Video Smearing with Nvidia 275GTX and Win 7

[City Planner 121]

Problem solved for now.  Running in Software mode does not promote the smearing of the screen as seen in the attached image.

However, I don't know what that will mean for a city that is being fully built and whether software mode will make the game unexcusably laggy or not at this point.

Hi,

I've never experienced this before in Simcity 4.

See the attached screenshot.  The display is "smearing" for lack of a better term, this usually starts to happen almost immediately after starting SC4.

My video card, (Nvidia 275GTX) is NOT overheating, it's running at only 54°c which is well under it's threshold for max temperature and is around the same temps that most of my games run without this issue.

I've got the latest video drivers acording to the nvidia site ( 196.21) so I'm not sure what to do, obviously I can't play it like this.  I've never had issues before with Sc4 on win 7 so don't know what's causing this.

Should I be running SC4 in software or hardware mode?  For some reason my brain is telling me that I read someplace on the web over the past 7 years that Hardware mode is buggy as all get out and that I should be running in Software mode, it's currently set to hardware as I figured that would offer the best performance.

Thanks for any assistance you might be able to send my way.

[SC4BOY 20]

Many folk use SW rendering permanently. It is caused by not being able to get "proper' drivers for SC4. SW rendering does have some peculiarities, but it beats not being able to use the game.. If you are really interested in using HW, I'd suggest you visit the driver site for your video card and find a driver that works for SC4. There likely will be a thread on your maker's web about SC4 as it is a common problem in newer cards.