Game runs poorly with NAM

[ZeFranz 0]

[ZeFranz 0]

Hey there, I'm a new SimCity 4 player and I installed NAM (Alongside the 3D camera and some Custom Content mods), and before I installed the mods the game ran perfectly with no stutter or anything. But after I installed NAM with the 4GB_Patch, it stutters and runs at almost 10fps. 

I don't have a dedicated graphics card, it's integrated graphics on a Ryzen 7 CPU. I already have the launch parameters set to -CPUCount1.

Any help? Thanks!

[Ulisse Wolf 4,459]

First you need to follow this guide to increase the performance and stability of the game. Before installing these mods you need to remove any launch paramenters that conflict with the Mod DLLs. 

 

Since you are using an AMD integrated GPU additional steps need to be taken since there are reports lately that there is a compatibility problem between SC4 and AMD GPUs

Here is the link with possible resolution to the problem and in case an alternative wrapper to dgvoodoo to use in case dgvoodoo fails

Regarding content management.

First remove all unnecessary files such as .jpg, .txt, .css, .html and .pdf files.

Then the .jar files need to be run as it allows you to install mods and the game does not read .jar files

[ZeFranz 0]

So I installed all I could with the SC4 fixes mods, followed the installation guide and all, but I still have weird "stuttering" (I think that's a better term than frame rate loss). In fact I feel like it's running *worse* than it did before I even installed the new mods on. I did end up having that text bug that happened with the guy in the reddit post this time, which was new compared to before, but nothing necessarily solved.

Also, found this out looking at specs on my system, I have a Ryzen 5 CPU, not a 7. That's on me.

[rsc204 21,866]

3 hours ago, ZeFranz said:

In fact I feel like it's running *worse* than it did before I even installed the new mods on.

Which totally makes sense, because you are asking so much more of the game now.

Depending on your hardware, that may be limited to slower startup times and a little loss of snappiness. How much RAM does your system have and what type of Hard Drive? Such a drastic loss of performance when using mods is usually a system resources/limits related problem.

Note too the 3D Camera mod is not intended for normal game play. If you are activating that expect very poor performance.

[ZeFranz 0]

4 minutes ago, rsc204 said:

Which totally makes sense, because you are asking so much more of the game now.

Depending on your hardware, that may be limited to slower startup times and a little loss of snappiness. How much RAM does your system have and what type of Hard Drive? Such a drastic loss of performance when using mods is usually a system resources/limits related problem.

Note too the 3D Camera mod is not intended for normal game play. If you are activating that expect very poor performance.

I have 8GB of dedicated RAM with 20GB VRAM on a SSD.

And, as far as I know, I haven't started the 3D camera or configured it in anyway, and it's still a 2D camera in game

 

[rsc204 21,866]

If the game itself and the Plugins are stored on SSD that’s going to give you the best possible performance. If you are using a spinning disk for storing mods, adding mods will increase the number of HDD seek operations and those have a noticeable delay. In this scenario DATPacking should help.

8GB RAM is not much for a modern OS like Win10/11. The most SC4 can use is 4GB in any case, but if less than that is free in your system, it may cause problems. Check Task Manager before starting SC4, how much of that 8GB is free? Simply running a web browser with many open tabs in the background is potentially enough to cause problems.

[ZeFranz 0]

48 minutes ago, rsc204 said:

If the game itself and the Plugins are stored on SSD that’s going to give you the best possible performance. If you are using a spinning disk for storing mods, adding mods will increase the number of HDD seek operations and those have a noticeable delay. In this scenario DATPacking should help.

8GB RAM is not much for a modern OS like Win10/11. The most SC4 can use is 4GB in any case, but if less than that is free in your system, it may cause problems. Check Task Manager before starting SC4, how much of that 8GB is free? Simply running a web browser with many open tabs in the background is potentially enough to cause problems.

Like I said before, SC4 ran perfectly fine before adding mods, so much better. But what I don't get is how adding (from what I know of) less than 2GB* of mods causes the game to drop almost 10 fps and stutter like crazy. 

[ZeFranz 0]

To better clarify the issue I'm having:

Whenever I zoom in, SC4 takes a solid second to "render" up the models from what appears to be a low quality pixelated model to a more up scaled version.

Whenever scrolling (at any zoom level), I have "stutters" where everything freezes and then returns to normal after a second, then to repeat the next second. There's not really a noticeable difference between zoom levels.

Base game without mods runs perfect.
Base game with NAM (With all suggested mod patches and 4GB_Patch installed) alone ran poor.
Custom Content, both installed and uninstalled, showed no difference.

I don't fully understand how, while being an old game, would be so resource heavy to the point that an additional 2-ish GB to the 1GB folder would cause such a drop in performance? 

[rsc204 21,866]

Maybe something to do with loading and caching 5 million extra lines of RUL2 code. That’s why it loads much slower from the region view into a city. The full NAM takes it toll.

Ultimately your system either has enough RAM to accommodate SC4 or it doesn’t. Since the app now needs way more RAM than it previously did, I’m suggesting that your system can’t cover the additional load and it’s significant with a Full NAM controller.

Again, check how much RAM is free in Task Manager. Otherwise close RAM hogging Apps before running SC4 to free more up.

If there were a more general problem, your game wouldn’t work well without NAM either. So I doubt it worth looking at config settings and the like. 

[Kel9509 1,480]

5 hours ago, ZeFranz said:

Whenever I zoom in, SC4 takes a solid second to "render" up the models from what appears to be a low quality pixelated model to a more up scaled version.

Whenever scrolling (at any zoom level), I have "stutters" where everything freezes and then returns to normal after a second, then to repeat the next second. There's not really a noticeable difference between zoom levels.

The effect of re-rendering zoomed in models to more scaled up detailed (possibly HD) versions taking 1 second is normal, at least in my case.  It shouldn't be a big deal.

Scrolling doesn't "stutter" the game for me, and I'm not entirely sure what you mean by that.  But as I scroll, there are new buildings that come into view that need to be rendered by the game and that can take a second or so.  I'm not sure what you mean by it repeats the next second.  Sometimes it needs to keep rendering if you keep scrolling.  

All in all, 1 second delays when changing the views are normal for me.  Maybe you're expecting too much out of an older game that is limited in how much CPU can be utilized?  And I think rsc204 is right that your minimal memory might be the biggest cause here.  For what it's worth, I have about 7 gigs of plugins including the full NAM and I'm running on an older system from 14 years ago with a nVidia GTX 660, although I do have 32GB of memory.