As we've established, Grand Theft Auto IV on the PC is all kinds of broken. People are upset, people demand action. Well, people, action is coming, Rockstar today announcing the details of their upcoming patch.
The patch - which addresses problems Rockstar claim are affecting only "one percent" of users (uh, no) - will do things like fix ATi problems, stop a number of crashes and repair issues the game had with power management.
The full list of improvements includes:
-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.
Great for some, but for the rest? No mention there of improvements to the game's graphics code, which is the issue most people seem to be happening. Still, just because there's no mention of it doesn't mean they won't sneak performance upgrades in there.
In the meantime, Nvidia users can try installing this new driver, cooked up by Rockstar and Nvidia especially to improve performance.