High-resolution and multiple displays

[PBGV103 729]

Hey, I tried playing SC4 on a 27" Apple Cinema Display (2560x1440) and as soon as the game started it crashed and said there was a hardware failure and it would restart using software rendering. The game played ok in software mode other than the usual issues, but does anyone know of a way to get high resolutions to work using hardware rendering? I've had the game play fine in up to 1920x1080. I read somewhere that people have been able to play it in up to 2560x1600, and according to the widescreen gaming wiki, they've been able to play simcity 4 in up to 3840x2400. Is this a limitation of my computer's hardware? If so, what gpu would you guys recommend I get? Would I need something as high-end as a radeon 6970 or gtx 580 or even radeon 6990? I saw a screen shot online once where one person used amd's eyefinity to play the game on 3 1920x1080 displays. It would be amazing if I could do something like that.

My current computer (18 month old laptop) has an nvidia 9600M GT gpu. So, 512MB memory (GDDR3 i think, probably not GDDR5) only 32 cuda cores (compared to 512 cuda cores in the gtx 580) and relatively slow clock speeds (500MHz core clock I think). So even though it's only 18 months old it's very slow compared to most desktops out there.

Any advice? Amd vs. Nvidia?

  Edited March 10, 2011 by PBGV103  

[A Nonny Moose 8,263]

it is a command line issue. Here is mine as an example.

C:\Program files\Maxis\SimCity 4\Apps\SimCity 4.exe -intro:off -CustomResolution:enabled -r1280x940 -f

I use a funny screen size because I run with wine's virtual desktop to prevent my AMD chip set from trying to use HD on my VGA monitor.

As far as I know, you can have anything as part of the -r parameter. Note command line parameters are separated by spaces.

If you are running windows, you just edit the command line in the shortcut. If the command name is in quotes, all the options go after the last quote after one space.

Please report your results.

  Edited March 11, 2011 by A Nonny Moose  

[Hamish 1,370]

Im assuming your running the mac version of the game?

If so, I may have a solution.

You can either, try holding down the option button when loading the game, there is a drop down for a custom resolution, however it might not have the one that you want.

Another way, which I have not tried myself, and therefore is only speculation, is to change some values inside a file. Go to the Simcity 4 folder inside your documents. There you should see a file that is called: "<user>-config-log.txt" (<user> is your user name, so replace it with what ever you call your self). Inside that file, look for the sub heading "Numbers", and underneath that there will be the two lines, starting with the words, "screenwidth" and "screenheight". I think, that changing those should work, however you may want to back up that file just incase it doesn't. I haven't tried this, so if this works, please post here. I would be intrigued as to how much these numbers can actually change with out destroying the game.

Also, there is a graphical issue when the screen size gets over a certain amount, but I can not recall how much that is, but I think you should be fine.

And, post in the Mac thread next time if it is a mac related issue.

However, if you are running windows on a apple cinema display, then forget what I said and follow A Nonny Moose's Fix

[PBGV103 729]

Actually I'm playing the game on Windows through bootcamp. I have the game for Mac OSX as well but since maxis never released updates for it and I can't use 3ds max or gmax on Mac I use Windows.

Here's the command line I used for 1440x900 on my laptop display, which I've never had a problem with: "C:\Program Files (x86)\Maxis\SimCity 4 Deluxe\Apps\SimCity 4.exe" -CustomResolution:enabled -r1440x900x32 -CPUCount:2 -CPUPriority:high

Here's the command line I used for 1920x1080 on my external display, which I've also never had a problem with: "C:\Program Files (x86)\Maxis\SimCity 4 Deluxe\Apps\SimCity 4.exe" -CustomResolution:enabled -r1920x1080x32 -CPUCount:2 -CPUPriority:high

Here's the command line I used for 2560x1440 on the cinema display, which wouldn't start the game with hardware rendering: "C:\Program Files (x86)\Maxis\SimCity 4 Deluxe\Apps\SimCity 4.exe" -CustomResolution:enabled -r2560x1440x32 -CPUCount:2 -CPUPriority:high

I know 1920x1080 is a fairly high resolution to begin with, but 2560x1440 actually has 77.8% more pixels than 1920x1080, and simcity is a pixel based game. Similarly a 2560x1600 display has 97.5% more pixels and a 3840x2400 display has 344.4% more pixels than 1920x1080. More viewing real estate = better. Of course if you can get multiple displays to work the numbers keep going up.

Unfortunately the Cinema display I used is in the Apple store and I can't sit in there every day and play around with it 24/7. I won't buy one unless I know I can get it to work.

Also, I've heard of people having "black bar" issues and such in the region view when playing on resolutions over 1600x1200, but at 1920x1080 I've never had that problem. I always heard that those graphical issues where due to gpu limitations.

I'm fairly certain that the issue is either bad drivers or hardware limitation. Since I'm currently working on building a computer, what graphics card would you recommend I get? I know the card needs to have at least 1GB of GDDR5 for 3ds max 2011. I'm leaning toward a newer radeon since they have eyefinity which treats multiple displays as a single larger display. That would be great if I get a second 1920x1080 monitor or 2 apple cinema displays or something, but only if I can get it to work with the game.

  Edited March 11, 2011 by PBGV103  

[A Nonny Moose 8,263]

Any modern graphics card capable of handling the desired equipment will be fine. Just remember that SC4 is a legacy game and cannot use any advanced features, not even anti-aliasing, so everything has to be off, when you run the game. Most GPUs can be set to switch options when a program loads by setting the options to 'application selected'.

The more memory you have for your GPU, the better.

About bootcamp. If you are running OS/X, why not run the executable using the wine compatibility layer instead. It is not an emulator, but an on-th-fly JIT compiler for system calls, translating them to native mode as you run. Here is the site. wine is intended for UNIX/Linux users but I have talked to OS/X users who are also able to use it. This is apparently due to the UNIX-like kernel of OS/X.

If you are building your own machine, you might consider dual loading a Linux version, say UBUNTU, which is the one I am on. If is free, and dual boots with any other O/S.

I have totally converted to UBUNTU since my old machine could not continue with Windows. I have not run a MS operating system since 2007 nor any other "proprietary" stuff either. Freeware is definitely the way to go. UBUNTU is fully supported by the distribution site and other users.

[PBGV103 729]

Bootcamp isn't like parallels where you're running windows in the mac environment. With bootcamp you choose to either boot the computer in Mac OSX or the Windows OS. The only thing Bootcamp does while Windows is running, is run drivers for stuff like the keyboard back lights, sound, and the display back light. Oherwise it's pretty much plain Windows 7 64bit. The Mas OS 10.6 kernel (Darwin) is designed from the UNIX kernel, but I'm not sure why I'd bother messing with something like that.

I played around some more with the nvidia settings just to see if I could get better performance or quality on my laptop display since I can't test it with any other display right now. I turned off all antialiasing, gamma correction, anistropic filtering, texture filtering etc. The game then performed horribly. Half the buildings turned bright red, there was a grid pattern of transparency errors drawn over the screen, and any BAT redered with 3ds max was partially transparent at night.

Then I reverted all settings back to the original settings of the game. This made scrolling very choppy and the grid-like transparency errors remained.

Then I set all settings on high. This fixed all said issues, but made the screen flash bright colors while scrolling.

I finally settled on the following settings. Scrolling horizontally is fine but vertically is a little choppy. It also takes a while for the autonoma to settle into working properly; however, it's the best configuration I could find.

[PBGV103 729]

As far as gpu's go, I would imagine multiple in crossfire or sli wouldn't help but so much. I'd assume a 32 bit game like simcity 4 can only handle up to 4GB of graphics memory, though that maybe handled differently than regular memory. So I'm thinking of trying to find the best gpu I can afford and a fast SSD. I'd love to go with a PCIe SSD but I'm not sure if my motherboard BIOS would support it. A fast cpu would be great too, but my motherboard is a dual xeon board (for rendering in 3ds max). I already have the mobo and any single xeon with fast cores, ei. 3+GHz is well over $1000. So i'm going with the E5620, which will run at 2.66GHz for the game. I'm hoping with a fast GPU and SSD the game will run more smoothly.

Back on multiply displays, has anyone here tried running the game in eyefinity on a 5000 or 6000 series amd radeon?

[gio10469 24]

I haven't tried running the game on a 5000 or 6000 series radeon but I do plan on it in the near future. Most likely I'll be buying a 6950 card with 2GB of memory for the current system I'm building so lets see how it goes.