Revolutionary Loading Screen Mod

[FrankSobotka 11]

5 hours ago, Avanya said:

 

Btw when we're talking RAM usage it doesn't matter if your city is empty or has tons of buildings in it. Everything is loaded into the RAM at the start whether or not it's used. RAM usage doesn't go up as you place buildings in your city - it stays about the same all the time maybe going up a bit when you're saving. As your city grows the load for the CPU and the graphics card is increased, but it won't matter for RAM usage.

 

 

I was wondering about this. How much does video card matter and when does the game bottleneck with the GPU. 

So it sounds only when the city is very full of props and running active that the stress is on the GPU? I ask because while I have 32gb of RAM, I don't have a high end video card so I was wondering if I should upgrade that when I have a chance.

 

[Avanya 2,605]

Honestly I find the CPU starts falling behind before the GPU - ofc depending on what you have. For the GPU what matters the most is what resolution you run the game at and density of assets. If you're hand placing a lot of props and trees in your city you'll see some drop in fps when zoomed into those areas. I'd say if you play any other games and your GPU does fine, it will do fine in Cities too.

I have a GTX 970 which does well for larger cities with lots of props. Ofc when I add all the graphical mods for fancy screenshots and blow the resolution up it drops to 1 fps, but that's to be expected.  I've been told that a GPU with only 2GB or less will struggle with 4k resolutions on map themes and buildings, but I couldn't really say when to avoid what. This isn't really an area I know that well.

[FrankSobotka 11]

@Avanya

Sadly I just had to upgrade my resolution. I've been using three 19-21 inch monitors at 1440x900 for years but my main monitor just died so I had to upgrade to a 24 inch 1900x900 (I use my other two other monitors to a) watch shows while working b) keep reference stats opened)

My current build is 

Intel i5-6600

32 GB ddr4 

Geforce 1050 TI (4GB ram)

The only other game I play in last 3 years is Football Manager and its CPU intense not GPU so I have no idea about GPU really. I do use Photoshop frequently for work but my 32GB and SSD is more than okay for anything I do for work.

Maybe someone else can help me if you don't know because I am thinking of an upgrade, should I go to 64GB of RAM or GPU uprade 

 

 

[Avanya 2,605]

You'll be fine with that graphics card. My 970 runs a resolution of 1804x1014 (yes, I have a super weird screen) without problems and your card is more powerful. I'm not sure about your processor - I think it will do fine for the most part, but it also depends on if you run TMPE with all the extra AI settings, how big your city grows and what you're okay with. The simulation slows down as your city grows and some people are fine with that while others want it to run faster. I would personally wait and see how it does as you build your city.

32GB RAM is good. It will get you a lot of assets. Until you start running low I wouldn't upgrade. And even then you'd still want to keep on top of what you use and get rid of stuff you never use (or keep collections of different assets for different cities). There's enough stuff on the workshop to fill up any amount of RAM - I know of one person with 128GB who's also just around the limit of what he can handle.  32GB will get you more or less all the European assets on the workshop plus mods and themes. So I think you're good (until you've managed to fill them ofc). I would just leave it for now, maybe keep an eye out for RAM if they go cheap/on sale at some point (you can never have too much RAM ).

[hemeac 11]

@FrankSobotka, Your specs are nearly identical to mine except that I have a Geforce 1060 3GB and I've found that I can play on 1440p with no noticeable issues until I hit about 230,000 residents in game, after which vehicles would begin to "hitch" nearby when I made any changes to road or rail network, but I believe that was a CPU bottleneck more than a RAM or GPU.  I had been collecting assets and had gotten up to over 6000+ assets before recently culling and it would load up at about 98% of RAM at the start of the game.

[eufl 133]

Thank you all again!

@Ronyx69,

I am mostly connected via mobile internet, so I have not the possibility to download as much as I would do, if there were a cable near my home. With assets in local folders I can change settings, what I wouldn´t be able to do with subscriptions. Also I like to delete props from workshop lots to have empty versions, and if I want to start the game close to vanilla cause I want to go into the workshop itself, then it is also very convenient to put all mods and assets out for a few minutes without being forced to download them again.

And to be honest: I never had any problems cause of my local folders. I had problems cause of updates, that I wasn´t able to stop, cause Steam gives you no option not to update. There is a service, whare you can restore old versions of steam games but it is very complicated and you have to stay offline for using this feature. Sadly - if you start the game online then, it will update to the last version again.

Maybe I would use mods online, if I would be able to connect via cable. But like I said, I am not.

 

[FrankSobotka 11]

On 5/14/2018 at 3:37 AM, Avanya said:

You'll be fine with that graphics card. My 970 runs a resolution of 1804x1014 (yes, I have a super weird screen) without problems and your card is more powerful. I'm not sure about your processor - I think it will do fine for the most part, but it also depends on if you run TMPE with all the extra AI settings, how big your city grows and what you're okay with. The simulation slows down as your city grows and some people are fine with that while others want it to run faster. I would personally wait and see how it does as you build your city.

32GB RAM is good. It will get you a lot of assets. Until you start running low I wouldn't upgrade. And even then you'd still want to keep on top of what you use and get rid of stuff you never use (or keep collections of different assets for different cities). There's enough stuff on the workshop to fill up any amount of RAM - I know of one person with 128GB who's also just around the limit of what he can handle.  32GB will get you more or less all the European assets on the workshop plus mods and themes. So I think you're good (until you've managed to fill them ofc). I would just leave it for now, maybe keep an eye out for RAM if they go cheap/on sale at some point (you can never have too much RAM ).

 

18 hours ago, hemeac said:

@FrankSobotka, Your specs are nearly identical to mine except that I have a Geforce 1060 3GB and I've found that I can play on 1440p with no noticeable issues until I hit about 230,000 residents in game, after which vehicles would begin to "hitch" nearby when I made any changes to road or rail network, but I believe that was a CPU bottleneck more than a RAM or GPU.  I had been collecting assets and had gotten up to over 6000+ assets before recently culling and it would load up at about 98% of RAM at the start of the game.

Thanks for all this info, that helps a lot. 

I had been paranoid about assets since I crashed my game when I first started loading it up but since I learned a lot more I'm pretty confident that crash and save ruin had to do with Mod clashes rather than too many assets. I've been strict about sticking 1000 assets at ~10GB but I know I'll need more when I really start opening up the city rather than just experimenting. And I am much more careful about the mods I am using - although I still have that silly 6.5 million invisible population listed haha