I play GTA3 frame by frame!

Yup, I bought GTA3. Minimum requirements are a P3 450, 96 meg of ram, 16 meg 3d graphics card.

I'm running a Duron 850 mhz, 256 meg of ram, 32 meg Nvidia TNT 2 graphics card and it runs frame by frame. Kinda reminds me of the days when I played Quake on my old 486. I was the only guy around that could kill a Shambler with an axe, without cheating. Just move back as he brings his arms down.

Anyway, for those of you that may have seen the "Motherboard Gripe" thread (that was lost in the upgrade), the Nvidia was what I bought so GTA3 would run to solve my motherboard issues.

Here's a recap:
Motherboard died, passed warranty.
Bought new motherboard.
Old motherboard had S3 Savage 4 32 meg graphics card built in (memory shared with rest of comp)
New motherboard had some shitty 8 meg of shared ram maximum graphics card.
Bought GTA3 on a spur of the moment thing, got home, installed and got error message "Needs 16 meg of onboard video memory"
Realized I didn't have my reasonable old graphics card, had to buy new one.
Bought Nvidia TNT2 (Feel free to tell me how crappy it is)

So now, I can beat people up in slow-mo. Fuck it's great. I'd LOVE to see it run on a decent machine though. I even thought about throwing in the towel and upgrading to 1 gig of ram, 2.4 gig cpu machine but decided not to (It meant, as usual, basically buying a whole new computer which is on the plan for next year).

Incidentally, I also bought Cutthroats at the same time (in the bargain big). A pirate game, stealing ships, building the hoard etc... Ironic thing is, that after buying a graphics card to get GTA3 to work, I have to turn down my graphics acceleration for Cutthroats to work... It has some mouse issues, but it's a good old game.

 

Well, it works okay when the following conditions are met:
1) There are no other cars around
2) I'm driving around a small back lane behind a building
3) I can't see any buildings in the distance
4) I'm doing hand-stands while crossed legged

 

One of the advantages of consoles is the developers know the system specs, so they can write specifically for it. IE: No need to spend s**tloads of time making sure it works on every obscure system and 50 different graphics cards. Instead, they've just got the one, standard, set system which they aim for and fine tune their game to. It also means they don't need to put in pesky options like the ability to change resolution so that it actually runs smoothly.

I'm not sure, but wouldn't GTA3 in the highest resolution on the PC be a higher resolution than whatever the highest res is for GTA3 on the PS2? Don't they go "what the hell" and put in an extra option there just for fun to boost it up a bit, for those with high-end machines, seeing as most TV's can't actually support a high-res or something?


Here's an article that supports my point of view:
GTA3 - The differences between the PlayStation2 and PC Version

• High Resolution Textures

Almost every texture in GTA3C was replaced with a higher resolution version. This means that when you look at anything in GTA3C, signs will be clear to read (or even readable, as some were not in the PS2 version), textures on the road, buildings, etc all have better clarity and contrast.


• High Quality Sounds Effects & Music

Every sound file in GTA3C was replaced with a studio quality version. On the PS2 version many sounds were low in quality to keep performance high. Plus, hearing the sounds through TV speakers doesn't help of course. Put studio quality sound together with some great PC speakers and you've got wicked sound effects and music.


• 3D Graphics Card Support (Required)

Playing GTA3C on a PC without a decent graphics card wouldn't be much fun. As with almost all games today, acceleration of some type is required. GTA3C takes full advantage of graphics hardware available on your PC - with today's graphics cards smooth frame rates are achieved compared to the 15-30fps that the PS2 produced. This also makes GTA3C look better visually, with textures being hardware drawn through the Microsoft DirectX module which GTA3C fully relies on for all visual output. Graphical extras available in DirectX are also available to use.


Here's an article that supports my argument about TV's having a lower resolution than PC's:
TV Resolution Affects Console Design

A computer's digital resolution of 640-x480 is close to a high quality NTSC signal, and note that a 1600x1200 resolution on your computer monitor has 6.25 times as many pixels to display. Goes without saying, and you already know that a game console displaying on a TV inherently has nowhere near the resolution of high-res PC graphics. We'll stay away from all the HDTV modes for now, progressive vs interlaced, overscan issues, and even PAL, the television standard for much of Western Europe and Latin America, that has 625 scan lines and runs at 50 fields per second / 25fps. Actually, for a solid tutorial on vertical and horizontal TV resolution, the different and confusing methods used to measure them (like why did we say DVD has a horizontal resolution of over 500, when we all know it's 720 pixels across, right?…) see this link.

 

And Jinxed did descend down from upon high and did show his people the TRUE POWERâ„¢ of consoles and his people didst not believe him. Instead, they tortured their God and tied his only son up to a pole and gave him a crown of PC peripherals and wrapped him up in mouse cords and X-Box controllers. And his son did die and the God didst cry for his son was dead and his people didst say: "D00d, ur ghey!!1!". And they wrote about it in a book which didst form the basis for religion for years to come.