sct_0

I think I could, but I didn't try it because I came across a thread where someone did that (because their NVidia card also didn't wanna work with SC4, I think), and it kinda broke the game because it now couldn't access either card and ran on some other internal thing that is really not equipped to run graphical stuff. Someone else also said that this technique should be avoided because it can break other programs that don't use the NVidia card. Of course all of this is temporary, but since it didn't work in their case, and likely won't in mine either (from what I've gathered from this thread so far) I didn't feel like dealing with it anyway. I might do that still if the driver thing doesn't yield any results. Anyway, thanks for all the quick replies! I'm heading to sleep for now, it's almost 4am in my woods. *yawn*

@jeffryfisher @twalsh102 That could be a good direction to go to! Through the number of suggestions and the time that has passed, that quirk didn't stick in my memory, thanks for reminding me! Since I don't have any visual glitches when using the Intel card, I'd guess it is likely that it does have support for that version, but I think I'll check first if the NVidia card really doesn Wouldn't wanna spend time testing drivers if that's not the issue. Is that for sure? I'd guess there must be some documentation for that kind of stuff buried somewhere on the interwebs. In my experience, if there's no official sources, you can bet that there's unofficial ones. Either way, I'll look/try around and post a resource if I find anything conclusive. By the way, if this is the culprit, it could explain why there's so many older threads with people saying that a lot of suggestions I already tried worked for them: They most likely had drivers with legacy support. (I can already see myself patching together a simple Windows PC with a good graphics card solely for the purpose of playing SC4. xD )

It does keep the changed settings for both. I mean otherwise I couldn't say that changing the settings didn't work, because in that case, they were never actually changed from my computer's perspective (which obviously is what matters here). But, I never said the setting was being ignored, and SC4 also isn't the only application that requires the override to work. I'm not sure where you got that from. SC4 is the only program (I know of) for which the NVidia forcing doesn't work, all other programs I've tried so far let me force the NVidia card. It works even if the global setting is forcing the Intel card, or if the global setting is "auto" and the software isn't usually coded to use the NVidia card automatically. Programs I did this with are Divinity Original Sin, Sims 3 and Firefox, just to name a few. That seems to be the case here, so my question still persists: Why is this setting only being ignored (aka the NVidia software causing problems) in regards to SC4, and no other program?

So, I finally got around to trying what @rsc204 suggested, by editing the registry like it was instructed in the post they linked. Unfortunately, that did not work either, in the log it's still referring to the Intel card. But it did raise a question for me: If the problem is, as rsc204 said, related to power settings or permissions, because otherwise the PC cannot resist a force via the control panel, then why is this "rogue setting" only a problem for SC4 and none of my other games/programs?

Thanks for the input, @rsc204 that is really helpful. Fair point, what mostly bothers me is just that these posts rarely reflect the complexity these issues can reach. They are like "Here's the setting, just do this and that's it", without any further points about these other software issues that can occur. On the contrary, a lot of Linux distros' wiki pages have little paragraphs inbetween and whole troubleshooting sections dedicated to things that can typically/possibly go wrong and how to go about them. Something I really miss relating to this topic. I'm already sure it's not the overheating issue, because other pieces of software (games mostly) run just fine on the GPU even if the laptop gets hot. (Which it usually does, although it gets hotter when using the Intel card, than it does on the NVidia one. Which is good as far as I am concerned.) Regarding the power issue, I have my laptop set on full performance when it's connected to a socket, and I never play games that need the GPU on battery because...well the battery would be empty fairly quickly. I would generally be surprised if it was a general/system wide issue that inhibits SC4 to use the GPU, because other software does that just fine. I'm guessing it's something more specific. Well, so far it's always worked out fine for me when it was the solution to a problem, and the part of the thread you linked does suggest it as a solution. I'll see if I can find those settings otherwise first though.

Thanks for the info. I've come to notice that a lot of posts about GPU laptop issues actually do talk about BIOS options, with the result usually being that the OP doesn't have such a setting. I wonder why so many people say there is one as if it's the norm, even though usually there isn't. Oh well. If you mean the one in the Windows settings, I did come across that setting yesterday, but as I guessed, it didn't change anything. Yeah, as I said in my first post: I pretty much did all the "standard stuff". Went through that entire Tutorial and it didn't work. Which isn't the fault of the tutorial, obviously. Short rant: I'm honestly starting to get annoyed at the amount of other, tech-focused websites (Dell Forums, certain Subreddits, NVidia sites) presenting the NVidia Control Panel as the be-all-end-all solution even though it obviously isn't. I even came across someone saying that the program doesn't have any choice other than to use the NVidia if you force it via the Panel. Yeah, tell that to SC4, defying all odds, apparently. That could be helpful, thanks! While fiddling around yesterday I figured that maybe some digging in the Registry could help. Luckily I have the Pro version, so maybe that'll help me out? On the other hand, it's Windows 10, so who knows if that still works. On the other, other hand, the registry is ancient, and iirc, not much changed there since it's first conception. Anyway will look into that.

First tiny update on this issue: It turns out that my unit does not have a BIOS setting relating to the GPU, due to the setup mentioned by CorinaMarie (the discrete GPU not having any actual hardware connection to the display). It also seems that in my unit's case, a program starts either using the the Intel or the NVidia GPU and once it's running, it does not change which one it uses based on the power the software needs. So I gotta scrap the BIOS idea and figure out how to make SimCity and my card recognize each other in another way.

I did that, as it says in the tutorial. (I mean, otherwise I can't even test properly if it's working or not.) Unfortunately it doesn't make any difference, which is why I first thought the String in my file was faulty. BUT I somehow didn't know yet that that there is a specific BIOS setting for the card and switching between cards (I fiddle around in the BIOS quite often, I'm surprised I never noticed that). I'll check out the config-log thing and fiddle around with the card settings some more. Thank you for that one, that's really useful info I never came across before. In the 3D settings for the card there is an option for an activity indicator. That indicator as well as the Task Manager so far have shown me correct positives about software running on the NVidida (and I've never had a false positive), but maybe I'm getting a false negative in the case of SC4. Highly unlikely imho, but we are talking about ages old software here, so anything that can go wrong is game, I guess. I'll keep that in the back of my head. Currently I assume the problem is that SC obviously doesn't support hybrid video because of its age, so I'll have to fiddle around some more in that direction. I read about that specific problem before, but I assumed I could "hard set" it to use the settings by editing the files and the NVidia settings as the tutorial suggested. That was apparenlty wrong in my laptop's case. As mentioned by Handyman, I'll try "hard setting" it in the BIOS next. That idea came to me sometime yesterday, I'll try that out as well once I get SC4 to see the card and go to edit the sgr files. I tried the command-line parameters in a shortcut first because I do like to keep things "pure" and as little 3rd party reliant as possible, but that didn't work out at all and really like the launcher, so I wanna try to make that work first. If doesn't, I guess I'll try the parameters again. Unfortunately my internal card does struggle with SC4, especially once a city gets bigger. It also struggles more ever since I started testing out mods. Once the LEX is online again, I'll get my hands on one of the DATPackers to see if that'll help. I have quite the affinity for pottering around with computers, and in my experience you'll be hard pressed to fully wreck a system when you stay on the software layer of things. Usually a Live Medium will safe the day if nothing else can. But I totally get the sentiment, I'm only doing this currently because I know I have the free time to fix things in the worst case. Back when I needed my laptop for uni, I was a lot more concerned about this stuff because I couldn't afford malfunctions. Anyway, big thanks to you all of you, I really appreciate the help. Will post updates of the situation here when I get around to it, I'm kinda hoping that this'll be helpful for some other folksin the future too. Edit: Thanks, not things. xD

Hi there, so I was following Indiana Joe's Guide for running SC4 on Windows 8 and subsequently Mysteryous' Guide on configuring SC4 to run with newer hardware. All was going well until I had to edit Graphics Rules.sgr: I cannot for the life of me figure out the correct string for my Nvidia. No matter what I put in so far the game never runs on the card. I am assuming the problem is in Graphics Rules, since editing Video Cards.sgr is semi-optional. And on a side note: I noticed that Logic Bomb's Launcher overwrites my Graphics Rules.sgr every time I use it to launch the game, therefore I did the testing by launching the game without it. For the future though it would be great if someone can tell me how to disable that, I couldn't find a setting in the launcher itself. (I find a bit odd that this isn't mentioned in Joe's guide, but maybe that feature got added after the guide was written.) Specs Laptop: Dell XPS 15 9560 System: Windows 10 Pro Version 10.018362 Build 18362 CPU: Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-7700HQ CPU @ 2.80GHz, 2801 Mhz, 4 Core(s), 8 Logical Processor(s) GPU 0: Intel(R) HD Graphics 630 GPU 1: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050 (0x1c8d) All these specs were pulled directly from "System Information". Tell me if you need any more info, any help would be greatly appreciated.