Problems with Nvidia 930MX

[madbrxl 1]

Hello Guys, sorry for my English, I'm from Brazil.

I had a older computer but now, it's gone. I tried to play SimCity for in my Notebook.

Specs:
Notebook Asus Vivobook 15 - Asus X510UR
Core I5 8gen
SSD SATA 3
8 GB RAM
GPU NVIDIA GEFORCE 930mx 2GB
Intel UHD 630

Well, a tried the methods of the forum for "New Hardware", but i can't play the game smoothly, I had severe losses of Frame Rate.

Anyone have a solution for the problems witch Nvidia 9xx mobiles GPU. I think that the integrated graphics are good too, but i can't run the game smoothly with them too.

 

[jeffryfisher 2,176]

OS?

Graphics driver support for DirectX 9c?

4GB patch?

[rsc204 21,817]

I'd start by verifying which graphics card (GPU) SC4 is using, if it's the Intel one, likely that explains the problems.

Navigate to the Install/Apps directory of SC4, here is a file named MYCOMPUTERNAME-config-log.txt. Open this file and copy/paste the contents into your next post. This will give us a better understanding of your environment.

[madbrxl 1]

On 12/05/2020 at 11:51 PM, jeffryfisher said:

OS?

Graphics driver support for DirectX 9c?

4GB patch?

Open CL support:	1.2
OpenGL support:	4.5
DirectX support:	12.0
Vulkan support:	Yes
Shader model:	5.0

[madbrxl 1]

On 5/13/2020 at 12:42 PM, rsc204 said:

I'd start by verifying which graphics card (GPU) SC4 is using, if it's the Intel one, likely that explains the problems.

Navigate to the Install/Apps directory of SC4, here is a file named MYCOMPUTERNAME-config-log.txt. Open this file and copy/paste the contents into your next post. This will give us a better understanding of your environment.

Log generated on 5/18/2020, 13:53

Spoiler

Flags
-----
hardwareDriver = true
DXT = true
fullscreen = true
MMX = true
FPU = true
backingStore = true
forcedFSAA = false

Strings
-------
userName = bdoam
appName = SimCity 4
version = 1.1.641.0
osVersion = Windows NT 6.2
computerName = DESKTOP-JRAHM7G
CPU = GenuineIntel
sglDriverName = DirectX
sglDriverVersion = 2.0
driverName = igdumdim32.dll
driverVersion = 0.0.0.0, GUID: D7B78E66-1A57-11CF-F373-5E36A8C2CD35
cardName = Intel(R) UHD Graphics 620
cardVersion = Vendor: 8086, Device: 5917, Board: 165e1043, Chipset: 0007
cardIdentity = Intel(R) UHD Graphics 620
soundDriverName = 
soundCardName = Driver de som primário
buildType = Release

Numbers
-------
cpuSpeed = 1800
memory = 2048
freeMemory = 2048
screenWidth = 800
screenHeight = 600
screenBPP = 16
videoMemory = 128
textureMemory = 128
textureStages = 4
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 Lotsa vidmem
applying Poor color cursor
  option 7 = 0
applying Not Slow GeForce

Options
-------
Visual Effects       current:   3 recommended:   2
Cars/Sims            current:   3 recommended:   2
Shadows              current:   3 recommended:   2
Atmospheric effects  current:   1 recommended:   1
Water effects        current:   1 recommended:   1
Software/Hardware    current:   1 recommended:   1
Cursor               current:   1 recommended:   0
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 = 4
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

 

[jeffryfisher 2,176]

Wow, is that 2GB of total RAM? That would certainly slow you down!

[rsc204 21,817]

Ideally you want to force the NVidia card to be used when running SC4. In theory, there should be an option in the NVidia Control panel under 3D Settings, where you can tell your machine to which card to use for specific games. I think since you have an ASUS machine, you should be able to do this successfully. However, some users have reported restrictions in effect prevent such settings from working as they should. In the first instance, you should follow through the "Graphics" section of this guide:

Hopefully that will get SC4 using the NVidia card and these issues should go away. But if that doesn't work, report your findings here and we can see if there is something else that can be done about it. Further info on what's happening here is below.

14 hours ago, jeffryfisher said:

Wow, is that 2GB of total RAM? That would certainly slow you down!

Probably not, I don't think I've ever seen such a log showing more than 2GB detected, most likely a limitation of the code. Let's face it, in 2003 so much ram was unthinkable, I made one P4 machine where the buyer insisted on 768MB and paid £750 for the RAM alone, to get it. That would have been around the same time.

What's probably more of an issue is how SC4 is only detecting 128MB of V-RAM, sadly this is normal for such internal GPUs. Where more than one GPU is present, you cannot dedicate a certain amount of memory for use with the internal GPU. By default it is allocated 128MB, but more can be assigned when an application demands it, usually up to around 1GB. However, this is an issue for SC4, because once it's detected what it thinks is a card with only 128MB, it won't try to use more. This leads to more "swapping" of data between your HDD and RAM, which ultimately is the cause of your lag. A modern app would know this 128MB was not a hard limit, but SC4 again wasn't designed with dual GPU setups in mind and doesn't know this. Bear in mind too, a dedicated GPU has it's own, often much faster V-RAM on-board. Not only does such a setup have more capacity, i.e. needs to swap data less often, but the RAM is not shared between the game and GPU running it either, further improving efficiency.

It's kind of annoying to think, these Intel cards can work just fine with SC4, they have sufficient power to keep up with the game's limited GPU needs. What always causes problems is the drivers and legacy compatibility, something ATI and NVidia do a hell of a lot better than Intel. However, with the exception of the 3000 series Intel iGPUs which have terrible drivers, every variant of the Intel HD / UHD chips can at least work. Of course, you'll still suffer the shared-RAM issue, but that can't be avoided.