Sim City 4 Lagging

[LeFail 0]

Hi!

This is my first post here so bear with me if you need more information than I'm giving you

I'll start off with my Specs:

XP Pro (x86/32-bit)

E8400 Core 2 Duo @ 3.0GHz

4GB OCZ 1066 RAM

ATI HD 4850

And Sim City 4 Deluxe

I have the latest video drivers. Because 32-bit XP does not recognize 4GB RAM, I manually set my page file to make it recognize approximately that much. 3GB is what it normally detects.

Now the problem: This is not my video, but after the 0:13 mark is where I have my problem, what is shown IS the problem

It happens when running the game in hardware mode (not software). Another funny thing happens when I load into a city: the clouds and fog have little 100% transparent squares in them, shown in the attached picture.

I have tried disabling one core by pressing CTRL+ALT+DEL and setting the affinity to CPU0, but this doesn't work.

EDIT: The point of this thread is to run the game in hardware mode, not software. Software mode has already been tried, and I dislike it. Thank you.

[LUEshi 0]

I'm having the same problem and with a very similar setup. Only I'm running winxp 64-bit and have an e7200 processor. You'd think that with 4 Gb of RAM and an HD4850 we'd be able to run this 5 year old game without any problems. .

[TV-VCR 15]

Most likely it's a graphics problem, not a CPU problem... does anyone else here own a 4850 and get the same problem? There's a possibility it could be a bug with card. It could also be overheating for all we know.

[LeFail 0]

Originally posted by: TV-VCR Most likely it's a graphics problem, not a CPU problem... does anyone else here own a 4850 and get the same problem? There's a possibility it could be a bug with card. It could also be overheating for all we know.quote>

I know it's not overheating, I've done testing on my own. It takes 6 hours of consistent 3d rendering (game-playing) to overheat this card when the fan isn't properly regulated. Every five seconds it speeds up to bring the temperature below 50ºC, then speeds down, and repeats. The temperature never exceeds 68ºC, and an overheating temperature for this card is 75-80+. To monitor the temperature, I use Asus Smart Doctor. It also controls the fan speeds.

It runs games like CoD4 on max settings at 1680x1050 (minus AF and AA) at 90+ fps, and Crysis on high in DX9 at a constant 40+.

What could cause the squares in the fog that's being displayed on top of the "out-of-boundary" area.

[lamphalo 0]

Hello guys,

I myself just built a system with the follow specifications and I am running into the poor performance problems as well.

Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 3.0Ghz

2x1GB DDR2 800

ATI 4850 512MB GDDR3 (Catalyst 8.

Windows XP Home SP3 32-Bit

Sim City 4 Deluxe

I get better performance in software rendering mode but it's still very hitchy and not acceptable.

[rtil 1]

Originally posted by: LeFail squares in the fog that's being displayed on top of the "out-of-boundary" area.quote>

change the rendering mode from 'hardware' to 'software' in the options. this also might make the game run a lot faster. be sure to reset SC4 after you change these options. you should notice a big difference in performance.

[SC4BOY 21]

Another thing is to turn OFF in your video driver ANY AND ALL advanced settings ..it's a known problem with SC4 as it was written before any shading, aliasing, etc.. make it as simple as possible.. that probably will stop the problem.. also you should not have to run in software mode.. yoor hardware is more than advanced enough to run SC4 fine.. 

Inside SC4  nothing there needs to be adjusted to your particular card.. be sure you have "transparency" set to on.. sounds like you may have it off in the game settings..

[lamphalo 0]

Well I turned off Catalyst AI and still have the same problem when using hardware rendering, totally unplayable stuttering, so I guess I will have to continue using software rendering for the time being.

[LUEshi 0]

Let me know if you guys find anything that fixes this.  I'm getting the same problems you are getting with the laggy game and the wierd off color pixels on the lights and some colors. I'm using this setup, which is basically the same as all the others here:

Intel Core 2 Duo E7200

4 GB RAM

ATI 4850 512MB GDDR3 (Catalyst 8.

Windows XP Pro SP2 64-bit

Sim City 4 Deluxe

[TV-VCR 15]

This is sounding more and more like a problem with the 4850 drivers.

[sithlrd98 66]

As far as I remember....ATI and SC4 don't get along.

[crazymodder 0]

Originally posted by: sithlrd98 As far as I remember....ATI and SC4 don't get along.quote>

no, all old graphic cards work with SC4 but not the new one.

[TV-VCR 15]

I have heard of quite a few people running Simcity 4 fine on 4870 cards (drivers), but it seems the 4850's drivers don't like simcity... or whatever.

[LeFail 0]

Originally posted by: rtil

Originally posted by: LeFail squares in the fog that's being displayed on top of the "out-of-boundary" area.quote>

change the rendering mode from 'hardware' to 'software' in the options. this also might make the game run a lot faster. be sure to reset SC4 after you change these options. you should notice a big difference in performance.quote>

That's the whole point of this thread. I don't want to run the game in software when I know it's perfectly capable of doing it in hardware mode. And no, I don't notice any performance increase in actual game play, in fact, everything but scrolling deteriorates.

Originally posted by: SC4BOY Another thing is to turn OFF in your video driver ANY AND ALL advanced settings ..it's a known problem with SC4 as it was written before any shading, aliasing, etc.. make it as simple as possible.. that probably will stop the problem.. also you should not have to run in software mode.. yoor hardware is more than advanced enough to run SC4 fine.. 

Inside SC4  nothing there needs to be adjusted to your particular card.. be sure you have "transparency" set to on.. sounds like you may have it off in the game settings..quote>

I have never enabled any advanced settings, to my knowledge. Is the "support DXT format textures" option supposedly advanced? AA and AF are always enabled in-game for me, never through the drivers. I also have all the options in-game enabled, when I run both in software and hardware. Lowering them in hardware makes no difference.

Originally posted by: TV-VCR I have heard of quite a few people running Simcity 4 fine on 4870 cards, but it seems the 4850's drivers don't like simcity... or whatever.quote>

The fact that it works on the 4870 series cards and that it doesn't work on the 4850s is flat out stupid. That is, it's most likely a driver problem, since the only difference between the two cards is that one card has GDDR5 memory, while the other (buggy) has GDDR3.

Originally posted by: sithlrd98 As far as I remember....ATI and SC4 don't get along.quote>

Funny that you mention that; I've owned three ATI cards and none of them have worked well with Sim City 4.

LUEshi, thank you for posting your driver version. It will save me from upgrading to it from 8.7. So that rules out the only two drivers available for the card.

[Screwballl 196]

Heres my system:

dual core E6600

2GB DDR2-1066

GA-EP35-DS3P motherboard

ATI 256MB X1950GT

XP Pro SP3

I also tried a 256MB nvidia 7300GT

I found that SC4 is not setup to use PCIe video cards properly (or even newer AGP cards that use a "bridge chip" so a PCIe based card can be used in AGP slot) so when the system is set to hardware rendering, it is trying to send the requests as an AGP "signal" which causes lag and in my case corruption. I lost a city due to the lag since it corrupted my city file. Luckily it was not too far into it but the fact remains.

SC4 was released in 2003 before PCIe was even officially released. I can play SC4 on my older AthlonXP system with hardware rendering and it plays great, even large maps with 500,000 population. That system is AthlonXP 3000+, 1GB DDR-400, Radeon 9600XT 128MB.

With my newer system, as soon as I switched it to software rendering, all my lag and problems went away. My city was still corrupted but I just created a new one in its place and it is doing great!!

It is not a case of your system being capable, it is the games ability to use that hardware, which it is not. Crysis can use your hardware properly, SC4 cannot due to its age and original programming by EA. If EA released a patch to fix this (which will never happen), then we may be able to use hardware rendering with our PCIe video cards. Until then, switch it to software rendering and enjoy the game.

[TV-VCR 15]

Originally posted by: LeFail

Originally posted by: TV-VCR I have heard of quite a few people running Simcity 4 fine on 4870 cards (drivers), but it seems the 4850's drivers don't like simcity... or whatever.quote>

The fact that it works on the 4870 series cards and that it doesn't work on the 4850s is flat out stupid. That is, it's most likely a driver problem, since the only difference between the two cards is that one card has GDDR5 memory, while the other (buggy) has GDDR3.quote>

A bit grumpy I see? I already said it was a driver problem. There is no need to call what I said "flat out stupid."

Screwballl: That's really odd. I have SC4 set to hardware rendering and I have an 8800GTX, and SC4 runs great. Not disagreeing with you however.

[LeFail 0]

Originally posted by: TV-VCR

Originally posted by: LeFail

Originally posted by: TV-VCR I have heard of quite a few people running Simcity 4 fine on 4870 cards (drivers), but it seems the 4850's drivers don't like simcity... or whatever.quote>

The fact that it works on the 4870 series cards and that it doesn't work on the 4850s is flat out stupid. That is, it's most likely a driver problem, since the only difference between the two cards is that one card has GDDR5 memory, while the other (buggy) has GDDR3.quote>

A bit grumpy I see? I already said it was a driver problem. There is no need to call what I said "flat out stupid."

Screwballl: That's really odd. I have SC4 set to hardware rendering and I have an 8800GTX, and SC4 runs great. Not disagreeing with you however.quote>

Sorry, I meant that the reality that it doesn't work the way it should is stupid, not that you told me it. The rage was directed at the driver developers, not you

Update on the problem, changing the "support DXT textures" to off does nothing to help the problem.

[lamphalo 0]

Precisely, I want to run the game in hardware and not software mode.

Previously, SC4 did not run well on my previous graphics card, an ATI X1600. The only thing getting me by is my CPU and RAM in software rendering which sucks because I would love to have the GPU help as well.

[TV-VCR 15]

Originally posted by: LeFail

Sorry, I meant that the reality that it doesn't work the way it should is stupid, not that you told me it. The rage was directed at the driver developers, not you quote>

Ah, sorry.

If there are any, perhaps you could try some beta drivers? Just a shot in the dark.

[Screwballl 196]

Originally posted by: TV-VCR

Screwballl: That's really odd. I have SC4 set to hardware rendering and I have an 8800GTX, and SC4 runs great. Not disagreeing with you however.quote>

must be ATI/AMD cards then... I am looking at an 8800GT.... when I get the money...

[tungston 19]

The problem with the ATI drivers started sometime in late 2005, or early 2006, and could be limited to PCI express cards. I don't know because PCIe cards is all I have used with ATI.

Now with Vista, and DirectX 10 I have no problem with hardware rendering.

[Wodong 1]

Tungston, what vid card are you using? I have an ATI HD 3650, and it hates hardware rendering. I can get SC4 to run in software rendering, but like the OP I'd rather have hardware rendering. Also running Vista, like yourself, with DX10.

Man I miss my old comp....

[tungston 19]

The Vista machine has a ATI X1950 Pro, not real recent [1 yr old now], or top of the line [256MB].

[LeFail 0]

Well, still nothing found.

Does anyone have a 2x00 series ATI card that runs the game just fine? It's odd that it doesn't like the two latest DX10.1 cards...

EDIT: I found someone with a problem on a 2600: http://forums.amd.com/game/messageview.cfm?catid=260&threadid=91717&highlight_key=y&keyword1=sim%20city

So it's not the functionality of DX10.1 that destroys the game, it's something else...

[Trioxis 32]

I have the exact same problem with my new HD4870.

System:

Intel E8400 (dual core)

2GB DDR2

ASUS P5K Pro motherboard

Club3D HD4870 1GB

XP Pro SP3

I used to run the game with a Geforce 7900GT and had no problems at all. Bought the ATI last week and now have these problems as well.

[Vaelin 0]

Actually, my 3 year old PC with an older ATI card is fine. However, my new HTPC (which should be perfectly capable of handling SC4) with a 9500GS has problems. I've tried three recent drivers, and I've found that it's choppy whenever shadows are not on low.

I can enable all types of AA, AiF, etc (though I haven't tested all combinations yet) so long as shadows is set to low. It even runs great in software mode (with shadows).

You may want to try turning shadows to low with the new ATI cards. I'm thinking it may have to do with some of the newer shaders conflicting or not being handled correctly or lack of backward computability. Comparing 8XXX Nvidia to 4XXX ATI is mixing generations. If you are running an 9XXX Nvidia card then you have a good comparison feature-wise (similar shader and DX10 support). There also may be a setting that will correct the shadow problem, I'll investigate more in the coming week.

New PC specs are

Intel E7200 (Core 2 Duo),

2GB PC800 DDR2,

some weird mITX motherboard (Intel NB if I recall),

9500GS (not the sharpest tool in the shed, but perfectly capable of SC4) with 512 MB,

Vista 32 Premium.

[Trioxis 32]

That actually works, it's running all smooth now. Setting shadows to low does work.

[rbpolsen 0]

I too have a 4850, but when I play, I get so such problems. However, the machine forces settings on me, even when I change them, and crashes at the closest zoom level.

[waway625 72]

Originally posted by: Vaelin

You may want to try turning shadows to low with the new ATI cards. I'm thinking it may have to do with some of the newer shaders conflicting or not being handled correctly or lack of backward computability. Comparing 8XXX Nvidia to 4XXX ATI is mixing generations. If you are running an 9XXX Nvidia card then you have a good comparison feature-wise (similar shader and DX10 support).

.quote>

errr..

the 8 series cards are very much like the 9 series cards..

in fact the 9800GTX and the 8800GTS 512 are almost the same (except the 9800GTX have higher clock and memory speeds)

while the 9800GT is a rebadged 8800GT..nonetheless, the 9800s are G92s like the 8800GT and 8800GTS

that said, even the GTX 2xx have the same "shader and DX10 support" as the 8800s and the 9800s..that is they arent DX10.1 capable as opposed to their ATI HD 3xxx and HD 4xxx counterparts

anyway..

my specs are

e8400 Oced to 3600Mhz

4Gb OCZ Fatality PC6400

Geforce GTX 260

Vista Home Premium 64

and i can say, the game now runs noticeably slower versus my PC back home with the ff specs

e6300 Oced to 2800Mhz

2Gb Micron D9 @ PC6400

Geforce 8800GT

Windows XP Sp2

considering my XP rig is fairly new/modern (simcity wise) i would say that its "probably" vista thats the problem coz i can really notice the difference...my "old" PC simply runs the game smoother (higher framerates monitored via FRAPS) compared to my current PC

[Skolnik 0]

I have 2 systems a amd black edition 3.2 gig dualcore cpu, 2 gigs of corsair 800mhz dual channel memory, 8800 gt gpu, msi platinum mobo ,it runs simcity 4 just fine

the second is an amd 2.8 gig dualcore cpu 2 gigs of ultra memory and an 8800 gtx gpu, Asusm2nmx se plus mobo

the second one runs Simcity 4 like i believe the original poster describes, after a short time it begins to speed up and slow down jumping, laggy like, almost like you using the speed up time function

 i have tried different drivers even switched out gpus to no avail, from what ive seen no one really has an answer  . 

The only real differences in the 2 systems are brands of products,  they are presently running the same drivers.

So its strange that the problem shows up for some and not others, im going to be switching out parts until i make it run correctly, 

any new input would be appreciated on experiences with this.