One of the year's biggest titles has at long last landed on the desktop platform. The widely acclaimed Grand Theft Auto IV is now available nation-wide for Windows PC gamers.

While the game is largely the same as it's Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 precursors (which we reviewed upon release back in April) there are some differences and one worthy new addition. We detail it all in this in-depth review update.

i heard that one of the noteworthy additions is that it needs a patch/doesn't run.

So why haven't the bugs that have caused many people to get a refund been mentioned?

wow, the ausgamers test rig is in the small percentile of PC's that were actually able to run this game

So why haven't the bugs that have caused many people to get a refund been mentioned?

Probably because I've been busy playing a game that has run satisfactorily for me instead of reading internet whinge threads.

Yeah! Damn those people who bought a game and it didn't work for them. shame on them.

nice writeup dan, exactly what i wanted to know about the pc version.

There are some beta drivers for GTA4 from Nvidia for series 7 and up that give a decent boost, but from what I hear the game is very heavily CPU dependant so there is only so much driver tweaks can do for it.

Rockstar have let us know that a patch is due out today (US time) that addresses some crash and performance issues and also that the devs have been doing some direct community support over here. There's also a bunch of other info for troubledhooters on their official support site.

A fix to the crash after legal screen that some German customers were reporting.
Numerous improvements to the video editor: Smarter naming of videos, improved rendering quality, better FX during replays
Fix to bowling while using certain sensitive mice
Fix for ATI 1900 shadows
Overall savings to memory
Graphic improvements to particle systems and mirrors
Multiplayer character settings are preserved
Support for DirectInput controllers. Note: The current hack way of supporting these controllers may not work with the improved functionality. So we recommend you remove the hack before upgrading to the patch.

http://www.1up.com/do/newsStory?cId=3171703

I was not impressed when running this game as it ran terrible on an e8400, 4870, 4 gig ddr2 ram machine.

I finally picked it up, not silky smooth but 38fps in benchmark at 1600x1200 with texture on medium, render on highest and 50 for view distance and detail distance. Given what I expected it's great and very playable even at worst. 98% CPU usage but under 70% for Video and System memory, on an e6600 @ 3.2 with 4 gigs of 800 and an 8800GTX - and that's in Vista!

ive read a whole bunch of peeps reporting its a crap game, and shame on rockstar and so on, everyone seemed to be sitting with either a 4870 ati card of some description or vista64 or both...

my $200 Geforce 9600GT runs the game great at medium settings and matches the 360 in my lounge room for quality, 4Gb of the cheapest RAM money can buy and XP SP3 on a 2.4Ghz C2D keeps the loading at a minimum...

Patches will be out and all will be well. Its part of the nature of PC gaming, get over it kids.