Game Crashes, and Jerks around

[City Planner 121]

I've seen other threads on Vista and SC4 crashing and other nasties, however I didnt want to intrude on other peoples help threads by cluttering them up with my own SC4 problems so here is my Vista crash thread for SC4......

Hi,
I've got Vista 64 bit, AMD Quad Core, 8GB RAM, Nvidia 8800 GTS, and the game crashes randomly for me as well.  I've gotten so nervous about it now that I waste more time thinking about and saving the game with Ctrl+S that it's gotten quite annoying.  Sometimes I might get in 10 minutes of playing it, other times I might get 1 hour or more.  It is however almost predictable to tell when its going to crash since it sort of pauses the game and you can then sence that the crash is coming (I know, this is odd to explain).

The game is also very jerky, watching the vehicles in the game jerk around is pretty unpleasant.  They go smooth for a few moments then they jerk then they go smooth for a while, then jerk again. (Not to be confused with disapearing vehicles which would be normal in SC4).

I generally alt tab to the desktop and set the affinity in task manager unless Im running SC4 Startup manager which does that for me.  It's very strange since the game ran fine on my last computer which was only a dual core and was also running Vista 64 bit with the same video card and only 4GB of RAM.

My SC4 Shortcut looks like this now:
"E:\Simcity 4\Apps\SimCity 4.exe" -CustomResolution:enabled -r1920x1200 -f -intro:off -CPUP -EH:off

But the CPUP and EH:off didn't seem to help any either.

I have to now wonder if setting the resolution to 1920x1200 is causing SC4 to burp on me, maybe it's just more than the game and the computer can handle with a 9 year old title.  I don't know, but I'd sure like to get SC4 back to the stability and smooth way it use to run on my old computer.

Thanks for any assistance.

[SC4BOY 21]

Dont know if this is your problem but you can't define a resolution that doesn't already exist for your video card. look at your card driver and see what resolutions are defined for your card (ie can you select it from your "screen size" settings. Most video cards allow you to add new resolutions to the driver. If you do that then you can enter it in your startup shortcut. Also sometimes you must add the video card to your "video cards.sgr (in the install directory) in order to get things to work properly.

[City Planner 121]

Yah, my screen resolution supports the 1920x1200

I'll check the video cards.sgr file and see whats in there, I seem to remember having to add my card to the sims 2 apartment life to get it to run. But it didn't run at all where as SC4 does run but unstable, but I'll try it and see what happens.

Thanks

[cwilliams312 0]

City Planner,

I have the exact same problem. Although I'm working with a 32-bit Vista. SOMEONE HELP!

CWill

[dietercl 5]

i also have an nvidia card and had this issue. i have a geforce9600m gt. i simply turned in the nvidia contorl panel the option use my preferences. and then put the bar all the way to the left. (don't know the english translation for the word on the left it should be opposite of quality). i no longer experience random crashes. i also turned of the shadows in game. have yet to experience another crash. as to why this worked i have no idea but it worked. i found this solution on a youtube video.

[RSP16 0]

This is just my case and is quite rare, but maybe your video card is overheating. (My Radeon X1650 Pro used to do that to me a lot until I rebuilt my computer so it could run upside-down, long story.) dietercl's post might help out; but if it doesn't, try this:

CAUTION: You might get burned if you're not careful

1. Open your computer case (if you can run it with it open)

2. Play some SC4 or some other game until it crashes

3. Turn the computer off (you're pretty much forced to by the crash)

4. Feel the video card's heat sink/fan or near the chip.

If it's cool, you probably have a software issue. If it's very hot, overheating is the problem. Try moving things around to give your video card more breathing room and/or invest in some case fans. If it's an integrated graphics card, you probably should get a real graphics card.

Hope this helps.

[mrbombit 1]

Have you tried pressing ctrl alt del and bring up the task manager. Go to processes and right click on simcity 4 . Set the priority to high. And then right click again and set the affinity to one cpu. This will stop the jerkyness and crashing.

[SC4BOY 21]

hmmm... I forgot one thing: I'm not sure about the AMD quad core, but on my dual core, I HAD to apply the AMD Dual Core Optimizer (or something very close to that) from the AMD web site before it would run smoothly.