PiperRTW

I already tried OpenGL, it didn't help, it only froze up the game and made strange black boxes appear. If you look at the ratings on Steam, Sim City 4 has very bad reviews, usually based on the fact most people can't get the game to work. It either doesn't load up or the graphical errors appear. Many people are having this problem. You are correct, perhaps OpenGL might work better for some, but, not everyone is able or willing to spend the time on determining the absolute best method to use. Hardware rendering might make the game look slightly sharper (debatable) and provide the option for HD skins in plugins (no HD texture in vanilla game), but apart from that is there really that much of a benefit. For most cards the game is unstable, but that is to be expected considering the age of the game. I bought the game for 2 bucks off steam knowing full well it might not even load. For most, single core setting and software rendering will atleast get the game playable which for many people is really what they want....at least to start with. Perhaps, for those players who are enthusiastic enough about the game can investigate their own graphics cards to determine the best way by using various guides on this website. I posted my computer specs in the video, people can make of it what they want. regards

Not entirely true tbh. Without explicitly setting this game to run on single core, I couldn't load it from steam. Perhaps it might be patched, but all I got was a black screen without this customisation. When I did manage to load it, I started to build a city and there were graphical glitches everywhere, fuzzy lines and weird shapes. I had these graphical problems until I set it to render software. Setting clouds to low will also be very beneficial for most players regardless of graphic card. Each player has a different set up, this worked for me pretty good. I am running windows 8.1, icore 5, 4G Ram, HD4000 graphics card.

For anyone having trouble getting sim city 4 to work on modern machines, watch this video