buffering = On
* Vertical Sync = Force On

Both SLI and GPU PhysX are enabled too.

STEP 2:
GTA IV Settings:
NOTE: I have tweaked my GTA IV shortcut to bypass the Graphical restrictions. To
do this make a shortcut on your desktop for the "LaunchGTAIV.exe" under your GTA
IV root directory (Note: this file does not have a normal GTA icon, so it doesn't
stand out easliy). Next right click on the desktop shortcut, click properties and
copy "-norestriction" (not the quotes) and paste it into the end of the "Target"
line after the quotes so it should look something like this.

"C:\Program Files\Rockstar Games\Grand Theft Auto IV\LaunchGTAIV.exe"

-norestriction
(Location may vary from user to user)

Then ALWAYS launch your game from this shortcut NOT from the damn "PLAY" button on
the Rockstar SocialClub launcher.

* Resolution = 1650 x 1050

* Aspect Ratio = Auto
* Texture Quality = High (Before Tweak = Med)*
* Render Quality = Highest (Before Tweak = High)*
* View Distance = 25
* Detail Distance = 50 (Before Tweak = 25)*
 * Vehicle Density = 25
* Shadow Density = 6 (Before Tweak = 3)*

* These were my specs before I did the tweak and It was barely playable!

PC Specs at the end of my post.

Now that all my settings are out of the way I want to cut to the most important
tweak that I came across throughout my hours of fiddling, start n' stopping and
updating etc. You may have noticed earlier i mentioned "KEY ASPECT IN THIS TWEAK"
beside the "Maximum Pre-rendered frames" setting on my nVidia Control panel, well
of all the minor adjustments I made, THIS setting made the most notable
improvement, and by that I do mean from literally unplayable on LESS settings than
what I'm NOW using to VERY PLAYABLE on MUCH HIGHER settings. Basically the whole
basis of my tweak lies solely on this lucky number 2, because I tried every other
number of Pre-rendered frames up to 5, surprisingly 0 pre-rendered frames didn't
free up the CPU anymore than when it was pre-rendering 4 frames, 3 improved my FPS
notably, but 2 improved it even more, once I went down to 1 my FPS dropped again.

As I have said over and over again, this worked considerably well for me, my
suggestion would be try these settings on your own system but changed the number
of pre-rendered frames numerous times whilst restarting the game to see if there
are any changes.

I hope this works as well for you guys as it did for me. =)
__________________
CPU: Core 2 Duo E6600 2.4Ghz (Socket LGA755)
Mobo: Inno3D nForce 680i SLI
RAM: 2GB G.Skill DDR2-800Mhz (CL 4-4-3-5)
Graphics: x2 XFX Geforce 8800GT 512mb OC-670Mhz
Sound: Creative X-Fi Fatality XtremeGamer
PSU: 750W Thermaltake Toughpower (SLI Certified)
HDD: 1TB