Solution: use RICOHJPN-D01-067 dye discs such as Aone DVD+R DL

This is how I found out:

I have a 6 month old falcon chipset Arcade console with Benq drive, flashed with 1.41 iXtreme.
I've been using Infiniti 360 discs for a short while as I feel they offer better value for money than Verbs and work just as well. I made my first backup of an original copy of GTA IV shortly after the game came out using one of these discs and experienced the same severe pop-ups that just about everybody else did on the Benq drive.
After reading that even Verbs didn't provide a fix for this problem, I began researching into other possibilities...

I quickly discovered that clearing the cache of you memory card/HDD does nothing, and that also having a HDD does not help as some claim.
Eventually I stumbled across a forum where people were discussing the pop-up problem. One particular person stated that using a program called 'DVDIdentifier' you can identify which dye an original xbox 360 game uses. Apparantly GTA IV uses "RICOHJPN-D01-067." So with this in mind, I began researching DVD+R DL media that uses this kind of dye, starting at SVP Communications. Here, they actually tell you which dye each media uses. I found that Aone-branded media did (amongst others) so I purchased some from eBay to test the theory.

I can confirm, that after 1 hour of testing so far, pop-up is greatly reduced and loading times shortened.
The irony here is that Aone triumphed where Verbs failed, and Aone are some of the cheapest media going! I bought 10 for under £3!!!

interesting
can someone from UK verify them to work?

because here in "real" europe i cant get em

but seem to be 4,74 (@ebay) € for 10 discs where as Verbatims are here for 21€ for 5 discs

ive always used aone and they have worked great for me. and cheap as chips

The RICOH-JPN-D01-67 dye is one of the worst you can find Look up scans of this dye and you'll see a lot of PI and PF errors. Especially the layer break section and the start of layer 1 are horrible.

Originals definately don't use this dye. It's a blank dye that can be written with laser light (what a burner does). Original games are pressed discs which is one of the things why they're shiny silver and not dull purple

Maybe the game seems to be playing better but you will soon experience freezes. If you absolutely not want to use your original get a MS28 drive.

When I first burned off GTAIV on a verb it played perfectly with no pop up and I didn't know what everybody was talking about. Then recently it has just started to have all the slow loading texture problems so I think no matter what kind of disc you use it will just take a few weeks and it will start sucking too.

thx so i keep buyin my expensive but nice verbatims

I find it funny how all the people that always claim to have such answers to all of the problems that long time veterans cannot solve all have 1 post in these forums...

Nice try mr Aone salesperson. No better way to boost the sales of your poor dye discs than to claim that it works. Welcome to the internet after 13 years. I think people are natively more skeptical, especially when you claim factory pressed discs used the awful RICOH dyes....

I'm pretty sure that the disk is pressed and uses aluminum, unless you are talking about the dye used on the 'gold copy'...

You are lost, severely...

This problem is only on BenQ drives? No wonder my BenQ loads the game slow as hell...My Samsung works great but my BenQ is so damn slow to load this game.

Aone works great until you test the layer break. Nearly every time it has issues between 50-57%.

Original discs are pressed.

Meaning they don't use dyes. They use aluminium layers that reflect light.

You fail.

aone disks are the best trust me on this one i prefer these to verbs.most of my backups are used with these not one problem what so ever.its the way in which u burn them off is the trick for perfect burns.i have sata onboard my motherboard when i use this to burn off i get problems with what ever media i use so i bought a sata card and run my sata hd on this perfect backups every time using image burn.

I'm a little bit disappointed by some of your replies.
Comments such as "your an Aone" salesman and "you fail" are hardly welcoming to a new member such as myself, but I take it that is simply due to cynicism. All I was trying to do was share some of the knowledge and success I'd had with making a backup of GTA. If certain people are having a hard time coming to terms with the fact that Verbs didn't sort the problem for Benq uses - so what?

Firstly, I am not a Aone salesman. That comment did make me smile though. If I was to call myself an adocate of any DL media, I'd say I'm an Infiniti 360 salesman, since I never had an unsuccessful burn in the whole time of used them.

Secondly, I bought some Aone discs purely as an experiment. I honestly did not expect them to produce any decent results and certainly not over Infiniti or Verbatim media. I was a complete surprise that it worked and has been working every day of this week for countless hours.

Thirdly, I'll admit. I might have been a little hasty to post up the supposed "fix." The only reason I bothered was that I thought it might be worth sharing. Perhaps there were other factors. For instance, I burned the backup at x1 speed (I normally use 2.4 like most other people). That might have had an affect, who knows?





That information was simply relayed from a post on another forum, as I mentioned in my opening post (I take it reading isn't a strong-point yours?). I don't profess to be an expert in DL media, but by-the-by, the information I discovered caused to make my first successful backup of GTA after 4 other attempts using more expensive media.

I take it that you didn't cross check said poster's claims? (About the "dye" in pressed discs) You really shouldn't throw stones out of glass houses.

Anyway, I created my GTA IV backup on Verbatim Singapore discs. Loading times and such are near to original. Even with the fastest cars on the straightest roads, I have never "outran" the disc.

I'm fairly certain such claims are due to a worn out laser after playing too many backups.

If you look at a forum like CDFreaks, you'll see that it has been comprehensively proven that Verbatim DVD+DL are superior in every way to AOne.

Sorry if you were offended by my early post - but this is a tough forum

I have a 360 Benq that is from the beginning of March and I don't play it that often. GTA IV does the slow texture loading thing and I know my laser isn't worn out.

Don't know what to tell ya.

I have a February Elite with a Benq and I get near perfect performance.

Maybe it has to do with the writer you used to burn your backups as well.

Different burners give different quality results. I use a Lite-On.

I take it reading isnt your strong point either, if you actually read and comprehended that other forum correctly you wouldve known that gta4 doesnt use dye as you so claimed here
"Apparantly GTA IV uses "RICOHJPN-D01-067.""

The guy said he burnt gta4 on "bulpaq x8 disks" and that the dye was "RICOHJPN-D01-067" and it ran perfect for him.

Anywho I have a BRAND NEW benq and I had a problem with popup and such that everyone else is talking about. I use sony branded dvd-dl and it works perfectly on a samsung ms28 but when i tried it on my brand new benq *read brand new , weak lasers isnt the problem, when i say brand new this is the first game i tried on it ever i bought it yesterday*

i thought it was odd that like 70% of benq users would have a problem while 30% didnt.I was able to fix it by doing 2 things , clearing the hd cache and having games start at bootup. Sounds weird but i read garyopa or one of thoose guys post saying he fixed a assassins creed problem by having it start at bootup instead of going to dashboard. I tried it for gta4 and it worked INSTANTLY HUGE differnce , still very seldom popup but nothing more then my old samsung use to do.


Cliff notes:
1. Dogpitt not to smart
2. POSSIBLE fix by clearing hd cache and having games start on boot instead of going to dashboard

Took the liberty of rectifying one of your many spelling mistakes for you.
May as well put that Literature Degree to use.