GTA Vice City Not Enough Memory Problems

[Numan]

A good friend of mine cannot get GTA:VC to load on her machine anymore. She has a Pentium 4, 1 gig of ram and an ATI Radeon 9800 with 128 megs. She gets an error popup saying there is not enough video memory when trying to run the game. Tried un/reinstalling it, getting the latest Catalyst drivers and turning off Smartgart (was the only thing I could find when googling for an answer)

Any other ideas?

 

[Gurck]

The system handles other games well? Try deleting everything related to the game in the 'My Documents' directory and try again.

 

[homercles337]

Fun game, sh!tty port. If it runs on PS2 with 32MB of system ram and 4MB of video ram i have no clue why it wouldnt run. I have a similar system and had no problems, way back when...sounds like a hardware problem.

 

[Numan]

Yes she tried Need For Speed Underground 2 and that worked. GTAVC worked before, but I'm not sure what changed on her system if anything at all. It's WINXP SP2 I forgot to mention above.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Not enough video memory? Are the AGP GART/chipset drivers loaded? If you start DXDIAG.EXE, and go to the "Video" tab, does it show all three acceleration options enabled? DirectX updated to 9.0c?

 

[Gurck]

Originally posted by: homercles337
Fun game, sh!tty port. If it runs on PS2 with 32MB of system ram and 4MB of video ram i have no clue why it wouldnt run. I have a similar system and had no problems, way back when...sounds like a hardware problem.

Ah, it's not so bad, GTA3 was far worse on the PC. I have pretty much the same system the OP is describing (P4b 2.67, gb ram, 9800pro 128/256) and vice city runs flawlessly (awesome game btw).

 

[homercles337]

Originally posted by: Gurck

Originally posted by: homercles337
Fun game, sh!tty port. If it runs on PS2 with 32MB of system ram and 4MB of video ram i have no clue why it wouldnt run. I have a similar system and had no problems, way back when...sounds like a hardware problem.

Ah, it's not so bad, GTA3 was far worse on the PC. I have pretty much the same system the OP is describing (P4b 2.67, gb ram, 9800pro 128/256) and vice city runs flawlessly (awesome game btw).

Its not bad when developers port to PC based on PS2 specs? How many times have you been running down the street looking to jack a car, turn around, and EVERYTHING you were just looking at is gone when you turn back around? Object persistence does not exist when you port for 32MB of ram and 4MB of video ram. I did say that it was a fun game, but upping the texture res and draw distance is barely a true port.

 

[Gurck]

I see what you're saying, I'm comparing it only to GTA3 though. I get bad framerates in GTA3 on the aforementioned system even in 10x7 - hell, even in 8x6 in certain parts. At least I can enjoy VC in 16x12 glory.

 

[bamacre]

What OS system is she running? If she is running a server version of windows (i.e. 2003 Server), by default, the video card's hardware acceleration is turned off, and it just needs to be turned on.

Do this by right clicking on the desktop, select PROPERTIES - SETTINGS tab - ADVANCED - TROUBLESHOOTING tab, and slide it to max.

 

[homercles337]

Yea, i see what youre saying with respect to GTA3, GTA:VC does run/look much better. However, i REALLY wish that R* would get a clue and do a port that creates a persistent gaming world and recognizes that even the bottom end PCs have like 8x the memory/computing power of PS2. I have wondered if this is part of the Sony agreement. "Yes, you can make ports after X months, but they MUST not be any better than the PS2 version."

 

[bamacre]

I used to have problems with gta3 on my 128mb ti4200 card, could barely play it at 10x7. Funny thing is, when I got my x800pro the first game I played was gta3, and it runs so smoothly at 16x12 with full aa and af maxed out. It looks WAY better than the PS2 game, in fact it looks fantastic.

Vice City of course is not as damanding and was a better port overall because of it. These two games are still among my favorites. I did like 5 "stunt" videos for Vice City.