Simcity 4 graphics problem

[Nuclear550]

Hi to all! Just want to say if anyone can help me with my problem. The problem is my simcity 4 deluxe is running slow even though i have a gaming comp. Here is my specs: AMD quad core, 4gb ram, and a Nvidia EVGA 8800 GT.

[dragonshardz]

Set SC4 to use just one core of the processor, that might help. I don't remember exactly how to do it, let me check around.

[Andreas]

Right-click the SimCity icon, select "Properties" and add " -CPUCount:1" to the target path.

[tomfoolery_79]

I have a similar problem and similar specs on my computer, but I use an intel E6850.  I can run Call of Duty4 at 60FPS, but Sim City 4 drops to about 5FPS ??  I changed it to run single core with little/no performance gain.

[mtg]

tomfoolery what gpu do you have?

[tomfoolery_79]

EVGA GeForce 8800 GT, I think with 256MB onboard RAM...maybe 512mb, I don't remember.

[Andreas]

The GPU is pretty much irrelevant for SC4 - it's only used for rendering effect props like the fireworks, smoke that comes from the smokestacks and similar. Everything else is CPU-based. Please remember that SC4 is almost seven years old, and thus designed for hardware that is much slower than what we have today. Most rendering capabilities of modern GPUs cannot be used at all, and the main bottleneck for the game is the speed of your HD, since it has to reload the building models and the textures whenever you change the zoom or rotate the map. As long as your PC is busy with doing that, the game performance will be sluggish, even on the most current computers.

[tomfoolery_79]

Good insight Andreas...the problem is mainly when zoomed in close.  My hard drive is 10k RPM not the normal 7500.  What FPS are you guys getting just for comparison purposes.  It's not a huge deal, I'll live with it.

[westamastaflash]

The GPU is pretty much irrelevant for SC4 - it's only used for rendering effect props like the fireworks, smoke that comes from the smokestacks and similar. Everything else is CPU-based. Please remember that SC4 is almost seven years old, and thus designed for hardware that is much slower than what we have today. Most rendering capabilities of modern GPUs cannot be used at all, and the main bottleneck for the game is the speed of your HD, since it has to reload the building models and the textures whenever you change the zoom or rotate the map. As long as your PC is busy with doing that, the game performance will be sluggish, even on the most current computers.

So a raided drive, or perhaps a 4 GB RAM Disk for my plugins? With 8 GB physical ram total, i could give 4 gb to a ram disk... hmmm

[westamastaflash]

I just did a test with Qsoft ramdisk x64 for windows 7. I made a 3GB ramdisk and loaded all the plugin dependencies (Model files + Mega Packs) onto this ram disk. I then used sysinternals "junction" command to create a filesystem link in my plugins folder to the models folder. All the other plugins remained in the plugins folder.

Loading speed is about the same. The buildings change from "fuzzy" to "sharp" a slight bit faster, but not much, really. Once they are all rendered there is no speed difference. I think it's CPU cycles, not HDD speed nor GFX card power, that is the determining factor.

The *biggest* factor in scrolling choppiness appears to be the "shadow" setting. With it set to low I had smooth sailing with both the RAMDisk and the regular HDD.

I think the key to a faster game is to try to stay at one zoom level for long periods of time. Once the whole map is rendered it pans very quicky.

My Specs:
Win 7 x64
GTX 275 1.7GB
Asus P5B Deluxe Mobo
6 GB ram
Core 2 Duo @2.40 ghz
7200 RPM WD HDD (2 not raided)

[Andreas]

Thanks for the test, this was surely insightful. Maybe there's an in-game cap that limits the loading speed of building models and textures to a certain degree, in order to ensure smooth playing. Did you check your graphics settings for the building loading speed? You can set that to "low" on a less powerful system, not sure what you or your system picked in the first place.

[westamastaflash]

I used all settings on "High" initially. Once I turned off shadows, the scroll speed was very smooth. It seems that turning down shadows, at least for me, is the best way to speed up the game.