Notes about Minimum System Requirements (SC4)

Contributor/author(s): Mayor CT Flourish, Rand Huck

From Mayor CT Flourish:

The official minimum system requirement for the video card is 16 MB, but it's possible to run SimCity 4 with an 8 MB video card. On a year 2000 model computer, an 8 MB video card can run SimCity 4 at the lower resolutions with very little lag, while new computers with 8 MB video cards can run SimCity 4 with almost no lag on the lower resolutions. So to all those people who think they can't play SimCity 4 because their computer isn't good enough, give it a try. It may work.

...based on...

(tests on PIII 600 MHz, 384 MB RAM, 8 MB ATI Rage Mobility)

(tests on Athlon XP 1600+, 256 MB RAM, 8 MB ATI Rage Mobility [newer card version] )

...so to summarize what I've just said, it's possible to run SimCity 4 with reasonable performance on 8 MB video cards, if your other hardware specs meet the minimum.

From Rand Huck:

On a different tangent, how does SimCity 4 do when your video card and RAM exceed the minimum requirements, but your CPU doesn't?

On my 450 Mhz machine (official system requirements: 500 Mhz), I am still able to run SimCity 4 with acceptable performance, even at medium graphics settings, with populations of up to 100,000. After 100,000, I may have to decrease a couple settings (mostly in the "number of cars and sims"). The only real resource cruncher is the shadow settings, which I always have set to low.

See also
System requirements, platforms, and languages