SimCity4 Hardware???

[Whitedog]

Man, I got SimCity4. What a great game!... The only thing is... MAN IS IT SLOW!!

OK, I know I have an old system...

Shuttle AK12 (Yea, I know... lame mobo)
XP 1800+
512MB PC133
GeForce2 GTS 32MB DDR
WDJB1200


Do you think a 128MB Video Card (9500 Pro) would make the biggest difference if I were to only upgrade that?

The reason I think so, is I know there are a TON of textures in that game... as the Cities get larger, it starts to CRAWL! I figure it is having to fetch graphics from Main Memory instead of Video memory being I've only 32MB card...

Anyone have any experience with SimCity4 like to share their Hardware and "performance" of the game?

Thanks!!

 

[Pakman]

I'd kinda like to know the answer also...
I pretty much have the same configuration as you do..
I think I have the same mobo, it's the cheap one that takes SDRam or DDR and has the SIS chipset.
1800+ Athlon
512 PC133
Geforce2 GTS 32mb
ibm deathstar hd...

Once my cities started getting bigger, everything got kinda choppy..

 

[Davegod]

dont have the game myself, but seen a few articles saying simcity really eats up ram, people saying 1gig "needed" for cities >8000 or something.

ps. software & games forum

 

[Whitedog]

kinda choppy??? man... Mine comes to a crawl! If I zoom in or out, it takes like 5 seconds to zoom, and another 20 or so seconds to get back to smooth animation. Jumpy as Hell when I try to scroll!!

It the same on both Mine and the wifes pooter... her's in similar to mine except she's running a 32Meg TNT2. But her's is no slower than mine.



[edit]

ps. software & games forum

Uhmm.. This is a HARDWARE issue.

If someone is having slow performance with their computer, generally they post HERE.

 

[SexyK]

Well, I've got a P4 1.6A at 2.2 with 384MB RDRAM and a 9500Pro (128MB). The game runs like @ss. Video card means just about nothing as far as i can tell, just need more RAM. Its pretty rediculous that it performs so badly with an above average setup though. note to self: 1GB RAM in a new rig (contrary to recent posts here).

BTW: My city is at around 42000 people now, and its sooooo slooooow.

 

[BurnItDwn]

my box (xp1800) with 1GB of ram plays it pretty nicely until there are about 80K to 100K population .... I think this 1800 is just too slow

 

[smp]

<OT>

Man I remember when simcity was a light game to play :\

 

[Dacalo]

damn city!

 

[Spyro]

Originally posted by: smp
<OT>

Man I remember when simcity was a light game to play :\

Yeah. I think I'm gonna stick with simcity 2000 on my dos box.

 

[Whohangs]

I've got a AMD 1700+ XP, 756 MB of RAM, and a GeForce 4400 ti and the game runs pretty well. Zooming in and out are definitely slow and scrolling isn't that smooth, but it's good enough. I've heard of people having problems with much higher hardware, I guess it depends on what you consider playable. One of my cities is at 120K. I don't think the game is that dependent on the video card, and more dependent on memory and processor speed, but don't take my word for it.

 

[Aquaman]

I think your best bet would be a ram upgrade, although a video card upgrade wouldn't hurt.

Cheers,
Aquaman

 

[beatle]

Seems to run ok on my comp w/768 megs of PC133, tbird @ 1266, GF2 GTS. I haven't built much of a city though.

 

[Sid59]

gah, even simcity 3K ran like crap. GO SIM CITY 2000 !!!

 

[paperfist]

Seems to be a RAM problem. I have an AMD 1600+, ATI 9500Pro & 1GB RAM and with a 60k population I don't notice any difference with zoom or scroll between that population and a zero population.

 

[magomago]

Is the game THAT demanding? Geez...its freaking Sim City!

Perhaps there is a memory leak or something along that line..but that wouldn't explain the slowdown occuring right after a reboot.

I was going to buy the game, but now i'm having second thoughts consideing I couldn't play it very well....

What res/stuff are you guys running at? Normally I got 800*600 or 1024*768 with no frills turned on (no AA or AF) in my games

 

[CraigRT]

my system seemed to run it fine.. man, that really sucks how it requires such a rig to make it smooth..
sometimes smooth operation is the only way to have a game, to ensure its fun.. i haven't had huge cities yet.. so i am not really 100% sure, but it ran OK when i played it for a while.

P4 2.4B (533 FSB)
G4 Ti4200 128MB (O/C 315/560)
512MB DDR 333 @ 333 CL2
EPoX 4PEA+ 845pe

 

[Chaotic42]

It runs ok on my system:

Dual AMD 1800+
768MB
Geforce 4 Ti-4400
WD SE 80 GB Drive

I don't like it though, I've only played it a few times.

I run at 1600x1200. I'd get more memory if you really want to play it.

 

[IanthePez]

Originally posted by: magomago
Is the game THAT demanding? Geez...its freaking Sim City!

In Sim City, you now have "sims" running around all over. You see the people, the cars, so in big cities you have thousands!! of objects moving all at the same time! Gotta load all that in memory and switch it around a lot. Should be an option to turn people off

 

[Celstar]

This iteration of simcity is so much more advance compared to previous simcities. There's so much more things that the game keep tracks of, so it doesn't suprise me it runs a bit slow. It's definitely a much more intelligent game, and the AI is much improved. I don't experience much slow down at all unless I zoom in real close.

 

[hawkeye81x]

Same scenario here.
I'm running a 32MB ATI Radeon AIW, XP1800+ w/512MB DDR on an EPOX 8HKA+.
Lag-o-rama and I'm only at ~8000 residents.

 

[vegetation]

Runs really slow with my city of 100K+ big city map. Hate to say it but I quit playing the game for now as it just wasn't any fun watching the months go by so slowly. I figure the day we all have 10GHz processors available is when I'll be able to play it while keeping my sanity.

 

[0roo0roo]

ram monster. ram more important then vid card by far.

 

[Varsh]

I have to say it's nothing to do with the Graphics Card or the RAM, I can asure you that, it's primarily the Processor and it runs MUCH better on the Pentium 4 due to it's 4 channel FSB (533) over the AMD's 2 channel FSB (333). one of my friends has a ti4600, 512mb DDR333 PC2700 and an XP 2400+, his runs choppy, my other friends however, has a P4 2.2, 256mb DDR233 PC2100 and a GF4 MX440, his runs dead smooth even as high as a 150k population, I on the other hand have an XP1800+, 1GB DDR233 PC2100 and a GF4 MX440 and it runs very sluggish and slower than my friend with the ti4600, it's all processor speed here and it's showing, this is the first game I've ever known the P4 out perform the AMD processor .

 

[Chadder007]

Has anyone tried the new Patch for SimCity4? I think it fixes a texture cache problem with ATI cards....not sure about NVidia.

 

[bgeh]

Originally posted by: 0roo0roo
ram monster. ram more important then vid card by far.

this holds true for bf1942 too.