My graphics are auto adjusted based on my NGF 9800 only being 512MB. "Texture-quality" and "view distance" seem to only rely on the GPU's memory.

512 was the sweet spot when I bought it last year, as a 1GB GPU card will typically cost way more than an additional 512MB of regular RAM ever would. So, I went with 4GB RAM and a 512 card when buying my PC. Yes, I still don't expect to run GTA4 greatly, but do you suppose there is any way to improve things a bit? If I bought a 1GB card, eventually, and SLI it would that setting display 1.5GB available?

Greatly appreciate your help.

The restrictions in place in GTA IV are only really a guideline that you can actually bypass. Create a new notepad txt file with the text "-norestrictions -nomemrestrict" on the first line and save it as "commandline.txt". Place it in your GTA IV folder (for me that's C:\Program Files (x86)\Rockstar Games\Grand Theft Auto IV). Boot up the game and you should be able to increase all the options without any restrictions.

I don't think getting another card works that way; at least it doesn't for me. I'm using two GTX 280s in SLi, and although SLi does increase performance, it is not reflected in the RAM amount in the options screen (see below) - it just shows 1GB instead of 2. Also bear in mind that the game still requires a powerful CPU behind it as well as GPU.

EDIT: for some reason my image keeps disappearing when I post/edit this. Anyhow, heres a link to it http://www.giantbomb.com/gtaiv_2009_02_22_23_21_49_26/51-898021/

Typically, graphics card memory mostly impacts the framerate as you increase resolution. For instance, a 512MB card should run games just fine at 1440x900, but if you increase the resolution to something much higher, like 1920x1200, you might need a 1GB card, as a 512MB one might have a little trouble with that with modern games.

There are other ways to improve the performance in GTA4, such as turning off the built-in recording software in the options, which is enabled by default. Since you're using NVidia hardware, I'd also suggest grabbing the latest NVidia driver release. Some people have noted pretty nice performance improvements after installing the GTA4 patch and the newer Nvidia drivers.

Edit: Did I miss the point or what?

Thanks to both of you. I turned off the recording junk, went from 1680x1050 to 1440x900, installed the GTA patch (already had latest Nvidia) mentioned in the R* club popup, and finally did your .txt unrestriction. I put textures from med to high, double the view distance, and still ended up with a smoother picture than before.  Still gets slideshow-y at times, but I've seen the Xbox version get those same problems at friends' places. So yeah - thanks again.