Gilley7997

Just as an Update: I did make the changes to the Video Cards.sgr and Graphics Rules.sgr files as mentioned above. It didn't have any affect on game play. I still had to run at my above listed settings. Which is fine. The game is running smooth. I can turn the Shadows up and take pictures if I want to, but having them up during game play in the U-Drive-It mode just makes it choppy. Thanks for the help and suggestions!

Originally posted by: Frosteeze I too am using GeForce 8800 GTS. Unfortunately I dont have nvidia control panel thing. Can you tell me more about that?quote> Well I believe it should be default installed as part of the driver installs when downloaded from the Nvidia Website. It can be accessed in two ways on most machines: First: 1)Right click on your desktop 2)Choose Nvidia Control Panel Second: 1)Right Click on Desktop 2)Choose Properties 3)Go to the Settings Tab 4)Click the Advanced Button 5)There should be a Tab in this Window that is named your specific Video Card. Go to This Tab 6) Click "Start the Nvidia Control Panel" These are the steps as I am looking at them on a Windows XP machine. I didn't put the exact Vista steps as I don't have that OS in front of me right now, but they are nearly the same. Hope that helps, if you don't have these options, I would suggest going to Nvidia's Website and downloading the latest driver.

I did some playing with this tonight.....And I have the system running fairly smooth on Hardware with Low shadow settings. These are the command line options that I am using: "C:\Program Files\Maxis\SimCity 4 Deluxe\Apps\SimCity 4.exe" -f -Introff -CustomResolution:enabled -r1680x1050x32 -CPUCount:4 In the Nvidia control panel I created a Program Setting profile for Sim City 4 with these options: Anisotopic Filtering: Off All Antialiasing Options: Off Maximum pre-rendered frames: 0 (Leaving this at the suggested 3 caused me issues) Multi-dispay/Mixed GPU acceleration: Single Display Performance mode (I have dual monitors so forcing this to singe helped) Texture Filtering - Anisotropic: Off Texture Filtering - Negative LOD Bias: Clamp (This setting was also causing issues) Texture Filtering - Quality: High Quality Texture Filtering - Trilinear Optimization: On Threaded Optimization: On Triple Buffering: Off (This was an absolute requirement to have off) Veritcal Sync: Force Off (This was also an absolute requirement to have turned off) If anyone has any other suggestions or observations as to why these settings cause issues, or gives this a try as a solution let me know, Hope it helps someone else.

First of thanks to all the contributors to this site, it has been very helpful. I received the Sim City Box for christmas as I hadn't played Sim City since 3000 and just wanted to have a little fun. I installed SimCity 4 Deluxe on this machine and put the latest patch from Maxis in the game: Intel Quad Core Q6700 (2.66 Ghz) 4GB 800 Mhz Ram Windows Vista 32 bit. (SP2) BFG Nvidia 8800 GTS OC 512MB Graphics card. Trend Micro Internet Security also runs on this machine. I have already reformatted and reinstalled the latest drivers for all hardware on the machine. (The machine was in need of it anyway, and I like to clean things out every now and then.) No Additional Game Mods have been installed. I start the Program from my Desktop Shortcut with the following switches, which I give credit to simtropolis for assisting with: -f -intoff -CustomResolution:enabled -r 1680x1050x32 DXDiag Reports no issues. Of course it also reports that DirectX11 is installed. Here is the issue. I have all the Gaphics Options turned to High (Except Shadowing as I was experiencing the crash to desktop issue, which after setting this to low hasn't occured.) When Rendering is set to hardware, I have issues with Automata. Vehicles and Sims will partially be there and then not and then come back. (This is not the normal Automata fade. As when these partially disappear you can still hit an invisible car in U-Drive-It mode.) Also when looking at a Windmill Power Station, the rotating blades of the windmill will cut out the image behind it, and it will never return. I also noticed when watching the Performance Tab of Task Manager, that even on a brand new city, with population under 5000, one of the 4 CPU's will basically be 100% pegged while the simulation is running. When I set the rendering to software mode, I have almost flawless gameplay currently. (I worry about larger cities though, as I have only played in small maps learning how to fit highways and ramps and roads, and neuances of the new version of Sim City before I try something large.) The other thing I noticed is that the game doesn't appear to peg a single processort when I'm using software rendering. Under the Hardware Rendering, even turning the graphics options down or changing the resolution to a standard square (i.e. 1024x768x2) had no effect on the Graphical Glitches. Thanks for any input on this one. If I need to give you any more information just ask away, I'm willing to try anything on this one.