I recently bought Grand Theft Auto 4 for the PC. It is lagging and jumping frames a lot while I am playing. Especially during events where a lot is going on.

My computer specs are:

Dell Studio XPS
Intel core i7 2.80 ghz
Windows 7
8 gigs ram
1 TB of memory
ATI Radeon 5700 series 1gig

Any ideas on how I can get this lag to stop? I am not even running it at maximum performance right now and it still is doing it. I don't think my computer is to slow. Should be able to run this program with ease. Any ideas on how to help?
Thanks

Verify you have:

Latest game patches.
Latest video drivers.
Latest audio drivers.


Contact support or see the game's readme file for any known issues with specific hardware configurations.

What is the best way to update my drivers?
I went to intel and tried to do the automatic update. But it wasn't working correctly. Even after I downloaded the updates for explorer, and mozilla. Any ideas?

what is the best way to update my drivers?
My preferred method is to download drivers directly from the hardware manufacturer or system vendor. For Dell, the service tag # on the back the system can be entered at their support website and a list of drivers for that specific system as it was configured at sale will be provided, however they may not be the absolute latest.

Otherwise, determine the hardware model from the Windows Device Manager description or from a sales receipt and visit the manufacturer's website. If available, WHQL (Windows Hardware Quality Labs) certified drivers tend to be more stable than non-certified drivers but may lack all the latest whiz-bang features. Some vendors, like ATI/AMD (http://ati.amd.com/) have a nice driver search form right on their home page. For others, determining and finding the correct driver is an exercise in frustration.

Once the correct driver file has been downloaded, it is either self-installing, meaning it can just be run to update the driver, or is a compressed archive which must be first uncompressed with the appropriate utility. Once uncompressed a setup executable file should be located in the uncompressed files and run. RAR and ZIP are probably the most common compression formats. The free open source 7-Zip (http://www.7-zip.org/) utility handles both formats and others.

Once you are sure you have all of your drivers up-to-date, and the game is up-to-date, let us know if you still have problems.

If you still do, it could just be a weird issue with Windows 7 and the game. You could try compatibility mode by right clicking on the game's shortcut, choosing properties, then clicking the compatibility tab. There will be a drop down box with different versions of Windows as choices. Try XP Service Pack 3 and see if it works better.