Game suddenly running slowly

[elavery 1,013]

My simcity game has suddenly started running slowly, but only after I have pushed the Windows key and escaped to desktop and then returned to the game. I often escape to desktop to use google earth and google maps as they help me recreate cities. I have been doing this for a long time and it has never caused any game performance issues, but it has suddenly caused the game to start running slowly upon return from desktop. Any ideas or help would be appreciated.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

My simcity game has suddenly started running slowly, but only after I have pushed the Windows key and escaped to desktop and then returned to the game. I often escape to desktop to use google earth and google maps as they help me recreate cities. I have been doing this for a long time and it has never caused any game performance issues, but it has suddenly caused the game to start running slowly upon return from desktop. Any ideas or help would be appreciated.

On first blush, I would say save and restart the game.

Now you might well have hit the knee of the performance curve in this game. There comes a time when there are so many objects in the simulation that the game cannot run in a decent graphic performance frame rate because there is just too much to do. With a uniprocessing system such as this program, this comes much sooner than later.

Unless you have an exceptionally fast set of CPUs of which only one is used by the game, you will probably start to experience slowdown when your population gets to be around one to two hundred thousand Sims. By this time you will have several hundred thousand objects in the game, each of which has to be visited by the simulator each pass. The traffic simulator/pathfinder alone takes up a huge chunk of the processing time, and that is why I, among others, never run in Cheetah mode except for short bursts when there is some urgency.

I generally run in Rhino as this gives the simulator a chance to catch up. Eventually I drop down to Turtle mode. I am retired, so why should I care if it runs slowly. I like the animation.

I also run under Linux, which gives me the luxury of switching to another desktop to run other things. This leaves the game running, unaffected. Choice of operating system in this circumstance is critical. Another thing about Linux is that most of the distributions are free and are supported by the free software community. I am running Linux Mint.

  Edited November 10, 2011 by A Nonny Moose  

[elavery 1,013]

I don't even have a population yet. I am just plopping stuff at the moment. I do have alot of things in the city that i have created in lot editor, does that make a difference?

  Edited November 10, 2011 by eugenelavery  

[Jazzmaster 716]

I don't even have a population yet. I am just plopping stuff at the moment. I do have alot of things in the city that i have created in lot editor, does that make a difference?

What are your system specs? Specifically, operating system, memory (RAM), CPU (single core? multi core?), and GPU (dedicated or integrated?).

Are you running in hardware or software rendering mode? What are your other video settings? (waves, detail setting, et cetera).

[mrbisonm 1,620]

First try to restart your computer and see what happens after you saved the city of course. Then tell us the size of your pluginsfolder and if possible show us a picture of your whole city your playing in.

There's a time that every computer reaches it's playable limit with SC4. Example: Mine takes about 40 minutes of play with a 17 Gb's Pluginsfolder in a city that has about 100 K population, with all details on. Then I have to save and restart the computer to be able to continue. It gets very slow. That's just the way it goes.

Having a lot of stuff that you created with the LE usually does not interfere very much with the speed of playing the city, but all depends how much, that is why I asked for the size of your Plugins. What actually does slow gameplay are the mods, custom BATs and dependencies, again, all depending on the size of your computer and what you have running at the same time when playing.

Try also stopping some of the programs that you do not need when playing, giving the computer a chance to make use of more RAM for the game.

Good luck

mrb

[Indiana Joe 1,750]

I have noticed that turning the Shadows option down increases my game's speed by an exponential amount. Also, close out of Google Earth and your web browser before you return to the game. Running other programs in the background with a game like SC4 will definitely slow things down.

[elavery 1,013]

My plugins folder is only 819 MB. I always keep my plugins folder small and move things in and out of folder depending on what type of city I am building. What is the difference between hardware and software rendering mode? Is there a preference?

The odd thing about this is that I have had much larger cities before with this computer and never had any problems. I haven't tried the game today as I have been at work but I will see if this problem persists.

[Jazzmaster 716]

My plugins folder is only 819 MB. I always keep my plugins folder small and move things in and out of folder depending on what type of city I am building. What is the difference between hardware and software rendering mode? Is there a preference?

The odd thing about this is that I have had much larger cities before with this computer and never had any problems. I haven't tried the game today as I have been at work but I will see if this problem persists.

Hardware rendering can show more eye-candy than software rendering. There is an 'HD export' method developed a while back, that creates models in the BAT that appear anti-aliased in the game at the nearest zoom level, while they normally appear pixelated. These HD models will only work in hardware rendering mode, however.

Also, if you are using an integrated GPU that is sodored to the motherboard, your memory is not very large, or your CPU not very fast, these could all cause the slow downs. Additionally, running Google Earth and a web browser in the background could slow it down; the former is a larger culprit.

Finally, exactly what plugins did you download?

  Edited November 11, 2011 by Yoshiisland  

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Actually, if you have a multiprocessor, background tasks should not preempt your game's time slices, but they do take a large amount of memory. If real memory is not available for your game, you should be seeing a lot of disk activity (swapping/paging) as the game calls for pages that are out of memory due to the browsers hogging your core. How much real memory (RAM) do you have, and is any of it shared with your GPU? How much virtual space (swap file) do you have. Your game could be thrashing in the virtual space.

[Jazzmaster 716]

Actually, if you have a multiprocessor, background tasks should not preempt your game's time slices, but they do take a large amount of memory. If real memory is not available for your game, you should be seeing a lot of disk activity (swapping/paging) as the game calls for pages that are out of memory due to the browsers hogging your core. How much real memory (RAM) do you have, and is any of it shared with your GPU? How much virtual space (swap file) do you have. Your game could be thrashing in the virtual space.

True. I edited my post to say 'could slow it down' instead of 'will slow it down'.

[elavery 1,013]

I am not very knowledgable when it comes to computer terminology but the specs for my computer are as follows:

HP Pavilion dv6-2155dx Entertainment Notebook

Operating system: Windows 7

Microprocessor: 2.13GHz Intel Core i3-330M Processor

Microprocessor Cache: 3MB L3 Cache

Memory: 4GB DDR3 System Memory (2 DIMM)

Memory Max: 8192MB

Video Graphics: Intel HD Graphics

Video Memory: Up to 1696MB

Hard Drive: 500GB (7200RPM)

Multimedia Drive: LightScribe SuperMulti 8X DVD±R/RW with Double Layer Support

Display: 15.6" Diagonal High-Definition LED HP BrightView Display (1366x768)

Network Card: Integrated 10/100 Ethernet LAN

[Jazzmaster 716]

I am not very knowledgable when it comes to computer terminology but the specs for my computer are as follows:

HP Pavilion dv6-2155dx Entertainment Notebook

Operating system: Windows 7

Microprocessor: 2.13GHz Intel Core i3-330M Processor

Microprocessor Cache: 3MB L3 Cache

Memory: 4GB DDR3 System Memory (2 DIMM)

Memory Max: 8192MB

Video Graphics: Intel HD Graphics

Video Memory: Up to 1696MB

Hard Drive: 500GB (7200RPM)

Multimedia Drive: LightScribe SuperMulti 8X DVD±R/RW with Double Layer Support

Display: 15.6" Diagonal High-Definition LED HP BrightView Display (1366x768)

Network Card: Integrated 10/100 Ethernet LAN

I have a 1 GB ATI 6870 dedicated video card, but I also have the option of switching to that Intel HD integrated GPU you're using. I remember the game running quite a bit slower with that GPU, if all the settings were on high and hardware rendering was on. So, I feel like that could be the main offender here. Also, since your GPU borrows memory from your RAM, if you have applications like Google Earth and a Web Browser running behind it, your entire system could slow down. Since Windows 7 will use ~1GB RAM on its own, you're already down to 3 GB of RAM here, and its caught in a tug of war between SimCity 4 and Google Earth most likely.

I remember my older computer with only 2.5 GB of RAM and an integrated nVidia GPU. The game would actually run on high settings, but if I tried to do other things it could slow down quite a bit.

I'm not nearly as knowledgeable as some here about computers, but I feel that the cheapest thing you could do is invest in some new RAM; 6GB may be enough. <--Just realized this would be hard to do, with 2 DIMMS. You could get 2x4GB for an 8 GB setup, but it'd run you about $70+.

For completely free, you may try toning down the settings like details and automata appearance, and switch to software rendering mode.

  Edited November 11, 2011 by Yoshiisland  

[elavery 1,013]

Actually the game seems to be running faster again today. Still I am sure as the city grows slow performance will no doubt become an issue.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Actually the game seems to be running faster again today. Still I am sure as the city grows slow performance will no doubt become an issue.

Possibly the overheat protection on your CPUs is dropping the instruction execution rate when the notebook gets too hot. This is standard for most Intel processors, as cooking a processor can be very expensive.

This program takes processors to 100% and tends to keep them there.

  Edited November 11, 2011 by A Nonny Moose