How long does your game usually load?

[GeometryMath Algebra 614]

For me it takes about 3-5 minutes to load the game, and 1-3 minutes to load the first city, and about 15-20 seconds to load any other city thereafter.

 

Specs

Intel Core  i3-3220 @ 3.3GHz

4GB RAM

nVIDIA GeForce GT 610

500GB HDD

Windows 7

 

Plugins folder size:

5GB

 

How about yours? 

 

EDIT: Extra information added

[dirtguru 24]

About the same for me. Have 2.7 to 3.5 GB plugins depending on tile. Game runs on separate HDD set to run on single core.

Occasionally, game seems to start up much faster. Have no idea why??

[Monster's Cat 120]

When I start the game, it takes about 5-10 minutes to load the first city. Then it takes about 30 seconds to load any city after that.

[Haljackey 17,241]

I use a SSD (solid-state hard drive), no datpacker or anything. ~4GB of plugins

 

SC4 loads in under 1 min. Large, highly developed city tiles load in 2-3 mins.

 

If you're serious about SC4, get a SSD!

[infamousjbe 592]

My load times:

 

Launcher - Region = 3:07 min

Region - Lrg City (90k pop) = 4:16 min

Reload Same City = 2:26

 

On a rather slow subpar 32bit laptop with 2.20Ghz 3Gb (+4gb vitual memory thumb drive) RAM.

 

Hey, it was a free laptop. Not gonna look a gift horse in the mouth now.....

 

EDIT: Forgot to mention 1.97Gb of plugins.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

There was another thread on this, but here goes:  From call the script to a big open city with immediate quit with no save:

 

john@john-12-10:~$ sc4
Sat Sep 28 13:25:54 EDT 2013
Sat Sep 28 13:27:17 EDT 2013

 

Looks like 1 minute 13 seconds.

 

Using  Ubuntu 13.04 (GNU/Linux 3.8.0-25-generic x86_64) with wine-1.7.2.  This is an Athlon X2 dual core with 4GB.  My script is:

 

#!/bin/bash
date
env WINEPREFIX="/home/john/.wine" \
wine "C:/Program Files (x86)/Maxis/SimCity 4 Deluxe/Apps/SimCity 4.exe" \
 -intro:off -CustomResolution:enabled -r1920x1080x32 -d:software \
 -f -CPUcount:1 &>~/sc4.log
date


 

[jeffryfisher 2,176]

I don't think I have a particularly fast computer, but with 1.48 GB of plugins (not yet packed), the game:

 

launches in 33 sec

loads first sector in 52 sec

loads another sector in 7 sec

 

I am running Win-XP pro on a dual-core 2.9MHz CPU with 4GB DDR-2 RAM. My shortcut params are "-intro:off -CPUCount:2 -music:off". My plugins and regions are on my system drive, but my pagefile is on its own physical drive.

 

When loaded, with firefox still running (so I can write to you guys), the machine is still using less than half of its RAM.

 

Maybe it's quick because I haven't built big populations and CBD's yet.

 

[MandelSoft 2,769]

Running on Windows 8, Intel i5, HDD, 6GB RAM with the 4GB patch installed and about 3GB of plugins, intro off and in windowed mode and with quite some highly developed cities, these are my loading times:

Launch: 2-3 minutes

Loading first city: 3-5 minutes

Loading second city: 30 seconds - 3 minutes

[michaeldcannaday 42]

Windows XP Dell Vostro 1500 - 2.99 GB of RAM with almost 7GB of plugins ( I love uploading stuff for my game)

Unfortunely it takes me roughly about 7 minutes to upload my game and an additional 5 minutes on average to open a city... one day I'll get more RAM for my PC so I can speed it up. 

[z1 566]

With 4.5 GB of plugins, including the NAM:  Launch the game (from cold start):  1 minute exactly.  Load large tile of 2 million Sims:  45 seconds.

 

Two secrets to success:  DatPacker and SSD.  Mostly DatPacker, though.

[AcronShinra 60]

Launch + loading city -> w/o Datpacking t > 3 min

                                      -> with Datpacking t < 3 min

 

Estimated uncompressed plugin folder size ~ 2GB

[timmie 988]

On my laptop, Intel i7, 8GB RAM (with the 3GB patch), windowed mode, 3GB of plugins.

The first time I open the game it takes 3 minutes and 30 seconds to load. My largest city loads in 2 minutes and 40 seconds.

If I close the game, I can restart it in approximately 30 seconds.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

^ yes, the page file hangs around.

[SilverCyric 130]

Oye!! My initial load to the first region view takes a good 3-5 minutes, and my first city tile takes about 2-3 minutes, after that if it crashes, I can reboot in about 45 seconds, but the first city tile takes the original 2-3 minutes but afterwards I can switch between lightly developed times in a matter of 20-30 seconds, and nearly filled 500,000+ population tiles take about 1 minute to load. But this is due to the huge number of MMP trees I will use by that much development, plus I rock a plugins folder that is now up to, let's see here... at 5.94 GB with just over 13,000 files in it...  I use Maxis blockers and have hundreds of custom buildings, might even be close to over a thousand... Plus full airports, functional seaports, and everything the NAM has, plus their kitchen sink!

My comp...

Alienware i7 dual core with 8 gb RAM and 2 gb VRAM

[fefenc 77]

I have 1.3GB of plugins installed (including NAM). rçrçrççr

 

My computer is an "Intel Pentium 4 CPU 3.20GHz; 2,0gb RAM; NVIDIA GEFORCE 9500 GT".

 

My PC took ~1:25mins to load the game and ~ 2:30mins to load my largest city with 1.3kk inhabitants, the game was running at normal priority and with CPU 0 and 1 marked. After entering the city, I took a CTD when I zoomed out, but loading other cities takes just 35 ~ 50 seconds.

 

Now with hight priority and single CPU marked, it took 0:45sec to load the game with intro and 1:25mins to load the same large city, 35 seconds to save and go to region and 55 sec to load the same city for the second time. After that I loaded a medium city tile with 54k inhabitants and it took 25 seconds to load and 0:24 sec to save and go to region.

 

(Note: I've done this test with this page opened)

[The Pennsylvania Turnpike 252]

On my Pavilion g6 ...

 

Load from Desktop- about 2 to 3 mins

Load from region to first city 2 to 3 mins

Load from region to any city afterwards about 30 secs

 

I have 4 GB RAM and a plugins folder of about 2 GB big.

My hard drive has 500 GB

I am Running on Windows 7 Home Premium 64 bit

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Comment:  It seems that the big bugaboo in loading this game is Windows.  Running Linux I don't experience these long delays as can be seen from my post above.

 

One of the nice things about Ubuntu is that if you make a live CD for loading it, you can try it out without affecting your system at all.  Then you have several choices, and people often lay it down beside Windows.  The GRand Unified Boot loader (GRUB) comes on at boot time and gives you the choice of which system to load.

 

Running SC4 under Linux means you must also download the latest version of wine.  Release 1.6; Current Beta 1.7.2.  To run the NAM installer under wine you need to also load up the controls for flexgrids and rich edit controls as well as the vcrun6 library.  Easy to do with the winetricks package.

 

For users with little or no computer experience this is maybe not such a good idea.

[fefenc 77]

Comment:  It seems that the big bugaboo in loading this game is Windows.  Running Linux I don't experience these long delays as can be seen from my post above.

 

One of the nice things about Ubuntu is that if you make a live CD for loading it, you can try it out without affecting your system at all.  Then you have several choices, and people often lay it down beside Windows.  The GRand Unified Boot loader (GRUB) comes on at boot time and gives you the choice of which system to load.

 

Running SC4 under Linux means you must also download the latest version of wine.  Release 1.6; Current Beta 1.7.2.  To run the NAM installer under wine you need to also load up the controls for flexgrids and rich edit controls as well as the vcrun6 library.  Easy to do with the winetricks package.

 

For users with little or no computer experience this is maybe not such a good idea.

 

SteamOS dude '-'

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

 

<snip>

SteamOS dude '-'

 

What operating system is SteamOS?  And I don't like to be called a dude.  A dude is someone who goes to a dude ranch.

[fefenc 77]

 

 

<snip>

SteamOS dude '-'

 

What operating system is SteamOS?  And I don't like to be called a dude.  A dude is someone who goes to a dude ranch.

 

SteamOS is a recently anounced OS for ($0) that's being developed by Valve based on linux. It'll be basically an OS for gamers

 

You can check more news about it

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Interesting.  Do you have a link?

[fefenc 77]

http://store.steampowered.com/livingroom/SteamOS/

 

http://www.pcworld.com/article/2049400/why-steamos-will-challenge-windows-for-pc-gaming-supremacy.html

[mrbisonm 1,620]

Today region loaded took 7:47 min and a medium sized city with 6,704 residents took 8:02 min. My Plugins were at 7.3 Gb's.

[ROFLyoshi 1,760]

Usually above 5 minutes for a developed tile, depends on how many MMPs I have in the city.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

http://store.steampowered.com/livingroom/SteamOS/

 

http://www.pcworld.com/article/2049400/why-steamos-will-challenge-windows-for-pc-gaming-supremacy.html

Interesting, but why bother.  If you want Linux, there are already plenty of other distributions.

[simcity1999 34]

My SC4 with more than 1GB mods loads in about 30-45 seconds on my i5 machine. To load a city, first time took 1 minutes approx, and only a few seconds after.

[NielsC007 499]

Plugin folder is about 2,9GB at the moment.

Running Intel Core I7 and 4GB of RAM.

 

Simcity loads in about 2-3 Minutes

Biggest city loads in about 4 Minutes (710K population).

A 50K city loads in about 1 minute 30 seconds.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

One of the best things you can do is clear the garbage out of your plugins folder so that it contains only .sc4lot, .sc4desc, .sc4model, .dat files.  Compress the first three using either files2DAT or the DATpack program.  .dat and dll files are all you should eventually have in your plugins.  All the rest are documentation or error files (.sav files are junk).  All the miscellaneous junk should be kept in a separate structure away from the game layout.