The ultimate SC4-specific PC build?

[Broonie 15]

I would say I've got a good level of understanding when it comes to PC performance. However, for the last 5 years or so, my world has been on Mac.

After playing the not so great port on Mac on Steam, I'm keen to come back to the 'proper' world of SC4 on PC, playing with the new DLLs that have emerged and re-finding all the old BATs I used to enjoy

But, I'm looking for some advice on getting SC4 to perform at its absolutely best.

I've played around with wrappers, 4K, widescreen, and found that on my old laptop, which wasn't exactly slow, I wasn't getting great performance with graphics mods. I'd love to be able to BAT again, but I don't think it's so easy to get the best BATting tools up and running on modern windows versions.

I want to reach out and ask the community, in a semi-hypothetical scenario, if money were no object, what would the ideal PC look like to get SC4 performing at scarily-fast, lightning-pace loading, and ultra high framerate even with lots of buildings, trees, automata etc, all in HD?

Processor - would a super-high clock speed be better than a lower GHz multi-thread?

Memory - is more necessarily better? Would ancient DDR2 do the job?

SSD - would this make a difference?

Graphics card - I've tried to force the game to use an Nvidia card before, with no noticeable difference – what's the approach here?

OS - does Windows 11 make for a worse overall experience? That includes running lot editor, old editing tools like Andreas' multi tool

Maybe the ideal SC4-specific PC is a top-end machine from the 2010s, running XP or 7? Or maybe a gaming behemoth from 2024 can do the business better? Maybe a top end gaming machine isn't built to copy with a 2003 game?

Any examples of PCs that absolutely eat SC4 for breakfast without breaking a sweat greatly appreciated!

[rsc204 21,808]

On 06/04/2024 at 11:23 PM, Broonie said:

I want to reach out and ask the community, in a semi-hypothetical scenario, if money were no object, what would the ideal PC look like to get SC4 performing at scarily-fast, lightning-pace loading, and ultra high framerate even with lots of buildings, trees, automata etc, all in HD?

If anyone says this is possible, respectfully they are talking out of their arse, SC4 is an archaic 32-Bit application that can not support many of the software APIs and standards needed to take full advantage of modern hardware. Long and short, everyone will eventually suffer long load times and performance issues (lag) once they start filling up their Plugins folder and the number of sims and objects in cities.

I had the same idea back in 2013 and I settled for the fastest single-core performance CPU at the time, an Intel i7 4770, the system had a very fast x87 chipset, 16GB of 1600 DDR3 RAM, an Nvidia GTX 750ti 2GB and ran on a approx 550mb/s read Intel SSD (SATA III) running Win7 64-bit. Does this represent the best possible performance, well it’s hard to say without having lots of hardware to test differences.

What I can tell you is how it compared to the old PC, a Core2Due with a 2.4Ghz dual core chip, paired with an ATI 3870 (512MB) Radeon. Whilst it was a little quicker, there was really no huge difference, certainly not one that by itself would justify the 1,000€ or so of hardware I had paid for. Another interesting factor, I decided at some point I'd quite like a 2nd machine for testing mods so I could work on my main PC concurrently. It just so happened a friend was selling a BNIB Mac Mini 2009 which was bought in the US, he only wanted 300€ for it which at the time was a very fair price. It was the base spec Mini so a 2.53Ghz Core2Duo mobile chipset with dedicated NVidia GeForce 9400m GPU, 4GB (upgraded) shared memory and running the default 5400 RPM HDD. I used BootCamp to install Windows XP to run SC4 and loading times aside (expected due to lack of SSD/SATA III), it would run the same regions/Plugins as my main PC just as well.

There are a few considerations where in some cases older hardware would be preferable for improved compatibility but others where newer hardware may improve performance, although marginally in practice.

CPU
SC4 can only use a single core of your CPU without severe stability issues, however CPUs are always getting faster so there is in theory a benefit to be had from whichever chip can do the most floating point calculations on a single core. That said, again SC4 is not optimised and will not be fully utilising everything, but if might give you a little more headroom before the City and Regional population grows such that it induces lag to the game.

SSD/nVMe Drives
Best to have one, but performance between them isn’t hugely different in my experience.

Modern changes in Windows and much faster nVMe drives may mean Win11/12 and the latest hardware can work faster. That doesn’t track for me though, since I am convinced SC4 can not fully take advantage of SATA III and I know using a super-fast RAM drive doesn’t help loading times either. Although it could be a newer edition of Windows is necessary to unlock the full read speed, at least until Win10, I could get not benefits from either a RAM drive or switching to an nVMe drive.

The 2013 system is still my current PC, although due to a motherboard failure it is now using an x97 chipset and has an 1,800mb/s read nVMe drive, 32GB system RAM and an Nvidia GTX 960 (4GB) GPU. Those upgrades have if anything worsened performance rather than improved things and I suspect both the replacement mainboard is slower (despite being a top-end ASUS instead of a top-end AS-Rock and a year newer). But worse is that the new GPU just doesn't seem to handle SC4 as well as the old, which is a bummer because I upgraded my displays from 1080p 24" to 2k 27" screens and can not go back to the old GPU because it doesn't have the right outputs. I have used this system for 2 years as a testing suite with Win10 and as a second rendering PC, but it is now running Win7 again and will until it dies or something else forces me to change.

GPU
Older tends to be better. Anything with native DirectX 9 support is going to just work. But if you go modern or want to play much above FHD, then a dxWrapper is mandatory to bridge the compatibility gap. SC4 barely taxes a GTX 750ti (never more than 17% utilisation), so again I am fairly certain that no amount of power you throw at the game is going to give you a better experience.

RAM/OS
Unlike in 2013, these days a 64-Bit OS and a system that has at least 4GB free just for SC4 is almost mandatory, certainly if you want to use RHW (NAM). If you are buying a system with less than 16GB of RAM today, well lets just say I considered that the minimum in 2013 already. That said more than this is rarely necessary unless you have very specific use cases that require it, anything more than 32GB for a normal user is frankly crazy. Frankly it was a waste of money when I upgraded from 16GB to 32GB on my system, I will never make use of it, but I wanted to future-proof it and found 2 matching sticks to do so for a very decent price.

On 06/04/2024 at 11:23 PM, Broonie said:

Processor - would a super-high clock speed be better than a lower GHz multi-thread?

Clock speed is not relative, you can't compare a 3Ghz Pentium 4 to a modern i3/i5 with a lower clock speed. Single Core Floating Point calculations are what is important, you can find benchmarks between all CPUs for this online.

On 06/04/2024 at 11:23 PM, Broonie said:

Memory - is more necessarily better? Would ancient DDR2 do the job?

The faster the better, system performance is important, not SC4 needs to do much shifting of data in/out of memory. That said, no point paying a huge premium for stupid-fast RAM as the bang for your buck is frankly not there.

On 06/04/2024 at 11:23 PM, Broonie said:

 

SSD - would this make a difference?

Mandatory, I've been using one for almost 20 years, HDDs were the #1 bottleneck in most systems, it's night and day as a difference. Now, does it follow that the faster your SSD, the faster SC4 can work, no it absolutely doesn't track with my personal experience. At some point SC4 becomes the bottleneck, there is only so fast its code can load/juggle things.

On 06/04/2024 at 11:23 PM, Broonie said:

Graphics card - I've tried to force the game to use an Nvidia card before, with no noticeable difference – what's the approach here?

Did that actually work though, a lot of Optimus users don't realise that the software isn't doing what it's being told, thinking it knows better it will run on the iGPU. This is more about compatibility though, Intel iGPUs have always been a cause of compatibility problems with SC4.

On 06/04/2024 at 11:23 PM, Broonie said:

OS - does Windows 11 make for a worse overall experience? That includes running lot editor, old editing tools like Andreas' multi tool

Win10/11 has introduced many changes within DirectX, some aimed at backwards compatibility, but recently MS decided they wouldn't support legacy DX games before DX10. AMD/NVidia aren't all that keen to provide this either, so a Wrapper becomes mandatory to use DX9 for DX7 compatibility.

So far as I know, all the modding tools you might need still work with Windows 11, because backwards compatibility is a core part of the Windows experience (well for running most Apps at least, DirectX is not one such area). You may need to do some configuration manually or other tweaking, but everything should at least work, perhaps with some minor functionality loss. Of course you can run a VM with WinXP in the event something didn't, since most SC4 tools were designed for XP.

[Broonie 15]

Fantastic, thank you for so much detail. That's a bummer that money won't solve the problem   but I suppose you can't really be disappointed when you're forcing something from almost a different century to play ball. So I think a solid processor with decent single floating point calculation performance and and choosing something with an SSD (previous win laptop was HDD and with a relatively average single core performance) are my two main watch-outs. Pointless over-egging it for a top-spec machine when a mid-tier with both of those will do the trick! And as a wrapper is absolutely mandatory for me anyway, that answers the compatibility and 4k output questions.

[QuantumChicken 82]

I have this game running on my Ryzen 9 7950x gamer as well as on my Celeron 3.06Ghz Windows 98Se machine. That is a very different separation of tech, but it runs all the same regardless. My ryzen uses 4x SAS in a raid-0 for the games and the Win98se machine uses a IDE to SATA converter with a 256GB SSD on it. I do not notice any loading differences between either one as they both have ~1.3k addons and ~4.2k custom music.

[Propfam 2,288]

But then why my machine which is an i3 10110u machine with 4 gigs of DDR4 RAM, 256 gigs of gen 3 SSD, is much slower than a laptop rocking R5 2500u, 8 gigs of RAM, and 256 gigs of sata SSD? I mean, my system is newer and while I acknowledge the Ryzen's iGPU is far more powerful, in the end it doesn't matter. Is it because I'm running Windows 11 with all of those spyware and other craps? Or is it because I'm running out of RAM and forced to swap instead?

[rsc204 21,808]

Simple, SC4 is too old to take advantage of newer faster hardware. 

[Broonie 15]

Well, I seem to have answered my own question...

Last week I picked up a new external SSD for work, and thought, "let's try and install SC4 onto this thing so I can transition seamlessly between my desktop PC (an old Acer with a GTX 745) and my Macbook running Parallels" (which I'm yet to try).

I've been running SC4 with the Voodoo wrapper, reshade etc at 2560 x 1440 for a while on the desktop, with a considerable amount of lag and stutter, and a noticeable performance drop when loading big cities or plopping lots of trees at once using the tree brush and tree controller.

I was blown away when I launched SC4 from the SSD. Everything loads crazy fast, lag and slow loading of buildings are all but gone and theres a teeny, tiny, barely noticeable framerate drop on a screen drag, which I've now learned is potentially the 'dirty rectangle' issue. Turns out, from my experience, the lack of nvme ssd was the real thing holding me back. I'm only connecting via USB 3.0, so I'd assume an onboard SSD with quicker write speeds would only make things better.

So, my crumbling old 3Ghz, 4GB nvidia piece of crap card and a 2023 turbo speed SSD were actually all that was needed to get SC4 running as fast as I've ever experienced before. And the drive cost less than £100.

I can't believe this 21 year old game is still surprising me at every turn! It's literally never been better than this!