SC very laggy on High-end PC

[Lacolo 0]

Hey guys!

After stumbling upon this website a couple of days ago, I couldn't resist digging out my old copy of SC4 and reinstalling it. I am having some huge problems though. The game runs extremely sluggishly, and is virtually unplayable at all but the lowest settings. I find this very frustrating, as I can run virtually all other games on the market to date on maxed out settings without a hitch. I've got a pretty high end PC, although it's not DX10 ready.

A few excepts from my dxdiag are attached in code. EDIT: Removed the code. Is messing up the post.

I am running the newest ATI drivers on my X1900XTX, and I've patched SC to the newest version as well, but it doesn't seem to help.

I read in a post somewhere that there might be some problems with ATI cards and SC4, but I thought the patch might fix them. Any ideas what I could do?

Kind Regards,

Morten "Lacolo" Daugbjerg

Operating System: Windows XP Professional (5.1, Build 2600) Service Pack 2 (2600.xpsp.061012-0254)

Processor: AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core Processor 4400+,  MMX,  3DNow (2 CPUs), ~2.2GHz

Memory: 2048MB RAM

Page File: 801MB used, 3137MB available

DirectX Version: DirectX 9.0c (4.09.0000.0904)

Card name: Radeon X1900 Series

Manufacturer: ATI Technologies Inc.

Chip type: Radeon X1900 Series (0x7249)

DAC type: Internal DAC(400MHz)

Device Key: Enum\PCI\VEN_1002&DEV_7249&SUBSYS_0B121002&REV_00

Display Memory: 512.0 MB

Current Mode: 1280 x 1024 (32 bit) (60Hz)

Monitor: Plug and Play Monitor

Monitor Max Res: 1600,1200

Driver Name: ati2dvag.dll

Driver Version: 6.14.0010.6652 (English)

DDI Version: 9 (or higher)

Driver Attributes: Final Retail

[tungston 19]

I run the game on two ATI cards, X1900XT, and X800. I have to use software rendering for the game. With the X800, I could use a much older driver, and use hardware rendering. Those are the only solutions I know.

[Ryden123 0]

I have exactly the same problem, and im running a radeon x1900xtx aswell lol, the game runs so slow its unplayable ...

[oSDDo 0]

same problem here.. i have a very good pc. and a x1600   but its too slow to play... never had that problem with any other game.. not even with flight simulator x

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

You guys should really search for the solution as this is not new at all.  With dual AMD processors you need to set the affinity for Simcity4.exe to use one processor.

Also, with a 64 bit cpu, if you are running XP-64 or Vista, you may need to set the appropriate emulation mode for 32-bit programs.

[Ryden123 0]

Setting the affinity for simcity4.exe to use 1 processor did absolutely nothing for me. And im using 32 bit Windows xp.

[Silur 3,304]

I had same problems with my new GeForce sometimes ago ...

Try some another drivers - newest driver may be no best ....

[toxicpiano 125]

Setting the graphics mode on sc4 to 16bit helped a lot for me (I have the same card ATI card as you).

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Try running in software graphics rendering.  If it is better, we need to investigate your graphics card and drivers further.