Simcity 4 taking to long to load!

[Hoodlife 9]

I have a dell inspiron 2020 that currently has 4gbs of ram and simcity 4 takes awhile to actually start up and get the the region screen My dell supports up to 8gbs of ram and I am thinking about upgrading to that , will it speed up the time simcity 4 takes to load?

[z1 566]

Not significantly.

 

Do you use the NAM?  What is the size of your Plugins folder?

[Hoodlife 9]

I use NAM and my plugins folder is about 1.5gbs of hard drive memory.

[z1 566]

The best thing for speeding up game load times is the DatPacker.  It will also greatly reduce the time it takes to return from the Zones view or the NAM Subway Building view.

 

NAM 32 also has a feature that reduces the network controller size when you deselect features; this has a noticeable effect on load times.  A pre-release version of NAM 32 is currently available; you can find out more information here.

[GeometryMath Algebra 614]

And also, if possible, could you post the full specs of your PC? Like the kind of processor, graphics card, and whatever...

[T Wrecks 10,210]

Well, actually loading times should be dependent on hard disc and RAM mostly. I see this system seems to have a standard 500 GB HD. An SSD would certainly decrease loading times, but if you don't want to change your hardware, thinking about streamlining your plugins folder (and DATpacking it, as z1 said) is your best option.

[Hoodlife 9]

Specs 

Processor: Intel pentium CPU g645t with 2.50 GHZ

system: 64 bit OS with x64 processor

4gbs of ram but only 3.9gbs usable 

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

You have a better machine than I do, but the difference between loading times for us is probably that I have got my Plugins down to being lean and mean.  I do not copy useless files into the plugins area.  The only files that should be there are: *.SC4LOT, *.SC4DESC, *.SC4MODEL, *.DAT, and *.DLL.  Dynamic Libraries are different in that they need to be at the root of the plugins folder (that is, not in a subfolder).  Everything else can be divided up as you like for easy maintenance.

 

If you decide to use DATpacker, be sure to keep a copy of the uncompressed work so you can maintain it.  Once something is in a DATpacked file, it is cast in concrete.  Certain files should not be DATpacked.  Particularly the NAM (both folders).

 

For comparison purposes I have an AMD Athlon II X2 245 Processor × 2 with Gallium 0.4 on AMD RS780 Graphics and run Ubuntu (Linux) 13.10 with wine-1.7.8.  4 GB memory of which 3.4 GB is available.  My Plugins folder occupies just under 1 GB.

 

One of the possibilities causing slowness could well be your NTFS file system.  SC4 heavily fragments the hard drives on city saves and on adds to the Plugins array.  You should run disk maintenance at least once a week: Disk Cleanup and Disk Defragmenter.

[Cyclone Boom 17,031]

Removing files like readme docs and pictures may also help somewhat. The game won't load these, but must individually skip each one. This takes up excessive time, all which adds up in a large plugins suite. Just think, for every 100 items of content, there are potentially lots of unnecessary files increasing loading times. A useful program is the BSC Cleanitol.

This has the ability to transfer these files to an alternate location, all for future reference.

 

Like T Wrecks mentioned, a solid-state drive (SSD) will ultimately provide a more noticeable increase in loading times. But, of course, the downside is the cost. Probably one day these will become the standard on new PCs, as technology continues to develop. But for now, they remain the "iPhone" of storage mediums.

 

Another thing worth considering is the plugins themselves. It's always worth checking that all your content is really needed. Taking out files that aren't used will help.

[Hoodlife 9]

I had some money and I found some memory ram compatible with my pc and ordered it from dell For 114$ Hopefully this will speed up the loading times, I was going to get the extra memory anyways because I needed to run Cod Ghosts and Battlefield properly.

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

The extra memory will help only slightly.  This is a 32 bit game and even with the 4GB patch on a 64-bit machine you are still limited to 4GB total including your O/S.

 

Unless you want to invest in an SSD, then Cleanitol is not a bad idea followed by some judicious DATpacking.  Because this is a game from a more technical era than at present, you will find you are entering the novitiate of computer geekdom.