Why does SC4 lag so much?

[De Ja Vu 117]

Crysis on high settings = no lag

Crysis Warhead on high settings = no lag

Far Cry 2 on high = no lag

and now...

SC4 = LAG, LAG & LAG

My plugins folder has 1,5 Gb...

So how is this possible that it lags so much?

  -ATI Radeon HD 4800 Series

-Intel core 2 quad @ 2,50 Ghz

-3 Gb of RAM

 

[Namesys 3]

i guess that you run your massive massive plugin folder on an average hard disk drive. Now, that might be a problem you see because them speed is very very slow.

If you want to play SC4 good you have two options now

1. Get solid state drive (SSD) They are expensive but, the expensive ones really boost your speed to the limits beyond your imagination. Try those.

2. clean the plugin folder. I bet you don't seriously need all the files you have

[De Ja Vu 117]

Originally posted by: Namesys i guess that you run your massive massive plugin folder on an average hard disk drive. Now, that might be a problem you see because them speed is very very slow.

If you want to play SC4 good you have two options now

1. Get solid state drive (SSD) They are expensive but, the expensive ones really boost your speed to the limits beyond your imagination. Try those.

2. clean the plugin folder. I bet you don't seriously need all the files you havequote>

1. SSD costs more than my computer so i have to say no to that

2. I had a 4Gb plugins folder...and I kinda cleaned it to 1,5Gb

Thanks for your advice but that's just too expensive...

[tungston 19]

What part of the game is lagging, the graphics, the saves, or something else?

Which OS are you using?

[TEG24601 32]

The problem is likely due to Windows and SC4 not being able to utilize the extra cores of your processor, and perhaps SC4 not being put at the highest priority for CPU cycles. If you search around here, there are many solutions to increase the priority.

I currently run SC4 on a PowerBook G4, running at 667Mhz with 1GB of RAM, and a 200MB plug-in folder and rarely get any real lag, my only real limitation is that I cannot use the UDR missions, and my system isn't fast enough to handle them.

TEG

[De Ja Vu 117]

tungston: it lags when i move the mouse around, when I zoom in/out and so...

Windows xp professional service pack 3

[mrbisonm 1,620]

I have a 3.6 Ghz (single core) Processor and 1Gb of Ram on an old 6 year computer and get some lag during the rushhours only in larger cities (300K and bigger), but hey, I have currently 14 Gb's in my pluginfolder, which is quite a lot.......................... I think your problem is probably too many back-ground running programs like anti-virus, msn messenger, word, office etc......which causes the lag. Try to stop them all when playing.

I only have windows and Explorer working when I play, nothing else.

Maybe this will help.........

mrb

[De Ja Vu 117]

mrbisonm: Nope that's not it...it lags the same if I close them or not

[JakeMD 107]

I have the same problem. Your computer is extremely fast, but it runs sc4 like you are running it on an old Win95 machine. The problem is that Sc4 isn't designed to run on machines that fast. It doesn't know how to go in and use all of those resources.

[De Ja Vu 117]

Well then the only problem is how to make it use all the resources

[Operative 1]

Its the graphcard. I have the same system config, the same lag and even some graphics distortions in the game. There is a topic on the graphicscard problems on the site somewhere. Check it out, but there doesnt seem to be any real sollution yet.

[The_Hutt 11]

Yeah, there have been lag/graphical issues reported with ATI Radeon cards. That's probably the culprit.

[High5flyier 7]

What is needed at SC4 sites is a list of computers and their video cards and the driver that has made them work well with that particular machine for playing SimCity4. Ideally it would be great to take your machine into a shop and test drive the various video cards until you find the one the works for your pacific needs. The farther we get from when SC4 was made (2003) I notice more complaints about this problem.

People could enter their computer specs so that new people could get some ideas for what they can use to make their new computer purchase work with SC4 because lets face it on the forums now nobody is getting anywhere fast on solving their problem.

For instance if I want to play other games I use my sons computer because I can not upgrade the driver without degrading how SimCity will play. So my machine has become stuck in 2005 time to keep SimCity working correctly. But that's what it takes.

[Cougar2004 127]

Yeah, I am leary about building new computers and using new graphics cards now.  After a little research on this site, I finally decided that it is worth the risk to build a new computer, and I will get an GeForce 9800 GTX+ 1GB 256-bit GDDR3 PCI Express 2.0 x16 card.  It seems that the ATI cards are the ones having the problems lately, and NVidia has been doing ok.  I gave some findings in this other guy's post here: Wow And I went into greater detail on my own thread topic here:  SimCity 4 v.s. Best Video Card Selection (Poll Included)

I dont know all that much, but I'm trying because I want to build a new computer and I'm focusing on SC4 compatability since its the only game I play.  Email, Browsers, and Word Processing work just fine on anything, so no need to build specs to those.

I hope someone solves the problem for this guy.  As for the idea of sharing which cards work and which don't, we all already have the ability to enter our System Specs into Simtropolis in the User Settings. I know I did when i signed up, and i just looked, and its still there.  Perhaps SimTropolis could use that Data to either 1) just allow it for display, 2) transfer it to display page where people could click Yes or No for if it is stable when they use it.  But I doubt anyone would want to organize that.  Perhaps the best we can do is place something on the SimCity 4 Wiki - that someone once said existed.  Set up a format there and let all people just add their card with a note about if it works for SC4 or not.  Working would be helpful, not working isnt as helpful because failures could be caused by other components of course.  But its an idea.

[tungston 19]

Originally posted by: De Ja Vu tungston: it lags when i move the mouse around, when I zoom in/out and so...

Windows xp professional service pack 3quote>

 

It's the driver for the ATI card, and XP.  It started with the drivers some time in late 05 I think.  The only solution I know of is to run the game in software rendering.

I don't have experience with your card, but with the 800, 850, 1900 card and XP I have had to use software rendering.  With Vista, which came with DirectX 10, I can use hardware rendering with the X1950 card.

[iquere 2]

The game always lag a bit for me when running in the fastest simulator speed (cheetah? can't remember) And I have a very good rig as well, 4 GB ram, 8800 GTS 512 and 2,6 AMD dual core

It's just the way the game is, it needs to calculate a lot of stuff and it takes a lot of power. The game doesn't run that much better than on my old rig from 2003. And even then it was a bit low-end