Does anyone's computer actually run SC4 well?

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

^ You are completely correct.  As long as the graphics card doesn't cause a lag itself by trying to overprocess your image, it doesn't matter what it is.  I have an NVIDIA GEForce 4 MX integrated chip set and it works just fine.  Older than Methusalah in current graphics card terms, but working just fine, thank you.

The game is a CPU and memory hog.  The more system accessible RAM the better.  You should also set your Virtual Memory (Paging File) to the maximum so that Windows doesn't play the shrink/grow/fragmentation game with it.

[zzsim 3]

^ Yep, I actually set my virtual memory to 4gbs awhile ago when I read your guide about it at the top of the Bugs and Issues page. I don't honestly know how much of a difference it made though since I did the change shortly after completing the upgrade to 2gbs of ram, so it would be hard to distinguish where any gains came from. Of course I would imagine that you would notice a much larger performance increase if your computer has less virtual memory to begin with. One thing I can say though is that it appears to load the game a second time much quicker as while it may take about a minute the first time (still much quicker than the 5 miutes it took on my old computer ), it'll take about 20 seconds a second time I try to load the game (assuming that I haven't turned off my computer in between). I'm guessing that with that much virtual memory, the system will store whatever was accessed (in this case the SC4 content) until it needs the space for something else. Since I mostly use my computer for internet applications, it probaly does keep some of this information "on tap" if you will. 

Edit:  "SC4 is an old game (its not even a DX8 game AFAIK) so i dont think there would be much difference going from a top end card of two years ago and today would help (as two years ago, the 6800ultra was king, which is equivalent to a 7600GT..and going from a 6800ultra level performance to an 8800GTS did not yield much results)"

^ Same story here, as I said in my first post, I didn't notice any ingame perforamance increase, and I went all the way from a 6200 to an 8800.

[Cob92 360]

If the game were a CPU hog then I would have low fps, because my CPU is not a cutting edge device. It contains only a single core and runs below 3GHz(the common threshold for faster CPUs). However, I noticed that when I doubled the memory, the small lag that existed before vanished. From my point of view, these are the performance determining components in order of importance:

1.RAM

2.GFX card(particularly GFX memory)

3.CPU

[joerg 280]

Lets just say from a software standpoint SC4 is sluggish title, not designed to take advantage of much scaling beyone what was available at its release. No multi core support, no advanded gpu support, limited support for more than 2gigs of memory, and a rather slow loading sequence.

The game would probably run at its absolute fastest on an xp pro system, 3.46ghz P4 Extreme system (the fastest single core cpu based on netburst if i remember correctly), 2 gigs of memory, 4600 series graphics card, and a massive page file stored on if possible a raptor drive. My guess is this combination would yield very impressive sc4 performance.

Which is sad becuase i acctuall hadnt played sc4 in 3 years and in that time my computer went from a single core althon 64 3000+ oc'd to 2.6ghz and a gig of memory and a ti4200, I went to a dual core athlon x2 4200+ @ 2.53ghz, 4gigs of memory, and a 6600gt, needless to say the game honestly feels slower to me.

Ideally SC4 would have a mem cap of 16gigs, support for up to 4 threads of processing, and support for offloading physics and highly parrallel tasks to the gpu. Unfortunetly it has none of those nice little performace boosters and we are stuck with it as is.

[waway625 72]

Originally posted by: N_O_Body ^ You are completely correct.  As long as the graphics card doesn't cause a lag itself by trying to overprocess your image, it doesn't matter what it is.  I have an NVIDIA GEForce 4 MX integrated chip set and it works just fine.  Older than Methusalah in current graphics card terms, but working just fine, thank you.

The game is a CPU and memory hog.  The more system accessible RAM the better.  You should also set your Virtual Memory (Paging File) to the maximum so that Windows doesn't play the shrink/grow/fragmentation game with it.quote>

uhmm i think the settings for the virtual memory should depend on how much Physical RAM you have though, in my case (i posted my findings on the virtual memory guide) SC4 takes less than a gig of Pagefile so setting it to 4gb would just be a waste of harddrive space (which is becoming precious nowadays with current games taking up 5-10 Gb )..you are correct in making it static though and to keep them contiguous

another thing that can help is (when defragging the harddrive) to put your games and pagefile on the outer part of the disk (i use ultimate defrag to do this) as the outer disk is the fastest part of the harddrive, still its beter to have more RAM as possible to avoid the use of page file (as RAM is much faster than virtual memory)

Originally posted by: zzsim

^ Same story here, as I said in my first post, I didn't notice any ingame perforamance increase, and I went all the way from a 6200 to an 8800.quote>

add to that the "problem" wherein even if you set the game to run in 32bit, the config stays 16-bit for modern (post Geforce 4 ti 4600) cards

anyone found a workaround for that?

Originally posted by: Cobhris96 If the game were a CPU hog then I would have low fps, because my CPU is not a cutting edge device. It contains only a single core and runs below 3GHz(the common threshold for faster CPUs). However, I noticed that when I doubled the memory, the small lag that existed before vanished. From my point of view, these are the performance determining components in order of importance:

1.RAM

2.GFX card(particularly GFX memory)

3.CPUquote>

for SIM city GFX memory may not be an issue as using rivatuner;s GPU memory usage meter, mine only used up to 270mb of vRAM

for newer games though, id take GPU power over memory (would you choose a 512mb 6800GS over a 320mb 8800GTS?)

remember, memory is only important if the GPU has the raw power to use it

for example, a Geforce 6600GT with 256mb of ram wouldnt be much of an advantage over the 128mb version as to use the whoel 256mb of vRAM, you would have to enable higher AA and details..thus at those settings (on modern games) the 6600GT would struggle anyway

same goes for other low powered cards with high vRAM, its simply marketing as those cards are too weak to use the entire vRAM anyway ie 6200s with 256mb of vRAM; 7600/6800s with 512 of vRAM

here are the stats of my resources used when loading a city of about 500k with about 2gb worth of plugins

https://s188.photobucket.com/albums/z294/wawayscreens/?action=view&current=sc.jpg

in summary, loading a large city tile with about 500k population, SC$ only used

271mb of vRAM, 992mb of RAM and 812mb of Pagefile

[jigsaw 227]

i dont know if this has been mentioned before, but i have drastically improved my SC4 performance on my old laptop by

1. creating a seperate partition for SC4, (8GB) in my case i labelled it Z:

2. installing the game into this partition

3. all plugins i ever have installed, i now install into the plugins folder in the program files directory, not the my documents directory.

4. avoid using the my documents folders for anything.

i run my laptop on 1GB RAM, using a ATI 9600, P4 clocked to 3.2G and before i did this above process, lag was getting really bad. now, only the natural lag (like growing lots, automata, and really large cities slow it down) but otherwise it now runs fine.

[scififan68 23]

I forgot to mention that Sc4 starts to lag a little with a city that has a size of 500,000 sims or more.

[waway625 72]

Originally posted by: joerg

The game would probably run at its absolute fastest on an xp pro system, 3.46ghz P4 Extreme system (the fastest single core cpu based on netburst if i remember correctly), 2 gigs of memory, 4600 series graphics card, and a massive page file stored on if possible a raptor drive. My guess is this combination would yield very impressive sc4 performance.

quote>

that would be most ideal except id change the P4 extreme to an Athlon64 FX 57 as the fastest single core processor

Originally posted by: joerg

.

Which is sad becuase i acctuall hadnt played sc4 in 3 years and in that time my computer went from a single core althon 64 3000+ oc'd to 2.6ghz and a gig of memory and a ti4200, I went to a dual core athlon x2 4200+ @ 2.53ghz, 4gigs of memory, and a 6600gt, needless to say the game honestly feels slower to me.

quote>

thats because your A64 single core runs faster (at 2.6) than your athlon x2 (at 2.53Ghz) im not sure but you could try running superpi to see  how, processor/ram wise, your current setup stacks up with the old..

are you using the same board? and was the old 2-gig running on 2 sticks and the 4gb RAM is using 4 sticks? coz you may be running 1t before and now at 4 sticks you have 2t command rate?

my only guesses for the slower performance would be the CPU (being a tad slower on single core apps since its clocked lower) and the RAM running on a slower command rate or perhaps looser timings?

[davepenman 0]

Ok shot in the dark but if you got a faster hard drive like a scsi or I-ram it would load incredibly faster and would be a dramatic increase in fps althought i'm not sayin it will the chances are high that it would becuase no matter how good some pc's are with quad core and dual core it may be the speed it is accesed I-ram which is several times faster than the fastest hard drive available would load Sim city extremely fast although is limited by its capacity of 4gb and the cost to buy 4gb of RAM and is volatile memory which means if it lost power it would lose data stored on it. It does come with a battery in case power is lost and data is still stored when the pc is on standby. Even if it isn't used for sim city windows xp boots instantly if it is stored on I-RAM. Search on youtube and you will find a video.

[tungston 19]

That sounds good, but [basically] the only time a hard drive is in use is when the game is loaded, and when you save. More than that is the speed of the front side bus, memory, and processor, that determines how fast the game is. The hard drive won't slow down loading enough you would noticed it. Even older drives transfer rates are 100MB per second.

[jabezscratch 159]

I've got a WD Raptor that spins at 10,000RPM and the game loads fast (30 seconds). My plugins are 1.4G (packed by Datpacker) and intro is removed. I can't compare the performance of the Raptor against my previous HDD (a 160G 7200RPM Seagate) b/c I got the Raptor w/ a new CPU (Intel E6700) + 4G RAM on Windows XP Pro (I know, I know: XP can't fully utilize 4G RAM -- I was futureproofing myself for Vista). I've got an ATI 1900GT so I have to run in software mode (we all know about that still unresolved issue). The only time I notice harddrive reads in the game is when I'm on my huge capital city (2 million pop) otherwise no HDD activity.

[davepenman 0]

Well was worth a suggestion lol, Why doesn't someone make a table of which pc's run SimCity 4 well and which don't, of course everyone would need an identical city which is very large so I suggest downloading a large one and everone who wants to be in the test would download this map and run it and run fraps to measure how many frames per second and make an average of how many they got, They would post their system specs and we would maybe find a trend and possibly what the problem is.

[normac 1]

Having run SimCity4 on a total of 6 different computers with various combinations of Intel/AMD and nVidia/ATI through the years I can conclude the following:

SimCity prefers AMD over Intel. Current AMD dual core processors will run SimCity quite well, without having to gimp your system by making it run on only one core, provided you download the dual core optimizer I mention in the zoom crash thread (or click here for those of you who are lazy).

SimCity runs far better with an nVidia graphics card than with ATI. ATI's drivers just don't mix with SimCity's requirements. Every ATI system I've played it on, graphics are choppy when scrolling and the game is generally sluggish. It's been well documented that SimCity prefers nVidia over ATI due to the way they draw things. Look through the forum here and in the graphicsrules file in SimCity.

SimCity will run much better with large amounts of QUALITY RAM (2gb). I stress quality because 2gb of value RAM doesn't preform as well. Most zoom crash issues can be attributed to this.

Things I have found that don't really make much difference (that's not to say it may not improve the game for other people) are:

Graphics card RAM size (a GeForce MX440 with 64 MB of RAM will work just as well as an nVidia 8800GTX with 768 MB of RAM). Remember, SimCity was made to run back in the days when all these new fangled cards didn't exist. Although I'm sure Maxis thought of the possibility of better cards, they had to make a game that would run well back in 2004.

Page file size. If you have 2gb of ram, your optimal page file size is 4096 MB anyway, so it shouldn't really matter too much.

A RAID 0 setup for your hard drives will increase load times but not by as much as you might think. It's a benefit, but not a great one.

My current set-up (AMD x2 5200+ w/dual core optimizer, 2gb Crucial RAM, nVidia 7900 GS) runs SimCity perfectly and has for quite a while. No lag and ZERO crashes.

[screamingman12 30]

Hmm, that's odd, because I found just the opposite. My specs, Dual Pentuim IVs @ 3.2 Ghz each, ATI Mobility Radeon X600 (128 MB), 512 MB RAM (although I'm thinking about going to 2GB), WIndows XP, 90 GB HDD. The only time I have had crashes was when I wasn't being careful with the GLR, haven't had any other issues, the scrolling thing happens ocasionaly but otherwize SC4 runs excellently.

[normac 1]

I didn't say SimCity wouldn't work well with anything other than what I wrote. I just said that this is what I've found to be the best.

[tungston 19]

These reports are individual opinions.

There are no substantiated reports that one brand of processor runs Simcity 4 any better than the other.

There are so many combinations of hardware, and software setups, it would be impossible for an individual to determine that.

[screamingman12 30]

well yeah, I'm just saying that I don't think that there is a procesor bias in the game (if you could call it that). BTW Normac, what would you consider quality RAM, I'm thinking about doing an upgrade.

[tungston 19]

I think he would say "Crucial", and so would I. The best price I have found is at mwave.com.

Check the ram you need at the Crucial site first.

I just bought 2GB of Ballistix Tracer [Crucial high performance] 1066MHz for 137 USD.

You should be able to get 2GB standard Crucial for your computer for under 90 USD including shipping.

[normac 1]

Originally posted by: tungston These reports are individual opinions.

There are no substantiated reports that one brand of processor runs Simcity 4 any better than the other.quote>

I disagree. Looking through the numerous threads on CTD's and other various bugs you can see a bias towards AMD's. I've run SimCity on 3 Pentium 4 based computers and 3 Athlon based computers and whether you choose to believe me or not, I'm just passing along the information that I find AMD processors to be generally better at handling the computing power SC4 requires.

Especially with the new dual core processors, there are numerous reports of people having problems with the new Core Duos. The solution? Gimp your processor and make SimCity run on one core effectively cutting your processor power in half. With the AMD's on the other hand, although the information about the dual-core optimizer is fairly new, people have already reported that it solves CTD problems without having to gimp the processor. Swamper77 is the most notable of these people.

@ screamingman12: I would consider quality RAM to be anything that isn't the cheapest RAM available. For example, Kingston has a line of RAM that is specifically called ValueRAM. I've used it and I had more crashing errors due to zooming and other things with it than I have using top of the line stuff. Crucial is an excellent manufacturer. Tungsten is right about prices too. I also have 2gb of Ballistix Tracer RAM I bought for ~$100 from www.newegg.com.

Other decent RAM makers include Corsair, OCZ, Kingston, Mushkin, and G. Skill to name a few. All of them have a "value" line to my knowledge. As long as you steer clear of that you're okay.

[tungston 19]

Before I start, I am not interested in a AMD slash Intel war.

Originally posted by: normac

Originally posted by: tungston These reports are individual opinions.

There are no substantiated reports that one brand of processor runs Simcity 4 any better than the other.quote>

I disagree. Looking through the numerous threads on CTD's and other various bugs you can see a bias towards AMD's. I've run SimCity on 3 Pentium 4 based computers and 3 Athlon based computers and whether you choose to believe me or not, I'm just passing along the information that I find AMD processors to be generally better at handling the computing power SC4 requires.quote>

 

Swamper77 is the most notable of these peoplequote>

I don't think you noticed that Swamper used the AMD fix.

I guess you overlooked the word "substantiated".

Because someone has crashes with the game, does not mean it is the processor.  I believe that video drivers/setup, memory, and custom content conflicts cause the majority of crashes.  Plugins lead the list.

Brand loyality is admirable, but you are overstating what AMD processors can do.

I run the game on a Core2duo, with XP Pro, and a Core2Quad, with Vista.  I have absolutely no proplems with either of them. 

I also challenge your statement that AMD is better at handling the computing power required by SC4.  Again, just your unsubstantiated opinion.  I doubt you have access to the latest computers, or the equipment to compare them.

I think if you are following the tech news, you know that AMD is no longer matching Intel performance.

[prince_of_sims 0]

There's just a tad bit of info missing from what you said.

AMD is getting beat by Intel on desktop processor lines, but AMD's upcoming Quadcore and Octacore platforms are set to revolutionize the server industry.

[normac 1]

Tungston: I did notice Swamper used the AMD fix, as do I for reasons I mentioned in my previous post and the zoom crash thread. I don't really care whether people prefer Intel over AMD either. I was just contributing my findings to the general knowledge pool. I do not have brand loyalty. I have 6 computers, 3 Intel and 3 AMD's. SimCity just seems to run better on the AMDs. Whether you agree with that or not is fine but you shouldn't discredit my findings simply because yours are in conflict. Also, I do know that Intel chips outperform AMD chip, especially recently. But I counter that because SimCity is 4 years old. Modern computing standards and general performance vs. SimCity performance I do not believe are entirely correlated when it comes to current benchmarks.

[tungston 19]

Originally posted by: prince_of_sims There's just a tad bit of info missing from what you said.

AMD is getting beat by Intel on desktop processor lines, but AMD's upcoming Quadcore and Octacore platforms are set to revolutionize the server industry.quote>

 

There aren't even projected release dates for those processors.  The slower one that is expected to be released in September, won't "get-r done".

When they happen then we can talk about them.  So far all they have are " simulated benchmarks".

I doubt Intel is sitting on their backsides waiting for AMD to come out with a better chip.

Here is George Ou's take on AMD's deceptive benchmarks.

[davepenman 0]

Ok this AMD V INTEL crap is getting out of hand and sim city cannot multithread so don't brag about it if you have sim city running perfectly on a Quad core 3ghz. My idea is to compare pc's which could and could not run sim city without lag now if anyone would like to participate in the test e-mail me your system specs and when your pc starts to lag e.g. population when it starts lagging. Please do not lie if you get 3fps with a quad core just to make yourself feel better, no one cares about what how great your pc is, but what we do care is if we can identify the problem and find a fix for those who would be most grateful for the even if slight increase in performance, I for one would. Please participate and my e-mail address is djpenman@hotmail.co.uk. I am looking for the following information:

CPU CLOCK BRAND (e.g. AMD Athlon64 4200 2.2ghz dual core)

RAM CLOCK BRAND (e.g. Kingston DDR2 and how many sticks of ram you have such as two 1gb etc )

GPU MODEL AND CLOCK AND MEMORY IF POSSIBLE (e.g. NVIDIA 7950 400mhz core and 750 mhz VRAM SLI etc)

Also if you know could you tell me your hdd specs such as rpm cache and size