Telordya

Yes, when I am in software mode, I assure that all my settings are set to High and Enabled. After that, in gameplay, if I compare Hardware and Software mode, I don't see any differences graphically, except for shadows. In Software mode, there are projected shadows of buildings, trees and other stuffs but they are really blurry.

If there is somebody who knows a lot about ATI cards, take a look at the utility ATI Tray Tools : http://www.guru3d.com/article/ati-tray-tools-/ Maybe we could disable some features introduced in new drivers that break SimCity 4 compatibility. However, there are too many of them and I don't know what they all do. They have names like "VolTxEnable" or "Enable Raster Guardband". We'll need a real specialist to understand all this.

I found a nice utility named ATI Tray Tools : http://www.guru3d.com/article/ati-tray-tools-/ There is really more tweaks that can be done for 3D with this tool. Maybe we could disable some features introduced in new drivers that break SimCity 4 compatibility. However, there are too many of them and I don't know what they all do. They have names like "VolTxEnable" or "Enable Raster Guardband". We'll need a real specialist to understand all this.

Yes, there is the Catalyst Control Center where we can adjust some 3D settings. It's pretty limited though, compared to the nVidia Control Panel. I'll try to tweak some settings and I let you know if there is something positive.

Thanks for the prompt reply north country dude. The solution in the thread you gave me really helped. This current thread and the other one you gave me should be always first in the forum. I am sure that there is a lot of other people with this problem and that they would like to play SC4 smoothly.

Nice find guys! Here's my machine spec: ATI Radeon 9800 Pro Pentium 4 3.2 GHz HT ASUS P8P800 SE 2 GB RAM Windows XP Pro SP3 I just added this line to the "Fast card" section in the "Graphics Rules.sgr" to get it work: stringMatch cardIdentity "ATI*9800*" It runs really smoothier than Software mode but I am missing the shadows, they were nice. Like weatherdrew, I had to set shadows to Low to get it playable. If someone finds another "fix" to get shadows at High, let us know.

vershner, your solution doesn't work for me. I set everything to Low and it is still really slow when I scroll in a large city. Software mode is really smooth but also misses a lot of details. Here's my PC spec: ATI Radeon 9800 Pro Pentium 4 3.2 GHz HT ASUS P8P800 SE 2 GB RAM Windows XP Pro SP3 That's really dull because I remember I played this game really smooth in Hardware mode few years ago, and nothing changed on the system, except softwares. I think there's something new in ATI drivers that is making this mess. Nobody has a great solution?