simcity sure takes a long time to load

[citysnib 0]

Does this happen to anyone else or is it my PC, it takes almost 45 minutes for Simcity to load, I have a feeling that the reason why it's so slow is because I have 6GB of plugins...

[DavidB_ 83]

Must be the plugins, my folder is only around 1GB but can take me up to 5 minutes to login to my dedicated SimCity account, get through the title (it can't be turned off on the Mac version) and load a city of around 50,000 population. I play on a Power Mac G5 Dual 2GHZ; 1.5GB RAM, 250GB HD, ATI Raedon 9600 Pro. However, I will probably build a PC in order to partially replace this and play SimCity 2013.

Do you know the specs of your computer? Do you run any other programs while you load or play? Please elaborate.

[jacksunny 741]

A few things you could try:

-ensure your game is full updated

-add the parameter "-intro: off" to your Simcity shortcut target.

-DATpacking, although I personally do not prefer this method.

-ensure all images, read-mes, etc. have been put in a separate folder, outside of your plugins folder.

[Titanicbuff 1,262]

I run at 1.6ghz and 1 gb ram- my plug ins is 2.5gb- and it takes 5 minutes to load sim city and another 5 for the city itself- Deffenetly your plug ins

[Adjiebrotot 94]

i use Dell Vostro 1014 Core 2 Duo 2.0 GHz with 2.0 GB RAM.

i think use Game Booster will make the game faster, try it

ALMOST NO LAG! except for graphical bugs like sucks screen flashing.

try to Low your Shadow. High Shadow just for taking screenshots!

[Mithrik 562]

Plugins, as more pugins you have, the longer it takes for your computer to read all the files of custom content you have.

You should clean your Plugins folder of what you don't use and if you wish use it in the future, then store it somewhere else. Also, you should move or delete all the images and read-me file you have there, as it all slows down the loading.

I have just over 1GB of plugins, and my laptop loads everything in about 2 minutes, because it has 3GB of RAM, high amount of it in your computer speeds up the process, not so much the processing power, and having multi-core doesn't do anything at all, as the game cannot exploit it.

But if you don't wish to buy a new PC then you just need to clean up your Plugins, believe me, it will help a lot. Look for files you never use, dependencies you are not using, etc.

At one time I had 3GB of plugins in my game, but now I try to never have more than 1.5 in use to increase performance.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

You need to prune those plugins. The only files that need to be in there are:

.dll

.dat

.sc4lot

.sc4desc

.sc4model

The rest is noise that has to be read and ignored by the loader. You should have a separate downloads folder that contains the original .zips, the expansions, leaving any noise files there.

I don't recommend datpacker because it creates a maintenance problem. I do recommend Files2DAT by ilive to reduce the space on disk taken by uncompressed BATs. Turns them into a .dat. If the loader process only has to look at one file it is quicker.

The size of your plugins makes me suspect you have had a case of "gee, I like that" and you have pulled in a lot of stuff you don't really need. The STEX isn't going away any time soon. If you have plugins you don't intend to use in your current cities, you should remove them. I have nearly 1700 files in my plugins and they take just under 1/2 GB. Some maintenance is clearly indicated in your case.

[cashmoney 5]

I have a 2010 dell inspirion with 4 gb ram and at least 6 gb of plugins. Simcity takes about a minute to load. I even have all the noise in my plugins, and i don't have the datpacker. got to be either your plugins or ram.

  Edited June 7, 2012 by cashmoney  

[Nielsen 10]

Mine loads quite fast, from Windows desktop to gameplay within a minute. Anyway, I have no mods installed.

[DavidB_ 83]

Ditto here on the PC version, but I keep SimCity 4 Deluxe pure and simple on an old machine for creating and testing mods.

  Edited June 7, 2012 by DAB_City  

[iowndiscti 141]

i've got 4 gigs of plugins.

and it takes me 10 minutes to run the game, and 4 minutes to load the first city. after that every other city i load takes about 45 seconds until i restart my computer.

-_-.

whats your ram?

[Haljackey 17,302]

The more RAM the better. Also, running SC4 on a SSD (solid state drive) helps considerably.

With about 3GB of plugins installed, SC4 took about 15 mins to load on my old computer that had 3GB of RAM and ran on a standard hard drive.

My new computer has 12 GB of RAM and runs SC4 on a SSD. Load time now is about 1 min.

Goes to show you, the better comp you have, the faster SC4 will load.

[facebooktwittergoogle 3]

Does this happen to anyone else or is it my PC, it takes almost 45 minutes for Simcity to load, I have a feeling that the reason why it's so slow is because I have 6GB of plugins...

damn i have 6gb of mods too but it only takes about 2 or 3 minutes to load

[westy177 203]

1gb mods 1.8ghz 2gb ram tho i should be gettin 1.8 gb ram extra from ready boost but anyway first load when pc turned on 1min with intro

[Wiimeiser 444]

I have 1.4GB and it takes barely a minute to load. I haven't datpacked anything either

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Long load times indicates poor disk maintenance or very slow disk hardware. My system loads SC4 very quickly considering that I pull in an operating system layer in order to run any windows program.

By poor disk maintenance I mean that users do not understand NTFS very well. NTFS creates multiple extent files frequently, and with SimCity's city tiles very often. When a file doesn't fit in its previous space, NTFS will create one or more extents linked to the original to accommodate the larger file. This can often mean much more disk activity just to get one file than one simple seek/read.

The cure for this is in two parts:

1. Run disk clean-up. This finds and releases junk and temporary files, including cleaning out the trash bin.
   
2. Run disk defragmenter. This consolidates multi-extent files into one piece, eliminating the multiple seek/reads to get a single file.
   

Neither one of these programs is blindingly fast. In fact, if you've never done it on your machine, it might be well to do each one overnight the first time, disk clean-up first. Then once a week at least. They are much faster on a well-maintained system. Watching grass grow is more interesting that watching either of these programs run.

To access these tools, right click on the image of the disk drive in My Computer and select the appropriate button. Stand well back. You cannot run anything else on your machine while these run. Best time to run is just as you go to bed.

  Edited June 8, 2012 by A Nonny Moose