# GTA IV has crappy looking shadows?



## linkin (Nov 3, 2009)

Is it just my setup or does GTA IV have really weird looking shadows?

They sort of overpower everything i can see so i just turned them off...

It's meant to look like this:






But the shadows have very thin white lines through them, and it looks horrible.

Other than that I'm enjoying the game very much! no AA isn't that bad with the motionblur thing or whatever it is.


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## Aastii (Nov 3, 2009)

Turn everything but the shadows down and try.

Normally the shadows are great, the only time I have evr had a problem with shadows was when they knocked up the graphics in WoW when wotlk was released and in CoD4 and the cause was (ready for this ) cheap asian PSU. My 750W PSU couldn't handle giving my system snough power so i was getting dodgy rough shadows and they were flashing and other weird crap like that.

idk if that is your problem but as you just so happened to recently get cheap asian power supply, could be it


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## Shane (Nov 3, 2009)

I think its your setup....on my 8800 card it looked crap,especialy the shadows and view distance was a problem....now i have it set to the highest it will go it looks a whole lot diffrent.

Its a shame GTA IV is so damanding...thats the only reason i upgraded,For GTA IV


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## WeatherMan (Nov 3, 2009)

You spent £300 just to play a £30 game?! 

Should have saved yourself some cash and bought an X360 lol


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## Shane (Nov 3, 2009)

Bootup05 said:


> You spent £300 just to play a £30 game?!
> 
> Should have saved yourself some cash and bought an X360 lol



actualy it come to just slightly over £200 iirc...but no, i wanted better performance in crysis too...i got it. 

and the 4890 should alst a while...not bothering with the 5000 series.


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## Gareth (Nov 3, 2009)

Also, GTA IV is very CPU demanding, and prefers quad cores over dual cores. Its the reason why I got a Radeon HD4870! On maximum settings, looks fantastic.


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## linkin (Nov 4, 2009)

I'm running a mix of very high/high/medium settings. it's not silky smooth but it looks good and it's playable. I turned shadows off for now and it looks a whole lot better. More FPS too


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## Bacon (Nov 4, 2009)

There are mods out there that make shadows look smoother.

Like here, http://www.gtagarage.com/mods/show.php?id=5691


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## Shane (Nov 4, 2009)

Bacon said:


> There are mods out there that make shadows look smoother.
> 
> Like here, http://www.gtagarage.com/mods/show.php?id=5691



Those usualy result in quite a performance drop!....like half way through the clip he lags some.

I tried the Anti-aliasing mod back when i had my 8800gt and it looked much better but my fps went to around 15-18 fps and it was stuttering 

Not tried it on my new card.


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## Bacon (Nov 4, 2009)

Nevakonaza said:


> Those usualy result in quite a performance drop!....like half way through the clip he lags some.
> 
> I tried the Anti-aliasing mod back when i had my 8800gt and it looked much better but my fps went to around 15-18 fps and it was stuttering
> 
> Not tried it on my new card.



I've got a 4870 and I've got modded textures, shadow quality, and AA on, runs no problem until theres mass amounts of cops and explosions going on, but when doesn't that happen? 

Edit: Averages 30-40FPS on 1920x1080 res.


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## linkin (Nov 5, 2009)

Bacon said:


> I've got a 4870 and I've got modded textures, shadow quality, and AA on, runs no problem until theres mass amounts of cops and explosions going on, but when doesn't that happen?
> 
> Edit: Averages 30-40FPS on 1920x1080 res.



How did you get AA to work?? I'd rather have definiton on and 2xAA over definition off and no AA


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