i've had that problem with newer machines, when gta is loading from a network drive (fast ethernet) or when the hdd is slow or with low amount of cache
gta 3 seems to be particularly broken in slower drives, whereas gta vc fares better

I can confirm that these problems result from the optimization (or rather bad optimization) of the game code. GTA VC was already a more refined game and worked better on weak hardware - and your laptop for gta 3 has a graphics card that is too weak (even though it meets the game's hardware requirements). GTA 3 works well on geforce 3 titanium cards (or something equivalent from ATI).

It seems that you are right. I reinstalled windows xp, installed just the graphics card drivers (unofficial omega) and gta 3, the effect is almost the same as I feel like it has improved slightly but the game is still unplayable.
The most important thing is that GTA VC runs much better as that was the title I cared most about.
The drive I have is in working order, it's 5400 rpm which is an improvement on the 4200 rpm it was, the system boots fast almost like an SSD.
So it comes out that I will not play gta 3 on this laptop.

This surprises me because I remember 20 years ago playing this game on a geforce 2 mx and it was playable and this is probably a card with comparable performance if not worse than my radeon.

Protonidas wrote on 2024-10-10, 16:31:

This surprises me because I remember 20 years ago playing this game on a geforce 2 mx and it was playable and this is probably a card with comparable performance if not worse than my radeon.

Ati radeon 7500 for pc would probably be equivalent. But you have laptop version and those are always weaker - because they are miniaturized to fit in laptop.

The PC port of GTA3's known to have rough overdraw issues for everybody then. This is normal. GTAVC fixed a lot of this.

Also you should play with the frame limiter on because the game logic is VERY tied to it, as well as the dynamic loading.

Turning off trails (a slow texture buffer feedback copy effect) helps a ton too, especially on a PowerVR card 😀 FWIW GTAVC didn't have trails.

I have a question. Could the fact that I'm using the laptop on an external monitor somehow affect the performance of the graphics card? I have a broken screen on this laptop so I am using my monitor.