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I think its a good idea to spread my experiences with different Direct X Wrappers. My Specs Lenovo e570: Intel i5-7200U, NVidia GTX 950M (Optimus Technology = means that SimCity 4 cannot be started with this GPU, although when binded the SimCity4.exe with the NVidia GPU in the NVidia Settings and with edited Graphics Rules.sgr and video Cards.sgr like this), 16 GB Ram I have found six different DirectX Wrappers dxwrapper elishacloud Voodoo2 from dege-diosg DDrawCompat from narzoul cnc-ddraw from CnCNet dxgl from dxgldotorg ddwrapper from bitpatch Why Direct X Wrappers? In my case and for many other users (especially with Windows 10) it is otherwise not possible to start SimCity 4 with DirectX (= Hardware Mode). The more compatible Software Mode is slower in general and you aren't able to use HD Mods, e.g. Maxis HD Tree Replacement Mod. To start SimCity with DirectX use the SC4 Launcher, which I recommend, because of such useful functions like autosave and choosing what folders and files should be loaded from the Plugin Folder. But you can activate DirectX also with the command -d:[renderer] in this case -d:[directx] More about startup codes here. General Use The general use is to unzip the files and place the "ddraw.dll" into the same folder like your "SimCity 4.exe", e.g. "C:\Games\SimCity 4 Deluxe Edition\Apps". Some Wrappers have additional files like config.files or separate Direct3D.dll's and so on. Just put the needed files into the folder of the SimCity 4.exe. And some Wrappers like the voodoo have graphical configuration UI's. In most cases here you have to specify which file or which folder you want to modify the DirectX Wrapper and apply to your configuration settings. Here you specify the "SimCity 4.exe" or the "C:\Games\SimCity 4 Deluxe Edition\Apps" folder. Sometimes there can be a Windows warning that the files could be dangerous. I think this happens because the files intervene deeply with the hardware of your system, but what I can say is, that all these wrappers looks very serious and I googled all of them for negative comments and found not a single one. Tearing problems With all Wrappers and also in Software Mode I get tearing errors like this. But just when I had the graphics effects on high or medium. With low all tearing errors disappear completely. So I have to play withoud clouds and industrial smoke. Now the tests :-) I recommend to read @Raymond7cn test here before. 1) dxwrapper von elishacloud In this thread there is explained how to use this Wrapper in resolutions above 1920x1080. This works fine, but you need a large monitor, because in resolutions above Full HD the UI is relatively tiny. In general the Wrapper works very stable and without noticeable errors beside of tearing (which I have with every! Wrapper and even in Software Mode). But it is not the fastest one. This Wrapper is in active development (last Update 9th August 2020) 2) Voodoo2 from dege-diosg A good and fast Wrapper, but in my case with sometimes heavy graphical glitches (for example in my case with Fullscreen 1920x1080), where I had almost just a white startscreen, which I had to hard-close with the Taskmanager (CTRL-ALT-DEL). In Windowmode everything was fine and fast and it has a lot of configuration options. If I choose my NVidia GTX 950M in the "Adapter(s) to use / enable" I get an error message when SimCity 4 is starting, that ddraw.dll couldn't be enabled and so it starts in Software Mode. But in the "DESKTOP-xyz-config-log" (you find this file in the folder where "SimCity 4.exe" is) it is stated that it starts with the NVidia GPU. I think this is a wrong message, because when I directly choose the NVidia GPU in the settings SimCity won't start in Hardware Mode. I was able to start SimCity in 2560x1440, but it was quite slow with this resolution. This Wrapper is in active development (last Update 2nd November 2020) 3) DDrawCompat from narzoul The easiest and the fastest one. Just unzip the ddraw.dll into the folder, where the SimCity 4.exe is. No further configuration setting needed. Highly recommend. But the highest resolution I got is Full HD (1920x1080). With higher resolutions SimCity 4 won't start. For me it's a bit unclear if this Wrapper is in active Development. The latest version is an experimental version from 13th July 2020. The last stable version before is from 2016, so I hope there will be further development on the experimental version. 4) cnc-ddraw from CnCNet It was succesful to Start SimCity 4 in Hardwaremode, but it is relatively slow. Otherwise nothing special here. This Wrapper is in active development (last Update 24th October 2020) 5) dxgl from dxgldotorg I had expected a lot from this wrapper. It looks very modern, is in active development and has many configuration possibilities. One downside is, that you have to use an installer for this (not just unzip and place the files into the SimCity 4. exe folder). Unfortunately I could not manage to start SimCity with any configuration :-( This Wrapper is in active development (last Update 10th October 2020) 6) ddwrapper von bitpatch A relatively old wrapper (from 2012) which hasn't seen an update since then. But it managed to start SimCity 4. It was also quite fast, but not as fast as DDrawCompat. Nevertheless this wrapper surprised me positively. I hope this thread can be helpful for those who search in Google for advice with their hardware problems or how to run SimCity 4 smoother. I will test from time to time the updates from the Wrappers mentioned above. If anyone knows from other Wrappers, which ideally got good results in SimCity 4, I would very appreciate it, if you could tell them here :-)
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Hello everyone, This thread is for everyone to post anything related to computer technology and "technology" in general. This is a place to share our news, thoughts and idea's, discoveries, experiments, interests, habits.... Whatever it may be and you feel like sharing about tech stuff, this is the place. *Many post will be "time sensitive", so please, keep that in mind when reading.* ~I'm going to start with a recent find of mine. It is a website with current computer news articles, in house product reviews, free tools and much more. It's a very informative web site. Check it out. https://www.techpowerup.com/ ~Hers some news for GOG members and Epic Games. They are joining together, creating a new game launcher that will connect tons of game and you can launch them all in one place. 😮 You can sign up for the trial run going on now.: https://www.techpowerup.com/272855/gog-partners-with-epic-games-to-expand-into-a-universal-storefront While your there, go to the "Our software" tab and download some of the useful and FREE diagnostic tools for your computer. This tool is worth investigating, https://www.techpowerup.com/download/techpowerup-gpu-z/. It is a low resource tool, providing vital info about your video card and graphics processor. It supports Intel graphic's, AMD, ATI and NVidia. Here's a screenshot of my GPU. It also can take a screenshot of only its self and store it in your desired location. Only one file to download and run. And that goes for many of their other tools. All the different tabs have a lot of good info. ~Here is a tool that lets you custom tweak your NVidia driver pakage. Beyond what NVidia lets you. Remove what you don't need. https://www.techpowerup.com/download/techpowerup-nvcleanstall/ ~Here is a worth reading article about RAM speeds. https://www.pcgamer.com/au/amp/does-ram-speed-matter-gaming-amd-intel/ ~New and Fast Monitors! https://www.tomshardware.com/news/acer-predator-x34-s-a-34-inch-200hz-nano-ips-curved-monitor-w-05ms-response-time What, 0.5ms 😎 https://www.tomshardware.com/news/lg-ultragear-nano-ips-gaming-monitors-38gl950g-27gl850,39635.html ~Sad news if you looking to buy a 3080 and 3090: https://www-tomshardware-com.cdn.ampproject.org/v/s/www.tomshardware.com/amp/news/nvidia-ceo-geforce-rtx-3080-and-3090-shortages-to-last-until-2021?usqp=mq331AQFKAGwASA%3D&_js_v=0.1#referrer=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com&_tf=From %1%24s&share=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.tomshardware.com%2Fnews%2Fnvidia-ceo-geforce-rtx-3080-and-3090-shortages-to-last-until-2021 ~The NVidia performance war. https://www.tomshardware.com/news/nvidias-geforce-rtx-3070-beats-2080-ti-in-first-performance-results
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How to set up the AMD Raedon R5 graphic card
luvs2draw posted a topic in SC4 Bugs & Technical Issues
Hello everyone, Found this while I was surfing the web. Here are the settings for the "AMD Radeon R5 Adrenalin Graphics Card version 19.11.1". Here is the link: https://www.amd.com/en/support/kb/faq/dh-012 I have set mine according to the directions from this site. It gives step by step directions. I have played the game with no side affects to my game. But like they say if you don't feel comfortable changing settings on your computer, don't, but if you give it try and don't like them you can always restore back to the factory settings. Enjoy. -
Visual enhancement for AMD radeon users by enabling "Override Application Settings"
yevelnad posted a topic in SC4 Bugs & Technical Issues
When SC4 max setting is not enough, make use of your powerfull Radeon Cards by enabling the "Override Application Settings" in the Catalyst Control Center/Radeon Settings. SimCity will now run with Anti Aliasing, Anisotropic Filtering, Texture filtering Quality, Tessellation, OpenGL@ Triple Buffering and many more.You will see an emproved quality. AMD article guide. Im using a fairly old 2nd gen APU laptop. Vertical refresh will make your game run smoother. -
Hello all Simtropolis members I recently bought a new high end Samsung Series 7 Chronos 770Z7E S0-NL, which has these following specs: Intel Core i7 3635QM AMD Radeon HD 8870M 8GB RAM 1TB HDD 1080p IPS panel. Windows 7 Profesional and all drivers are working. (Did a downgrade, W8 recovery partition is still available) SimCity 4 Deluxe Edition, retail box + updated to the latest version. For more information, here is the link to the laptop review (http://www.notebookcheck.net/Review-Samsung-Series-7-Chronos-770Z7E-Notebook.89376.0.html) My following problem. I like playing SC4 a lot, but the game doesn't want to run on the powerful AMD GPU, the game keeps running on the IGPU of the i7 CPU. That causes my game to lag a lot. 3 FPS when I turn the shadows on medium. When I turn off the shadows the game doesn't lag anymore. That's fine but the game gets quite boring (and empty) without any shadows turned on. I tried running the game on lowest settings and only shadows on medium but the same problem keeps occur. What I've tried; 1. First of all I've tried to run other old games (C&C Generals, FS2004) and these games runs the whole time on the AMD GPU because these games recognises the AMD while SC4 doesn't. 2. So I started CCC (Catalyst Control Centre) + Intel Graphics MCP and selected simcity4.exe to run on high performance. I restarted my laptop and SC4 still had a lot of lag. 3. So I looked at the web and didný find anything helpful. No one had reported this problem with an Intel + AMD GPU configuration, only Intel + Nvidia. I looked to other games that might have the same problem, tried what they suggested but didn't work for me unfortunately. 4. So I tried to look at the game installation folder to see anything weird and I spotted that the game only recognises the HD 4000 instead of the Radeon 8870M. I tried to remove the Intel one and place the AMD instead with the correct driver name, register key and such but neverless the game keeps using the HD 4000. 5. I installed the same game on my aunt's new HP laptop which has an A8 APU together with a 8670M and the game didn't lag and the strange thing is that the game recognises the 8670M while on my laptop it didn't. 6. The provided Bios doesn't have any forcing High performance gpu option, only basic things like boot order, hyperthreading and turbo managment. What drivers I used: First I used the standard drivers that Samsung provided with my laptop but I had the same problems so I downloaded the latest ones for the AMD (13.11) and Intel (2143.0 I think) from their official sites and nothing has changed. What I could do, Reinstall the game for the 2nd time. Find other city simulation game Hopefully someone could help me with this annoying problem. Bye for now I noticed that I posted this in to the wrong forum section, I'm apologizing for the inconvenience! (WHYY does this always happening to me )
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I like running SC4 in hardware mode because it is faster, but somehow it wouldn't work right with the new 7870 graphics card. Tried some stuff like adding my graphics card to the .SGR file, etc, but no luck. So I deleted the Graphics Rules (no rules! ) and Video Cards. SGR files. They are found in C:/ program files (x86 if 64 bit) / Maxis / SimCity 4 Deluxe. You will see the 2 files and drag them or click and delete em. I saved mine to a backup folder in case something happens down the road, although I doubt it. Now I have no problems running SC4 on the max settings with a modern graphics card and no buildings or textures disappear when moving around the map. Hope this helps I hardly see it as a fix, because I just deleted the darn thing. Sometimes the easiest solution solves the biggest problems. -
Could not initializa Direct Draw wrror on SC4 startup. New AMD 7870
Legosim posted a topic in SC4 Bugs & Technical Issues
I been having this problem with Sim City 4 with my new graphics card. It is an AMD 7870 Ghz edition. before I explain more, my specs are: Windows 7 Home Prem 64, 8Gb RAM 1333 mhz, Intel i7 2700K, AMD radeon 7870. before my graphics upgrade I had an AMD system with a AMD 965 CPU, which ran SC4 perfectly with the AMD 6870. then upgraded my PC to an INtel i7 2700K w/ 6870 and in hardware mode the cities would load incredibly fast, but buildings would disapear when I move the view and reappear again. Very annoying so I stuck with software mode. Now my current problem is my new graphics card, the AMD 7870. When launching SC4 I an greeted with an error. Says Hardware Driver Error on the top bar and Could not Initialize Direct Draw in the white box. I press ok and the game starts fine. Any clue on how to fix this error? I read a tutorial on adding my graphics card to the Video Cards SGR file, but no luck. Uninstalled and reinstalled SC4 and my 7870 drivers and no luck. I know it is a minor error and an old game on a space ship PC, but any help on how it can be fixed will be appreciated greatly.
