OK, I give up: Why the hell is it still so slow?

[Wheezy 23]

About my system: Samsung NP530E5M-X02US laptop, i5-7200U CPU, Nvidia GeForce 920MX 2GB graphics card, upgraded to 16 GB ram. (Although stock hard drive.) Not a high-end system or anything, but it should be more than enough.

I have CPU's set to 1 and SC4Fix, so it doesn't crash, but game takes maybe 6 minutes to open. Plugins folder is 3.75 GB and partially datpacked, so it shouldn't be that bad considering how many players have twice that and don't report issues. I've also used that patch that allows 4GB virtual memory.

This region is entirely large tiles, and lower-population cities are fine, but the one I'm currently working on is an almost built out large city tile with 700,000 people. I know you won't be getting peak performance with a city that size, but people have been building far bigger ones for years. And the way it's acting is very strange:

Menus open quickly, and it usually runs perfectly smoothly, but then it'll randomly freeze for anywhere from 2-6 minutes; it can also take that long to rotate or perform random functions like unpausing - but only sometimes - and maybe 5-7 minutes to save. Meanwhile I'm running Chrome and Spotify just fine and using just half my RAM total. It drives me mental.

SC4 Launcher was making it even worse, so I went back to opening it through Steam. Automata-increasing mods made it absolutely unplayable.

I still haven't figured out how to change the graphics settings to run it off the graphics card because the process looks very complicated. Would that help?

Edit:  Solved.  See below.

[CorinaMarie 29,771]

39 minutes ago, Wheezy said:

I still haven't figured out how to change the graphics settings to run it off the graphics card because the process looks very complicated. Would that help?

This sounds like, perhaps, you are using Software Rendering rather than DirectX. If so, then yes, that could make a significant difference. With software rendering it means the CPU is doing double duty handling all of the game data crunching along with everything related to the graphics rendering.

[Wheezy 23]

No, I'm using hardware rendering. When I switched to software for a while, I think it was actually slightly faster.  Looking at task manager, it's taking up only 1/4 the CPU, and I'm running Chrome smoothly at the same time. However, I'm guessing it runs off Intel graphics by default

[Wheezy 23]

Update:  I crossposted this to SimCity Reddit, where iambecome_dog solved it.  I'll quote him here in case it helps anyone else.

Quote

If you have an Nvidia card it there’s an application which allows you to specify which GPU each executable uses to render. You might have to download it

 

[Wheezy 23]

Original post.

So, that solution worked really well for a while, but when I bumped it up to 4.2 GB plugins (since it was running fine on 3.75 once I fixed it) and built a large skyscraper complex with a bunch of custom towers and parks, I think it made my CPU just tap out. Now, loading times are fine and scrolling is smooth, but when I plop or demolish anything - even a 1x1 open grass lot, the game hangs for almost exactly 30 seconds. (I repeatedly counted.)

 

TBH, this might my cue to quit playing and do that webcomic I keep putting off. It literally hurts to give up a project I've spent hundreds of hours on, but it's not feasible to finish this region if every city tile's going to do this when it gets big, and since I have a laptop, just popping in an SSD in my second slot isn't an option.

[xxdita 1,097]

It may not be the size of your Plugins folder that's causing problems, but the number of files. Try using SC4 DatPacker to keep things running smoothly. 

A few tips:

Before using DatPacker, I organize my Plugins folders so that none is more than 100MB or so, as I find the game (or maybe my PC) can't handle files much larger than this. You'll need to figure out the best way to organize your files for you, as well as naming conventions. 

Once you've finished DatPacking, you can move all folders except for the new Plugins_Compressed folder out of your Plugins folder, but keep any loose files that have been installed to Plugins as these have not been packed. There should only be a handful of files there anyway, such as a few "essentials". 

I like to keep these original Plugins as backup, so that I can reorganize everything if/when I need to DatPack again later on, as my Plugins folder grows more.

[Wheezy 23]

Last time I tried Datpacking all my plugins into about 10 different files, it caused all the residential growables in one of my city tiles to disappear, but that might have been because I did it incorrectly.  I'll try again at some point soon.  Maybe it had something to do with the way my residentials folder was organized?

Either way, thanks.

[twalsh102 1,601]

All datpacking does is remove your folder hierarchy and place the contents of all the game files being packed at the same "level" in the resulting .dat file.  

So if a whole group of exemplars disappeared, that would suggest that the datpacking process did not work correctly (or you did it incorrectly).  The organization of the original folder would only affect the order in which the exemplars are "packed."  

Open up your resulting .dat file and:  1) verify it actually opens; 2) there is actual content in the .dat file; and 3) See if you can find any of the exemplars that are missing.

[xxdita 1,097]

Pay attention to the DatPacking process as well. If a file is skipped, it will usually tell you why.