Inexplicable slowdown, especially when scrolling.

[Elegnaim 0]

System:

Windows XP SP2

3Ghz P4

3 GB DDR1 SDRAM

ATI Radeon X600 128MB.

Page file is 1536 to 3072.

Hard drive has about 50 gigs of free space. Max is around 160.

Running the game at fairly standard settings, although lowering the quality of things doesn't seem to improve the speed. Similarly, maxing out the visual settings doesn't appear to worsen anything.

Rendering mode is set to hardware

I had previously been able to run SC4 fine on this system, although at the time there was only a gig of ram installed. A few weeks ago, I reinstalled Windows, and added some additional RAM. It also works fine on my laptop, which is... a considerably worse system in every way. And only had a single gig of real memory.

- This isn't a proper install from the disc. I just copied the install directory and relevant My Documents folders over from my laptop. I don't know if that could be causing the issue. That being said, I doubt that it's a problem related to incorrect plugin installs, because... that hasn't changed at all since the last time I ran it on my laptop, and it worked fine then.

- I am NOT running any no-cd cracks.

- I am using NAM, although, as I was running it on my laptop previously, the less taxing pathfinding mods are in use.

- Dropping texture quality and city detail to the lowest DID seem to help for small cities, but not much for larger ones.

- Page file usage is hovering at around 834 megs, and SC4 is using 341 megs of real memory when running.

So, yeah. The only big change since the last time I ran the game on this system is that now there are an additional two gigs of ram, and I don't see how adding more memory would decrease performance.

Actually one possibility is that my video card drivers are configured wrong. I DID have to reinstall those, too.

  Edited December 16, 2011 by Elegnaim  

[tungston 19]

Have you tried running with the game software option for the graphics?

[Elegnaim 0]

Have you tried running with the game software option for the graphics?

That worked (which surprises me since changing from Hardware to Software rendering in most games usually tends to... make them slower?)

However, I cranked the shadow, draw speed, and visual effect settings, set the game on max speed, and started scrolling madly and it promptly crashed. Still, you seem to have got me on the correct line of addressing this issue.

  Edited December 16, 2011 by Elegnaim  

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

How big is this city? You may have hit the knee of the exponential curve where things get slow because of the number of objects in the game. The pathfinder especially gets slower and slower as the number of places to visit goes up. The problem with your hardware rendering being slower might have to do with your driver's ability to switch frame buffers (back buffers) fast enough, but this doesn't seem to be the case if software rendering is faster. An update to SP3 and perhaps a newer driver may help this.

Running flat out in Cheetah mode is only useful, IMHO, in the case where you want quick development of some specific thing. You surely don't get much enjoyment out of the game when you miss all the very nice animation that the developers have built in. Try running in a lower gear. It also gives you more think time. I run in Rhino most of the time and sometimes even in Turtle. This is a game to enjoy, not rush through since it has no end point and you can never win because there is no winning scheme. One of the best things about this program is you can only lose.

Scrolling and zooming are expensive because they cause general redraws for every frame. Try to slow down your pace and enjoy this leisure time activity. Become a frequent user of the in-game save (CTRL+s) and save yourself frequent redos.

When you moved your game from the other machine, did you also import the proper registry entries. Look for EA Games entries in the registry on your laptop, export them to a file or files, copy the files to your desktop and import them into the registry. All this is in the first menu of the registry editor (regedit). I am not sure this is really needed, but if you want some additional programs to install, you will need them.

[Jazzmaster 716]

I don't really think it's the hardware. My last computer was not much different in specs from the one you just described; in fact it was slower. It ran the game fine on maximum settings.

Is there any particular reason you couldn't have done a proper CD install? You can install the game on as many computers as you like; the program doesn't tie itself to the motherboard or anything like that as some limited-use programs do. If you lost the product key, there is a tutorial on the Omnibus on how to locate the product key in your registry. It doesn't take much effort either. If you lack a CD drive, you may consider investing in an external slim optical drive. I couldn't tell you what the best one would be, or if they are very reliable to begin with though I'm afraid.

[Elegnaim 0]

The problem with your hardware rendering being slower might have to do with your driver's ability to switch frame buffers (back buffers) fast enough

This is definitely an issue with the 945GMA integrated adapter that my laptop has, although, as I said, that didn't have scroll speed issues. I mean, yes, it was slowish, but not slow to the point of the game grinding to a near halt when I scrolled /any/ amount.

It could very well be a driver *configuration* issue, though. I do recall the Catalyst drivers having some weird default options set after a fresh install. I'll look into that and see what I turn up.

How big is this city?

Tiny. Population was right around 1000.

This is a game to enjoy, not rush through since it has no end point and you can never win because there is no winning scheme.

I'm familiar with how to play SC4. I cranked the speed because, as far as I know, cheetah mode is somewhat more taxing on the system, as is scrolling the view quickly and frequently, and I was interested in doing a bit of a stress test.

When you moved your game from the other machine, did you also import the proper registry entries.

No, but I don't think that would matter. The one problem I COULD see arising from this would involve mods not loading properly, but that usually causes other problems.

Is there any particular reason you couldn't have done a proper CD install?

No, I just didn't feel like going through the effort of reinstalling SC4, Rush Hour, and the necessary patches. Copying it to the HDD then back over was actually faster.

As I said, I have the discs, and my DVD drive works fine.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Well, I agree with Yoshi. My last machine was smaller than yours and the game ran fine. In fact I was running XP SP2. SP3 came out after i switched to Linux. Neither Vista nor W7 would fit on my old box, I had no money for an upgrade at the time, and so I went to something less full of bloatware, namely Linux. I've been on Linux for five years now, and I really have never looked back. I saved two hundred bucks on this machine by getting it without the software bundle (w7 + a pack of useless apps.) If you want to have a look at what's in this box, the description is here on my private site.

When was the last time you did disk maintenance on your machine? Sometimes the file system is rather messed up with multi-extent files and you should run the disk defragmenter at least weekly. Cities fragment pretty quickly. While this shouldn't affect your game in execution, it could if the swap file is badly fragmented. Defragmenting the swap file is a job for an O/S geek. The ordinary defragmenter won't touch that file. If you need to do this, I could try and give you a guide to it, but I haven't run windows for a long time. Fortunately it was XP.

It is also a good idea before you run the defragmenter to run a disk cleanup. Both of these utilities are available by opening My Computer and right clicking on the disk drive. In either case, watching one of these run is like watching paint dry. Get one started then go do something else, like sleep overnight. They cannot run concurrently and no other applications should be run with them.

The only other thing I can think of that would slow down your machine is the file indexer. If it is on, turn it off. Generally it is not needed and runs automatically unless disabled.

Other than that, there is a possibility that your disk is getting tired. To find out, run CHKDSK off-line. You set it up, then boot.

[Elegnaim 0]

I reinstalled the video drivers and everything's working fine (there are still random crashes, though. I think some of those are related to some of the custom sounds from the building mods I've installed. I need to clean out my mod folder when I get ambitious).

So this seemed... pretty idiosyncratic, and I'm not really sure what caused my drivers to break, but... that seems to have been the problem. That being said, I will run disk defrag and scan disk and disable unnecessary services just as a matter of general computer maintenance.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

I reinstalled the video drivers and everything's working fine (there are still random crashes, though. I think some of those are related to some of the custom sounds from the building mods I've installed. I need to clean out my mod folder when I get ambitious).

So this seemed... pretty idiosyncratic, and I'm not really sure what caused my drivers to break, but... that seems to have been the problem. That being said, I will run disk defrag and scan disk and disable unnecessary services just as a matter of general computer maintenance.

Random crashes seem to be an undisclosed feature of the game when run on a modern fast system. As near as we can tell there is a bug of some kind in the .exe (which we are not allowed to fix), that causes a zero pointer fault probably due to a queuing error that wouldn't necessarily show up in an old machine. The best work around for this is frequent use of the in-game save (CTRL+s).

[Elegnaim 0]

modern fast system

This system is neither modern nor fast.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

modern fast system

This system is neither modern nor fast.

Agreed, but your P4 is ideal for SimCity 4. The only system adjustment you might want to make is to fix the size of your swap file (virtual memory) at 4095MB (maximum), and run some disk cleanup programs. Disk Cleanup should run before the defragmenter, and you should run each one once a week at least. If you have never run either, it will take a couple of overnight runs, as these have to stand alone, and initial runs take ages. Watching them run is as useful as watching paint dry, so they are best scheduled while you sleep.

My only other suggestion is to update to SP3.

[Elegnaim 0]

I think I'm going to experiment with using the Set Affinity option on SC4 and forcing it to only use one "processor" (CPU isn't a dualcore but apparently it is hyperthread). Apparently that increases stability a lot on Vista, and I can think of a number of other games that have major issues with hyperthreaded or multi-core systems.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

I think I'm going to experiment with using the Set Affinity option on SC4 and forcing it to only use one "processor" (CPU isn't a dualcore but apparently it is hyperthread). Apparently that increases stability a lot on Vista, and I can think of a number of other games that have major issues with hyperthreaded or multi-core systems.

Whoa, Nelly! You changed the game here if you have upgraded to Vista. I think your box is too small (CPU wise) for that general hog of an operating system.