The long-awaited PC version of Grand Theft Auto IV has finally launched. YouGamers took it for a quick spin and noticed something quite unexpected. In GTA IV, High Resolution textures actually require more than 512MB memory from your video card. You simply can not turn the textures to High on with a 512MB card at any reasonable resolution - for that you need more than 600MB of available video RAM. That puts the practical minimum for High textures at something like a GeForce 8800GTX 768MB or a GeForce GTX260 896MB.
For those with 1GB cards - your card also has to be a "real" 1GB card. Older two-chip cards like HD3870X2 and GeForce 9800GX2 with 1GB actually have only 512MB per chip, limiting GTA IV to Medium textures as well. Granted, the game looks quite impressive even at Medium textures and the increa 213e sed overall resolution ensures that it looks a lot better than on the consoles, but in my books this is the beginning of the end for 512MB cards.
On a related note, those stuck with 256MB cards have to enjoy 800x600 resolution with Low textures as the maximum available setting. Time to upgrade...
Based on our quick spin, GTA IV doesn't recommend a Tri/Quad core CPU for no reason either. The game is very CPU-hungry, and I'd say that it's the first game that offers visibly worse performance on a fast dual core system when compared to a normal Quad system. On a 2.66Ghz Core 2 Quad with a GeForce 9800GTX the CPU utilization across all four cores was constantly over 80%.
More as soon as we can complete our testing, in YouGamers review of GTA IV PC, coming soon...
