How does the GTS 250 graphics card perform in Cities XL?

[joshphillips999 0]

Like, what settings can you play at? Which quality (very low, low, medium, high) and how much AA? And for how long can you keep them there, until you have to reduce it to a lower graphical setting to make it playable? Like at what population?

Anyone with a 9800GT/9800GTX/9800GTX+/8800GT/8800GTS/8800GTS 512mb/ATI HD 4850/4830 or similar, please also comment, because I'm looking for a card similar to these and I want to know how they perform so I can know if I need to get a better one to play at good detail.

I currently have an ATI 1k series, so i have to play the game in low, but it just looks SO much better on medium/high, so i really do have to change

[mentarman 14]

I had an ATI 5700 series card but it had severe problems with the game after hitting some sort of cap on the number of buildings I could build. There are some threads around on issues with some of the ATI cards. Check the Technical forum here for CXL.

I switched to this card:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814125294

and have had no problems. I run it on high detail level.

[mr-tom 2]

Well I'm using an 8600 GTS so nothing special, and it's running full detail, all the candy, 1680x1050

[joshphillips999 0]

Originally posted by: mr-tom

Well I'm using an 8600 GTS so nothing special, and it's running full detail, all the candy, 1680x1050quote>

You can max out the game with a 8600GTS? WOW, I thought people couldn't even do that with an 8800GT?

[joshphillips999 0]

Originally posted by: mentarman

I had an ATI 5700 series card but it had severe problems with the game after hitting some sort of cap on the number of buildings I could build. There are some threads around on issues with some of the ATI cards. Check the Technical forum here for CXL.

I switched to this card:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814125294

and have had no problems. I run it on high detail level.quote>

Wow, I was about to look into buying a 5700 series card, good thing you told me this! What kind of limit was it anyway? Only for like, huge cities? Do you know what your population was like when this happened?

Just curious, because I'm unlikely to have something like 10 million citizens in the types of city that I create.

Also, is that every time for a 5700 series card? And is it all of the 5xxx series or just the 5700s? 

If you don't know don't worry

Sorry for the bombardment of questions XD

[mentarman 14]

Well it seemed to be a hard limit on the number of buildings. I reached a point where it was fine but if I placed one more building of any type it would go haywire graphically and was unplayable. I bought that as a nice card that I thought was sure to work but apparently there is some compatibility problem or something. I was at a population of about a million but like I said I think it was less about the numbers and more about he amount of zones. This happened to every city when I got to about that size.

The problem for me was just with my card and I'm not sure which of the 5700s it was, I'll try to look. Someone else said it was all the super high end ATI cards, I can't attest to that. But I took his advice and picked up Nvidia the card I linked to above and it works great for me so far, and I've got a city up to 4.5 million now.

Again, do some looking in the technical forum and you'll see some threads I participated that discuss this stuff.

I'm no technical genius, so I can't tell you everything about it or really give advice, all I can say is what did and didnt' work for me with this game. I did message MC about it and they took a savegame and were looking into it.

[joshphillips999 0]

Originally posted by: mentarman

Well it seemed to be a hard limit on the number of buildings. I reached a point where it was fine but if I placed one more building of any type it would go haywire graphically and was unplayable. I bought that as a nice card that I thought was sure to work but apparently there is some compatibility problem or something. I was at a population of about a million but like I said I think it was less about the numbers and more about he amount of zones. This happened to every city when I got to about that size.

The problem for me was just with my card and I'm not sure which of the 5700s it was, I'll try to look. Someone else said it was all the super high end ATI cards, I can't attest to that. But I took his advice and picked up Nvidia the card I linked to above and it works great for me so far, and I've got a city up to 4.5 million now.

Again, do some looking in the technical forum and you'll see some threads I participated that discuss this stuff.

I'm no technical genius, so I can't tell you everything about it or really give advice, all I can say is what did and didnt' work for me with this game. I did message MC about it and they took a savegame and were looking into it.

quote>

Thanks a ton for the advice though! I saw a guy on youtube with a 5850 who had a 1.5 million, and hardly had any high density, so he had a LOT of buildings; so I guess with 5800 cards its fine, but frankly I haven't got the cash for one of those unfortunately. But oh well, thanks to you I didn't buy a card which this game has a huge problem with.

Only problem is I cannot really support a GTX 260 or similar because of my power supply, which is only 450w, and supports the 5700 series which do not require much power. Thanks for your help on that one, I'm gonna check out the technical issues forum.

[Msprintz 25]

Originally posted by: joshphillips999

Only problem is I cannot really support a GTX 260 or similar because of my power supply, which is only 450w, and supports the 5700 series which do not require much power. Thanks for your help on that one, I'm gonna check out the technical issues forum.

quote>

Upgrading to a better PSU isn't too difficult, as long as it's off and not plugged in.  They're not prohibitively expensive either, can probably pick up a 750w PSU for approximately $100.  Not a bad deal, and most can support SLI mode for both ATi and NVidia. 

[pete1061 0]

I have a 9800GT, CXL runs pretty well at 1600x1200, max detail and 4x AA.

The only time it slows is in street view when the city is over 750k pop.

[Cob92 360]

I can play on high, but the game slows in street views after about 500,000 population. My performance did improve a lot when I upgraded to my new machine (Phenom II x4 OC'ed to 3.2GHz with 4GB RAM), but I'm still using the same 8800GT as before.

[Stef42 0]

Setting all detail on high might make the game look better, but it also slows the game down. Why, because Cities XL isn't quite efficient in it's graphic engine.

Saying that the game runs at high detail on a 8800GT or 8600GT etc. doesn't mean it has a good framerate (FPS).

That's not quite important on these kind of games, although it certainly works better with a high FPS.

Using SLI (I've tested it) doesn't work so well either on Cities XL, just because the processor is the great bottleneck (the game only uses 1 core)

I think when building cities which become so large, the core which Cities XL uses, becomes full which will cause the FPS to slow down.

The graphics card is in my opinion not the (only) thing which causes the slow movement.

A processor with a speed above 3 Ghz already let's the game run smoother, while a dual-core and quad-core have the same results.. (because of the lack of multi-core support by MC)

[joshphillips999 0]

Originally posted by: Stef42

Setting all detail on high might make the game look better, but it also slows the game down. Why, because Cities XL isn't quite efficient in it's graphic engine.

Saying that the game runs at high detail on a 8800GT or 8600GT etc. doesn't mean it has a good framerate (FPS).

That's not quite important on these kind of games, although it certainly works better with a high FPS.

Using SLI (I've tested it) doesn't work so well either on Cities XL, just because the processor is the great bottleneck (the game only uses 1 core)

I think when building cities which become so large, the core which Cities XL uses, becomes full which will cause the FPS to slow down.

The graphics card is in my opinion not the (only) thing which causes the slow movement.

A processor with a speed above 3 Ghz already let's the game run smoother, while a dual-core and quad-core have the same results.. (because of the lack of multi-core support by MC)quote>

Yeah, when I said what graphics can you run at, I meant which graphics you can run at well, and which is playable

Like, I can play at maxed out graphics but I'm lucky to get 2-3FPS

[joshphillips999 0]

Originally posted by: Cobhris96

I can play on high, but the game slows in street views after about 500,000 population. My performance did improve a lot when I upgraded to my new machine (Phenom II x4 OC'ed to 3.2GHz with 4GB RAM), but I'm still using the same 8800GT as before.quote>

Originally posted by: pete1061

I have a 9800GT, CXL runs pretty well at 1600x1200, max detail and 4x AA.

The only time it slows is in street view when the city is over 750k pop.quote>

This is exactly the type of info I was looking for, I'm likely to be (despite what I said in the title, its because of my PSU) getting a 4770, as that uses pretty much the exact same amount of power as my current card, and that's almost as fast as a GTS 250 (meaning I might be able to go a slightly further with population than you guys before I start to lag And my other specs are very similar to yours Cobhris). Also its quite a lot cheaper than the other cards I was investigating.

This is also around about the type of detail i was expecting, maybe a little more than that, so I'm happy

But there are no problems anyone has heard of with the 4700 series right? Because the 5700's are similar (40nm process etc.) and they have huge problems with buildings, as mentioned above.

Also does anyone know if the game is Video RAM hungry? Like would it be better getting a 1GB card rather than a 512?

Sorry for the load of questions, just want to be sure I'm getting a card which would not have any problems and would run the game very well 

[jazyje 1]

I run the game on high, 1920 x 1080, 8X anti-aliasing, I have i-7 Intel quad core (about 3.0 speed), ATI 1GB 4850, no problems whatsoever, the plaza mod loads a bit slow when I first open any of my cities, that's about it though. As far as video card's RAM is concerned, go with 1GB if your monitor resolution is 1920 x 1080 (typically 22' plus size-wise have that resolution), you'd be fine with 512MB if your resolution is lower...

PS>You can buy ATI 4850 512 MB for about $70 these days.... Add about $20-$30 more for the 1GB version.

[joshphillips999 0]

Originally posted by: jazyje

I run the game on high, 1920 x 1080, 8X anti-aliasing, I have i-7 Intel quad core (about 3.0 speed), ATI 1GB 4850, no problems whatsoever, the plaza mod loads a bit slow when I first open any of my cities, that's about it though. As far as video card's RAM is concerned, go with 1GB if your monitor resolution is 1920 x 1080 (typically 22' plus size-wise have that resolution), you'd be fine with 512MB if your resolution is lower...

PS>You can buy ATI 4850 512 MB for about $70 these days.... Add about $20-$30 more for the 1GB version.quote>

Sounds great! So you can max out the game without any issues whatsoever?

Yeah I wouldn't be going quite so high, my monitor is one of the lower end for its size, it's max resolution is 1680x1050, and I won't even be going that high, probably. Most likely 1440x900 (or around that). So I think 512mb should be fine for me. By the way, does your game ever start to lag when you go into street view, and if so, at what population? Just curious, as a comparison.

But I'm not sure if my PSU will take a 4850, where as its guarenteed to work on a 4770. But a 4850 is about 7.5% or so better than a 4770, but meh I guess its not too bad. Thanks for the response by the way.

[jazyje 1]

Originally posted by: joshphillips999

Originally posted by: jazyje

I run the game on high, 1920 x 1080, 8X anti-aliasing, I have i-7 Intel quad core (about 3.0 speed), ATI 1GB 4850, no problems whatsoever, the plaza mod loads a bit slow when I first open any of my cities, that's about it though. As far as video card's RAM is concerned, go with 1GB if your monitor resolution is 1920 x 1080 (typically 22' plus size-wise have that resolution), you'd be fine with 512MB if your resolution is lower...

PS>You can buy ATI 4850 512 MB for about $70 these days.... Add about $20-$30 more for the 1GB version.quote>

Sounds great! So you can max out the game without any issues whatsoever?

Yeah I wouldn't be going quite so high, my monitor is one of the lower end for its size, it's max resolution is 1680x1050, and I won't even be going that high, probably. Most likely 1440x900 (or around that). So I think 512mb should be fine for me. By the way, does your game ever start to lag when you go into street view, and if so, at what population? Just curious, as a comparison.

But I'm not sure if my PSU will take a 4850, where as its guarenteed to work on a 4770. But a 4850 is about 7.5% or so better than a 4770, but meh I guess its not too bad. Thanks for the response by the way.

quote>

I believe 4850 is much much better for gaming than 4770 --- I remember reading it somewhere a few times -- if I were you, and considering your monitor's resolution, I'd buy 4850 512MB for sure -- best bang for the buck out there for gamers -- do a google search and you'll see it yourself.... I would still go with 1GB though myself JUST IN CASE you get a larger monitor... If you want it to be future-proof, I'd go with ATI 5850 (Driect X11), but that's much more expensive...

Personally, I don't have any issues so far, but my citites were never above 1 million residetns so far, but I use almost all mods available out there, I see just a bit of a lag with very large plaza mods, but that's about it... My shadows look kind of choppy but I believe that's just the way they look -- I wish I could just turn them off...

How's your PSU? As long as it's 400W or more and ier 1 or 2 quality, you should not have any issues running any graphic cards out there.... 

[SimCity4IE 202]

 I'm building a new gaming computer in June, and I was thinking of buying either a 5970 2gb or a 5870 2gb eyefinity version with an i7 930 OC'd to 4.2GHz. Would it lag with SC4 and (my newly bought) Cities XL?

[joshphillips999 0]

Originally posted by: SimCity4IE

 I'm building a new gaming computer in June, and I was thinking of buying either a 5970 2gb or a 5870 2gb eyefinity version with an i7 930 OC'd to 4.2GHz. Would it lag with SC4 and (my newly bought) Cities XL?quote>

Those are the best cards out there; I doubt it will lag with a super city in cities XL LOL (ie one of thoes ones with all high density covering most of the map).

And if it does; our GPU's have failed us all XD

[joshphillips999 0]

Originally posted by: jazyje

Originally posted by: joshphillips999

Originally posted by: jazyje

I run the game on high, 1920 x 1080, 8X anti-aliasing, I have i-7 Intel quad core (about 3.0 speed), ATI 1GB 4850, no problems whatsoever, the plaza mod loads a bit slow when I first open any of my cities, that's about it though. As far as video card's RAM is concerned, go with 1GB if your monitor resolution is 1920 x 1080 (typically 22' plus size-wise have that resolution), you'd be fine with 512MB if your resolution is lower...

PS>You can buy ATI 4850 512 MB for about $70 these days.... Add about $20-$30 more for the 1GB version.quote>

Sounds great! So you can max out the game without any issues whatsoever?

Yeah I wouldn't be going quite so high, my monitor is one of the lower end for its size, it's max resolution is 1680x1050, and I won't even be going that high, probably. Most likely 1440x900 (or around that). So I think 512mb should be fine for me. By the way, does your game ever start to lag when you go into street view, and if so, at what population? Just curious, as a comparison.

But I'm not sure if my PSU will take a 4850, where as its guarenteed to work on a 4770. But a 4850 is about 7.5% or so better than a 4770, but meh I guess its not too bad. Thanks for the response by the way.

quote>

I believe 4850 is much much better for gaming than 4770 --- I remember reading it somewhere a few times -- if I were you, and considering your monitor's resolution, I'd buy 4850 512MB for sure -- best bang for the buck out there for gamers -- do a google search and you'll see it yourself.... I would still go with 1GB though myself JUST IN CASE you get a larger monitor... If you want it to be future-proof, I'd go with ATI 5850 (Driect X11), but that's much more expensive...

Personally, I don't have any issues so far, but my citites were never above 1 million residetns so far, but I use almost all mods available out there, I see just a bit of a lag with very large plaza mods, but that's about it... My shadows look kind of choppy but I believe that's just the way they look -- I wish I could just turn them off...

How's your PSU? As long as it's 400W or more and ier 1 or 2 quality, you should not have any issues running any graphic cards out there.... 

quote>

Well the benchmarks I've seen have shown the 4850 to be only 5-10% faster than the 4770, like here, with only a few fames between them:

http://techreport.com/articles.x/16820/5

And here you can tell that the power consumption is much lower with the 4770.

http://techreport.com/articles.x/16820/11

I'm not sure what my PSU is, I'm pretty sure its either 400/450w though, theres a slim chance it could be 350w however hopefully that's not the case.

And btw, this is the only upgrade I want to make on this pc, because late next year or possibly beginning of 2012, I want to buy a windows 7 pc with more ram, a quad core processor and a high end graphics card. I won't be upgrading the monitor on this, either.

But they say you need a 450w/500w power supply for the 4850. Whereas a 350w can often run the 4770. And Its likely I probably wouldn't be able to support, or even need, a 5850. I don't really want this to be totally future-proof, just to play most modern games at high graphics (not maxed out on everything, just pretty high ^^). And this card seems good for that. Although, I was considering a 4850.

And about the shadows; has anyone else seen this with Nvidia cards? Or is it just ATI? Or the game itself? I know what you mean sometimes, they don't look great, but I wouldn't say they look bad; do you think they look bad? Or just not as good as you'd expect? Its confusing though, in all the screenshots other people supply, the shadows look amazing; or maybe it changes a bit in the screenshots?

And I think there is a mod to turn them off.

Thanks a lot for your advice.

[Jaybyrd05 3]

The shadows sometimes go funny on mine when I move around the screen. I turned down the AA one notch and that seemed to hlp some. I am running an 896MB GTX260.... I don't know much about the ATI cards bc I have always ran NVIDIA.

[joshphillips999 0]

Originally posted by: Jaybyrd05

The shadows sometimes go funny on mine when I move around the screen. I turned down the AA one notch and that seemed to hlp some. I am running an 896MB GTX260.... I don't know much about the ATI cards bc I have always ran NVIDIA.quote>

Interesting. Is this at street level aswell?

[mr-tom 2]

Originally posted by: joshphillips999

Originally posted by: mr-tom

Well I'm using an 8600 GTS so nothing special, and it's running full detail, all the candy, 1680x1050quote>

You can max out the game with a 8600GTS? WOW, I thought people couldn't even do that with an 8800GT?

quote>

Yeah.  Although I don't like big cities, so it may be that it would slow down if I built up a big population.

I prefer wide, open spaces.

[joshphillips999 0]

Originally posted by: mr-tom

Originally posted by: joshphillips999

Originally posted by: mr-tom

Well I'm using an 8600 GTS so nothing special, and it's running full detail, all the candy, 1680x1050quote>

You can max out the game with a 8600GTS? WOW, I thought people couldn't even do that with an 8800GT?

quote>

Yeah.  Although I don't like big cities, so it may be that it would slow down if I built up a big population.

I prefer wide, open spaces.

quote>

I see. Sorry, just one more question, does it lag on street level? 

Thanks

[jeremy12 0]

i have a 4870 1GB ram XFX card running on the highest level possible using the moded video settings file on citiesxs.net i am always running over 40 fps according to xfire overlay

Edit: I would STRONGLY recommend XFX i have never had one of their cards go bad (i have gone thru 8 cards in the last 5 years all of them were replaced just to get the newest card and the old ones go into friends and family pc's not a 1 has gone bad)

[mr-tom 2]

Originally posted by: joshphillips999

Originally posted by: mr-tom

Originally posted by: joshphillips999

Originally posted by: mr-tom

Well I'm using an 8600 GTS so nothing special, and it's running full detail, all the candy, 1680x1050quote>

You can max out the game with a 8600GTS? WOW, I thought people couldn't even do that with an 8800GT?

quote>

Yeah.  Although I don't like big cities, so it may be that it would slow down if I built up a big population.

I prefer wide, open spaces.

quote>

I see. Sorry, just one more question, does it lag on street level? 

Thanks

quote>

No, not at all.  But everybody's set up differs.  I'm also running an overclocked i7 920 with 6GB RAM...

[joshphillips999 0]

Originally posted by: mr-tom

Originally posted by: joshphillips999

Originally posted by: mr-tom

Originally posted by: joshphillips999

Originally posted by: mr-tom

Well I'm using an 8600 GTS so nothing special, and it's running full detail, all the candy, 1680x1050quote>

You can max out the game with a 8600GTS? WOW, I thought people couldn't even do that with an 8800GT?

quote>

Yeah.  Although I don't like big cities, so it may be that it would slow down if I built up a big population.

I prefer wide, open spaces.

quote>

I see. Sorry, just one more question, does it lag on street level? 

Thanks

quote>

No, not at all.  But everybody's set up differs.  I'm also running an overclocked i7 920 with 6GB RAM...

quote>

Oh I see. Thanks for the response. Reason why I asked is because street-level is where it tends to lag; but yeah nice pc

[Ocram's Razr 964]

Large cities eat up 3GB RAM sometimes so I recommend that unless you have a 64 bit operating system, you should run CitiesXL by itself.

EDIT: Maybe it wasn't CitiesXL but at one point I minimized some game and it showed 3GB RAM used (about 2.75 used by the game), or maybe I had a memory leak while playing a large city I downloaded. I really don't care how much RAM any 32 bit program uses because I have enough memory to handle 2.5x the maximum any 32 bit program can access (8GB RAM).

Tens of millions, I didn't make it. It looked like a skyscraper prison. Most of the population were executives, some were skilled and elite, (and a few unskilled for the services). Not a single low or medium density area. Virtually no pollution and a lot of trade going on. This city imported almost everything and exported a lot of executives.

At least that is how I remember it. It is possible that I merely saw a long video and read that it was a memory hog (and saw a screen capture of Tasl Manager) but that city was in the top 10 recorded populations of CitiesXL cities.

[joshphillips999 0]

Originally posted by: Ilikeseattle

Large cities eat up 3GB RAM sometimes so I recommend that unless you have a 64 bit operating system, you should run CitiesXL by itself.

EDIT: Maybe it wasn't CitiesXL but at one point I minimized some game and it showed 3GB RAM used (about 2.75 used by the game), or maybe I had a memory leak while playing a large city I downloaded. I really don't care how much RAM any 32 bit program uses because I have enough memory to handle 2.5x the maximum any 32 bit program can access (8GB RAM).

Tens of millions, I didn't make it. It looked like a skyscraper prison. Most of the population were executives, some were skilled and elite, (and a few unskilled for the services). Not a single low or medium density area. Virtually no pollution and a lot of trade going on. This city imported almost everything and exported a lot of executives.

At least that is how I remember it. It is possible that I merely saw a long video and read that it was a memory hog (and saw a screen capture of Tasl Manager) but that city was in the top 10 recorded populations of CitiesXL cities.

quote>

Wow. I'd never make that much anyway, a couple million and its likely I probably would've messed it up by then.

By the way, if you did infact download that city, where did you download it? I've been looking to download someone else's city to see what its like, but I couldn't find anything.

[Nucks8 1]

Could an ATI Radeon Express 1250 support Cities XL?

[jazyje 1]

Originally posted by: Nucks8

Could an ATI Radeon Express 1250 support Cities XL?quote>

I doubt it --- it's essentially a glorified integrated mobility card, correct?