I played a little GTA-4 and realized that my GTX 570's usage was around 30-40%. The highest it ever went was 47%.
This is on all settings high and V-sync off. I doubt my Q9650 is bottlenecking either since it stayed at around 60-75% usage on core 1, highest it ever went to was 90% (very rarely) Anyone know how to fix this? CPU and GPU are both at stock clocks. I am getting some pretty low FPS and its annoying since I just got this 570. I had low FPS with my 460 but never realized the usage was low as i never checked. Anyone know what could be the issue or how to fix?

paperFc

GTA IV is a very CPU intensive game and it doesn't really use that much GPU power. I believe you need four cores to run that game smoothly due to it being poorly optimized.

+1, you could try installing some texture mods like ICenhancer which will take advantage of the GPU and make the game look awesome.

I think you need to disable SLI.

I don't have SLI? Just one 570.

blacksapphire08

ziou.wang

I think you need to disable SLI.

Yeah GTA4 doesnt really take advantage of SLI. There is supposed to be a fix for it though...

1. Download Nvidia SLi Profile Manager here: Manage your SLI Profiles with NVIDIA GeForce SLI Profile Tool - 3D Tech News, Pixel Hacking, Data Visualization and 3D Programming - Geeks3D.com

2. Install it, drag, drop, whatever you need to do.

3. Open the program and then export the settings to a folder of your choosing.
4. Rename the text file to create a backup just in case something goes wrong.

5. Repeat the export process to create the new notepad file you will be editing. Then open it.

6. Find (Ctrl+F) "Grand Theft Auto 4" . Once you find it you will see some executable command lines and compatibility template codes and will look something like this:

Profile "Grand Theft Auto 4"
ShowOn GeForce
ProfileType Application
Executable "gtaiv.exe"
Executable "launchgtaiv.exe"
Setting ID_0x0095def9 = 0x00000202
Setting ID_0x1033cec1 = 0x00000003
Setting ID_0x1033dcd2 = 0x00000004
Setting ID_0x1095def8 = 0x00400405
Setting ID_0x10ecdb82 = 0x00000001
EndProfile

7. Oddly, GTA: EFLC seems to be compatible with SLI even though they use the same engine and version of it, at least with using the all the GPU processors, the VRAM ball is still dropped though. If you look you will see that the EFLC profile right below is missing that final setting line:
Setting ID_0x10ecdb82 = 0x00000001
Delete it and save your profiles.

8. Return to your Profile Manager and click import. Import the new profile file (not the back up). Play the game and enjoy MOAR FRAMES!

 
I've tried that hack and doesn't work for me. :(

If you really want to play it then go get it for a console (if you have one) if you want to get around the performance issues.  I personally destroyed my GTA-4 PC disk out of frustration.  I do still have my GTA classic disk that I might see if it works on my PC.

Well I've been playing GTA4: The Ballad of Gay Tony recently and can play it with everything maxed out, including all of the draw distance sliders.  And I too have a single GTX 570 (at SC speeds).  It might be though because I have an I7 920 @ 4.2Ghz.
 
My 570 usage is 99% most of the time.  Sometimes it will go down to around 70%, and when that happens, I check core temp and notice that my CPU is being used really heavily.  Then I'll get to another spot and my CPU will go down and my GPU will be back to 99%.
 
So I actually think it might be your CPU holding you back (since we have the same GPU) because the only times my GPU isn't at 97-99% is when one of my CPU cores is being maxed out.  My framerates really vary from place to place, but the lowest I get is 30-40, other times I'm 55-65+.  My average is probably 50 or high 40's.  And in enclosed areas it's well over 120.  I also played regular GTA4 with these same settings and results.
 
But yea, it is a really poorly optimized game to say the least.

Monst3r
I really doubt its the CPU. Like i said back when i had a E8400 it ran smoother. I will however try to overclock the Q9650 to atleast 3.6Ghz if I can get it stable. The E8400 use to be overclocked to 4Ghz so that might be a factor aswell, but I thought GTA loved Quad Cores...

I think that your Q9650 is not at 4GHz is a major factor.
 
We aren't at the point where programs coded for more cores don't still depend on frequency, otherwise you should be able to get one of those 2GHz 12-core Opterons from AMD andyour GPU utilization would sit at 100%-- but your game may perform slower due to only being coded for a certain number of cores (the rest are idle) that aren't running faster than 2GHz.  There isn't a single game that is open-threaded, to take any number of cores and threads you can provide, they aren't coded that way (it would make it expensive).  Game developers usually target a group based on what they buy, and the quad-core CPU is still not the most popular choice.  That doesn't mean GTA doesn't love quads, we just can't make the assumption that extra cores make up for frequency without knowing how the program is using those cores.  What makes anyone so sure that all cores a game uses are used to tell the GPU what to draw?  It would make sense in multi-threaded games that at least one CPU core run the game while another created the scene coordinates for the GPU to render, there is a low enough latency between CPU the cores for data transfer (with Core i generation, not so with Core 2 generation).
 
I hesitate to use the words "poorly optimised" simply because it assumes games are supposed to use hardware fully as if we all have the same hardware configuration, choice of settings and preferences-- we don't.  Some people will enjoy themselves while others won't.
 
As for the console port conspiracy others imply; if a game is truly a port, then a PC wth identical specs as a concole system should perform equally.  But that isn't the case for a variety of reasons that some PC enthusiast deny because the game can make their systems impotent after cranking up the details-- its the first Crysis all over again where people blame the game as opposed to their own insatiable preferences.

I've got a 680 SC edition with a i7 3770k @ 4.1 GHz. The game seems to max my 1st CPU core very often. It also says that its only using about 50-60% of my GPU most of the time. Its really annoying and all i want to do it playing with a steady 60FPS. Is there a mod/fix/workaround that will actually work? I've tried using the command lines like -nomemrestrict and stuff but it just refuses to to give me a steady 60FPS.