What's the "cardIdentity" string for Nvidia GeForce GTX 1050

[Raymond7cn 6,776]

42 minutes ago, rsc204 said:

so again I think we need to assume the slow-running is primarily a result of driver incompatibility.

Hi Rsc204,  Thank you ever so much again for all your help.You have been help me several times in my hour of need. I couldn't appreciate you more.Your information is very useful to me.

Base on your advice, i will try some method to deal with it. And i hope it would be good result so it could help people who has the same problem with me. All right, I'll do it. -Thank you.

Kind Regards,

-Raymond

[Raymond7cn 6,776]

Everybody, I'm so excited, I don't know what I'm saying. Maybe i am incoherent now. The problem nearly solved. But to be responsible attitude to this, i need to do more test to make this perfect, so pls forgive me, i will give the result later, and it's too late in china now(am 0:00), See you soon!

[Raymond7cn 6,776]

Hello everybody，

I am sorry for the late reply, Because there are too many test works to do with this issue (and my personal work is heavy recently). But whatever the final result is success, it worked, my NVIDIA Geforce GTX 1050 take SimCity 4 over instead of Intel HD 630. And I was satisfied with the effect.

As I said before, I think my research direction at the beginning is correct, because the Nvidia Graphics can drive my other games (via the control panel settings), then the NVIDIA graphics card also tries to drive the game, but failed. I assumed the reason is because this is an old game, from the beginning of the game production did not follow the OS and hardware, drivers and other upgrades. and When i open the SimCity 4.exe with hex editor (HxD), I found that there is "DDRAW.DLL"  references. (And also with the content of the  Exception  file)  So i google the DDRAW.dll (directx 7.0) from WINE, Then copy ddraw.dll and wined3d.dll in the game's APP directory, and run the game, then the NVIDIA GPU Active Panel shows SimCity.exe. But the running effect is very slow, then I use the compatibility mode WINXP to run the game, it’s better but same as the integrated GPU, nevertheless it seems proved my deduction: SimCity 4 uses extended DirectDraw in DX7, it creates a DirectDrawEx surface , then use D3D7 to draw on it, and uses DDraw to query the video card and do some texture and GUI stuff. So the game using DirectX1~ DirectX7 will benefit from DirectX wrapper.

Then I googled again and found out a more popular virtual graphics card dgvoodoo which can map Directx7 to a higher version of Directx. Then I gave dgvoodoo a try, and it almost works, It is very exciting for me, the almost part is for some reasons, such as N GPU’s execution efficiency. Water and Sky and night scene Flickers caused by Z-Fighting, etc. To be honest,  at this time the test is the most difficult, because 1) Too many combinations (N card settings * dgvoodoo card settings * running parameter settings * Multiple versions of N card driver * Multiple versions of virtual graphics driver * Many other factors variables) 2 ) different combinations need to start the game to observe the effect,  but some effects are not quantifiable, can only rely on the human eye or zoom in with the photo then comparing.

Then I think if Combine the advantages of both (WINE wrapper and dgvoodoo wrapper) will be perfect. So I use ILSpy decompile the dll file,but it’s too hard for me. Then I use virtual system Win7 to run the game, the result also not very well, can be Nvidia GPU but the performance will drop by about 30%.

So after 57 tests in about 3 days (and I was lucky enough to solve one or two small problems) (the file for recording the test process is too big, I am in China, I will not send it up through), eventually the method came up, I have to say that this may only be successful in my own game running environment, but I think this can also provide some useful information and inspiration for everyone.

【Final Running Log File】

Spoiler

Log generated on 10/16/2019, 20:13

 

Flags

-----

hardwareDriver = true

DXT = true

fullscreen = false

MMX = true

FPU = true

backingStore = true

forcedFSAA = false

 

Strings

-------

userName = Raymond

appName = SimCity 4

version = 1.1.641.0

osVersion = Windows NT 6.2

computerName = DESKTOP-0QDQEDK

CPU = GenuineIntel

sglDriverName = DirectX

sglDriverVersion = 2.0

driverName = dgVoodoo

driverVersion = 17479.2.62.1, GUID: D7B71E3E-5105-11CF-E877-FE140EC2CD35

cardName = dgVoodoo DirectX Wrapper

cardVersion = Vendor: 0000, Device: 0000, Board: 0000, Chipset: 0000

cardIdentity = dgvoodoo, DirectX Wrapper

soundDriverName =

soundCardName = 主声音驱动程序

buildType = Release

 

Numbers

-------

cpuSpeed = 2495

memory = 4096

freeMemory = 4096

screenWidth = 1920

screenHeight = 1080

screenBPP = 32

videoMemory = 2048

textureMemory = 2048

textureStages = 8

bogoFPS = 0

bogoMPPS = 0

 

Rules

-----

applying Sound

applying high sound detail

applying City Detail and Day/Night Settings

applying low computer power>

applying high computer power

  option 9 = 3

  option 13 = 1

  option 15 = 3

applying Texture Quality and Building Variety Settings

applying low memory>

applying high memory

  option 3 = 3

  option 14 = 3

applying Variable Speed Automata

applying default

  option 10 = 1

applying Standard hardware

  option 0 = 1

  option 1 = 1

  option 2 = 1

  option 4 = 0

  option 5 = 1

  option 8 = 1

  option 7 = 1

  option 6 = 1

  option 11 = 0

  option 12 = 0

applying Standard hardware>

  option 1 = 2

applying Standard hardware>>

  option 0 = 2

applying Standard hardware>>>

  option 2 = 2

applying Standard hardware>>>>

  option 4 = 1

applying Standard hardware>>>>>

  option 11 = 1

applying Two stages

applying Lotsavidmem

applying Not Slow GeForce

applying Fast card

applying Fast card>

  option 12 = 1

applying Fast card>>

  option 1 = 3

applying Fast card>>>

  option 0 = 3

applying Fast card>>>>

  option 2 = 3

applying Fast card>>>>>

  option 4 = 1

 

Options

-------

Visual Effects       current:   3 recommended:   3

Cars/Sims            current:   3 recommended:   3

Shadows              current:   3 recommended:   3

Atmospheric effects  current:   1 recommended:   1

Water effects        current:   1 recommended:   1

Software/Hardware    current:   1 recommended:   1

Cursor               current:   1 recommended:   1

VariableSpeedAutomata current:   1 recommended:   1

Translucent UI       current:   1 recommended:   1

Graphic Detail       current:   3 recommended:   3

Building Load Speed  current:   3 recommended:   3

Texture Quality      current:   3 recommended:   3

 

Properties

-------

forcesoftwaredriver = false

renderdynamicview = true

renderstaticview = true

renderwatereffects = true

rendercloudsandfog = true

forcepointsampling = false

forcebilinear = false

forcenoalphablend = false

forcenoalphatest = false

rendershadows = true

renderdecals = true

usesecondstage = true

forcedebugtexture = false

renderparticleeffects = true

renderflorashadows = true

renderterrain = true

showupdateregions = false

usecursoreffects = true

drawlottextures = true

drawlotfoundations = true

drawlotwalls = true

forcetexturerepeat = false

usescreenshake = true

renderui = true

useupdaterectclipping = true

usevertexbuffers = true

showboundingboxes = false

useoverlayculling = true

rendersnapshot = false

noaddsigned = false

nopartialbackingstorecopies = false

usescreenflash = true

renderautomata = true

preferopaque = false

displayalertborders = true

drawlotopaquetextures = true

useviewcleanup = false

doautozoomandrotationchanges = true

 

viewoffsety = 0

viewoffsetx = 0

texturebits = 32

lodoffset = 0

shadowdebug = 0

maxparticlestarget = 10000

particlelodoffset = 0

effectprioritylevel = 5

backingstoremaxzoomall = 5

backingstoremaxzoombuildingsprops = 5

backingstoremaxzoomterrain = 5

backingstoremaxzoomflora = 5

shadowquality = 2

minvehiclezoom = 3

minpedzoom = 4

cursortype = 1

depthoffset = 2

debugtexture = 0

dirtyrectmergeframes = 2

sounddetail = 2

buildingvariety = 2

buildingloaderspeed = 1

modellodoffset = 0

stringtexturecachesize = 1024

 

particleeffectslod = 5

splattexturescale = 50

texbindmaxfree = 8

particledensity = 1

particledamping = 0

particlescale = 1

lightingupdatedelta = 0.0001

shadowmodelthreshold = 12

demolishmodelthreshold = 12

rendermodelthreshold = 6

rendermodelthresholdscroll = 40

particlesizethreshold = 300

maxvehiclepct = 1

maxpedpct = 1

opaqueuialphavalue = 0.55

【Execute Parameter】

SimCity 4.exe" -w -CustomResolution:enabled -r1920x1080x32 -intro:off -CPUCount:1

【VideoCards.sgr Setting add to】

vendor "dgvoodoo" 0x0000

   card 0x0000 "DirectX Wrapper"

end

【GraphicRules.sgr Setting add to】

partialRule "Fast card" -any

         # We run well on these cards, so up the defaults.

stringMatchcardIdentity "NVIDIA*GeForce*GTX*1050*"

stringMatchcardIdentity "NVidia*Geforce*"

stringMatchcardIdentity "NVidia*Quadro*"

stringMatchcardIdentity "ATI*9700*"

stringMatchcardIdentity "ATI*8500*"

stringMatchcardIdentity "Matrox*Parhelia*"

stringMatchcardIdentity "dgVoodoo*DirectX*Wrapper*"

              stringMatchcardIdentity "AMD*"

【dgvoodoo Seting】

【Nvidia control panel setting】

I turned off all the smoothing related options, because somehow some of the polygons are a little smoother, but my favorite giraffe hd tree is not clear, so it's might be up to yourself。

 

Finally, I want to say is that the results may not be perfect, (in order to solve the flicker, running in the window, separated by virtual graphics N CARDS may not be able to play 100%, etc.), but I think it's can be further perfect, one of them is when I use the WINE DDRAW mentioned , I didn't put the CPU = 1, added to the operation parameters, the game can be run (no longer like before testing is slow, N GPU drive, Full screen no flicker ), but can only say that the effect of running slightly better than Directx with INTEL integrated graphics driver (and multi-core CPU, very unstable,it ‘s easy to crash in game) so I think if that is by changing the DDRAW can be recognized by N card now, so if dgvoodoo with WINE DDRAW can reference each other, then maybe can have the best perfect way of running SimCity

 I must thanks for the people who helping me to deal with this problwm. I am Chinese, my English is poor, so maybe I cannot express myself exactly, but I have to say It is you people that has kept this old game alive until now. No matter you are new to this good game, or the old people who have been playing it until now, they are all got happy because of your efforts. Thank you!!!

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Below is a still growing city with 1M+ running in window, Sorry i can't video that, it's no delay,flicker,crash, and i modify JRJ streetside tree, replace the trees for the  girafe's HD trees in Street,Road,Avenue,Oneway,all parameter is setting to High,Still Running decently and perfect with my Nvidia GPU.