How can I make SC4 faster?

[Beekeeper 0]

Hey,

I'm new to this board, and i'm playing SC4 on a pretty average laptop... I don't appear to be getting the crashing problem anymore since getting rid of a few plugins, but it is going incredibly slow. It seems to slow down when the population reaches about 30 000.

I have only a few plugins now and I defrag my machine every week...

System specs:
XP (Service Pack 2)
Dell INSPIRON I1200
Intel Celeron M
Processor: 1.30GHz
1.30 GHz, 248 MB or RAM

And about 5 GB free space...

What updates can I buy for my laptop that will make it run faster? I've exhausted all attempts with what i've got...

Thanks,
Anth

[frogger 0]

Laptops are usually difficult to upgrade, if you want a major change. Adding memory, etc. Probably won't help much, if at all, but your memory could be bumped up. I don't know about replacing processors in laptops but I think it's usually rather difficult. If you at least could upgrade to possibly a Centrino then it might help. The speed of the processor doesn't matter as much as the speed of the FSB, which is what I always look at when buying a new comp. You might also want to check the type of gfx card you have, as SC4 might have not configured its settings properly. Other things you can do is turn off extra extraneous services running on XP, turn off firewalls, the default Xp theme which will switch it to the classic theme.

Have you tried limiting the graphics in-game? Lowering the resolution, turning off unnecessesary ui transparency, cursor coloring?

Hope this helps!

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

Originally posted by: Beekeeper

I have only a few plugins now and I defrag my machine every week...

System specs:

XP (Service Pack 2)

Dell INSPIRON I1200

Intel Celeron M

Processor: 1.30GHz

1.30 GHz, 248 MB or RAM

And about 5 GB free space... quote>

If you really have only 248MB you have a real problem. For practical operation of SC4 on XP SP2 you need 512MB. The lowball CPU won't help either. The game is a CPU and memory hog and doesn't run well on low-end laptops. If you have a desktop machine, the best way to speed up the game is to move it there.

Upgrades:

1. Because of the odd memory number (not 256MB) I assume your integrated graphics are taking a hunk of your memory. If you can change your 256MB stick for a 512MB or a 1024MB stick you will see a marked improvement.
2. A new graphics processor that does not steal your RAM would be nice
3. If possible, if you have 1024MB of RAM after the upgrade, see if you can allocate more memory, say 128MB, to your graphics processor
4. Whatever your memory is, your swap file (virtual memory) should be three times that with at least one quantum memory size more as a maximum
5. As you create new regions you can easily use up your remaining disk space. Mine is currently half a gigabyte for 18 regions, not all filled up.