Arrow182

I'm starting to post computer articles from my experiences on my Facebook Notes since there's no built-in blogging feature except for linking to external blogs. My first article is on how I fixed the SimCity 4 Deluxe slowness problem on my setup. I'll paste the main points here and hopefully I'm not the only one that got positive results from this. First thing first, I have to put a disclaimer. Altering hardware from default specifications are always done at your own risk. I am not liable for any damages resulting in this. Also results will vary because every component, even with the same model number and specifications, are different. That means two of the same GeForce 8800GTS from the same manufacturer with the exact same specifications will result in different maximum overclocking potential. Use at your own risk. -------------------------------------------------------- (Computer setup is at the end of this article) (This article assumes you have the latest patches installed for SimCity 4 Deluxe) Without knowing if GPU (graphics card processor) speed or the amount of graphics memory is the cause beforehand, going out and dumping at least $160 - $250+ for a new gaming video card without knowing the cause is just not economical for many people. This is my case as well. But if you have the cash to burn and want to do that, it's your money. For many of us, including me, our Radeon and GeForce cards we paid $300 for just 2 years ago can still show some muscle. And being almost 7 years old, SimCity 4 should not be an exception. So onto my quest for the solution! Be it bad programming, amount of plugins you have, etc..., whatever the case is I wanted to see if higher GPU speeds would improve performance. If it did, then that means the amount of video memory is not the number one cause, but rather raw graphics processing power. And being a 7-year old game, with most video cards maxing out at 256MB of graphics memory back then, I doubt my EVGA 8800GTS's 320MB of memory was the main bottleneck. I am using Microsoft Windows 7 32-bit RC Build 7100 (Pre-Release) and nVidia driver version 185.85 from EVGA's website. I also used EVGA's Precision Tuner (ATI Tools & RivaTuner crashes in Windows 7 for me). Note my video card is made by EVGA so I am using their tuning utility, though there are other ways of doing it. This should also work with WindowsXP and Vista, but I have only tried it on Windows 7 32-bit RC Build 7100. Using the Fatal1ty 8800GTS specifications as a maximum overclock potential for my 8800GTS, the numbers are: **ALWAYS MAKE SURE YOU HAVE A POWER SUPPLY WITH ENOUGH WATTAGE AND AMPS ON THE INDIVIDUAL RAILS BEFORE OVERCLOCKING ANY PIECE OF HARDWARE. You can find help in many overclocking forums on the web** Core Clock: 649 MHz (default 513 MHz) Shader Clock (linked to Core Clock): 1502 MHz (default 1188 MHz) Memory Clock: 1005 MHz (default 792 MHz) Fan Speed: 100% (default 60%) Video Card Cooling: Default slot cooler (no modifications) Additional cooling: Antec Super Cyclone Blower fan speed (2 slots left/below the 8800GTS): High Additional Notes: Intel Core2Duo E8400 overclocked to 3.6 GHz with stock voltages Stability Testing: 3DMark Vantage / 1680x1050 resolution / Settings: High Pretty impressive overclock actually. At these speeds, the card ran stable through the entire 3DMark Vantage battery of benchmarking tests. It may be I got a really good card. Also note that I have an Antec Super Cyclone dual slot exhaust fan 2 slots left of (or below depending on the case type you have) of my 8800GTS and kept the card at 47C at idle and 57C at full load. Without the Antec fan the temperatures would be at 58-60C idle and 83C and would crash during 3DMark Vantage testing. Without frames-per-second readings, I can still tell you that relying on gameplay alone, large cities are far more responsive. Limiting the game to only 1 core of the CPU certainly prevented crashes, but it also seemed to slow the game down when you set it to go through days fast (even at 3.6GHz). Letting SC4 run with both cores seem to speed it up noticeably within large cities as well. Especially when lot of buildings are growing at once. So it seems SimCity 4 does take advantage of dual core processors as well, but you'll just have to live with saving often in-game and also those crashes after about 2 hours of play. CONCLUSION: From this experience, raw graphics processing power is what is needed to solve a good part of the slowness in SC4. And it seems to take advantage of dual cores. More video memory may help at rendering of the loaded city, but I don't have a card with 1GB of video memory so I can't say. Hard drive read speeds do not seem to matter until you zoom close to street level. That's when I here my old IDE hard drive trying to hold up and see SC4 lag considerably. About limiting the amount of plugins you have, it did not seem to matter in this case. I have 1.60GB worth of plugins including the latest NAM and 17 bridge plugins for it, and the overlock still made large cities of about 1.7 million sims run noticeably faster than before. COMPUTER SETUP: Case: Silverstone Escala LC-10 HTPC Case Power Supply: ULTRA X-Connect 500Watt Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-965P-DS3 Rev 2.0 (BIOS F13) CPU: Intel Core2Duo E8400 @ 3.6 GHz (default 3.0 GHz), stock voltages CPU Cooling: Zalman CNPS-7000C-AlCu RAM: A-DATA 4GB PC2 6400 CAS 5 Dual Channel Kit (ADQVE1B16K) VGA: EVGA e-GeForce 8800 GTS 320MB (320-P2-N811-AR) HDD: Hitachi DeskStar 7K80 80GB / 7200 RPM / IDE (using Vantec IDE to SATA adapter) CD/DVD: LG GGC-H20L Blu Ray/HD-DVD SATA Drive Additional Cooling: Antec Super Cyclone Blower dual slot exhaust fan O/S: Microsoft Windows 7 RC (Build 7100) 32-bit