gta 4 lags

It's probably your HDD loading new things in the game.

gta4 is close to a pcs worst nightmare, the game usually requires such high specs to run it, and i know people that complain about this type of stuff happening to them. How bad is the lag? I know that i have seen it occur but its very mild, just happens a lot.

Turn down the settings until you have the VRAM used to under 1 GB. It might also be the writing of new objects into the VRAM that makes it lag.

So because of lack of ram windows uses virtual ram and then it slows the hard drive down, and then lags the game. Makes sense. And if thats the case a defrag could be in order. I also have a 2gb stick of crosair ddr 2 800 ram that will work with my 2 1gb sticks of ocz, but I have some problems with my overclock that way. Those 2gb sticks of ocz are set to pretty high voltage too. But I could try it and see what happens.

also, even if I use less then the vram, it still lags, and if I am using 1.6gb of vram, the lag is almost the same. Its pretty bad too. Like it just completely stops. Oh and I have a mod called realismiv. Its supposed to let you set everything real high without lag. And theres also some new textures that look nice with that too.

yeah, definitely need to add another 2gb of memory. right now wouldn't be a bad idea if you get an update on the mobo and go ddr3, it would be more cost effective down the road.

I have the more ram sitting right in front of me. I really dont see the need to get a new motherboard. What would you pick. New motherboard or 4870x2?
I guess I will add the ram and hope this overclock still works!
free ram FTW!

Its your rams.
to give you an example, after playing some time (~1hour) my ram usage is at ~3.9GB which is almost max.
When I exit gta4, ram usage drops to ~800MB.
GTA4 takes a lot of rams.

You RAM is def lbottlenecking you

I defragmented, and that almost got rid of lag alone, and I just added another 2gb of ram! So my lag should be gone. I can hopefully now run it on 100% high settings, even view distance

only 2GB ram.
Trust me, I have the same Q6600 and with 2GB, it's unplayable.

Much better, until it crashed. Proably because I added a 2gb stick of crosair which will only do 1.9v, where my old ram could take 2.1. And belive me, I needed all 2.1v to get to 3.6. I think I will live with 3.4

Well xp doesnt eat ram. You shoulda said that awhile ago