SC4 Devotion Forum Archives

Hi,

Now that Windows 7 will be available within some moths I am considering to buy a new computer.
I'd like to configure my machine for optimal SC4 performance. For all other applications the machine I already have is quick enough, so the upgrade will in fact only be for SC4.

My questions are about what is the best configuration for a new computer.
The quicker the the better, of course but:
- In some forums I have read remarks about double and quad cores; that they are not useful. What kind of core would be the best choice then?
- Intel or AMD?
- Is there a recommendation for the graphics card? A quick one with lots of memory, I guess? Is there some special feature that I neet to look for?
- Good amout of RAM? How much is useful?
- Reccomendation for motherboard?

I am thinking about spending around € 500,-- ($ 650?).

Does anyone have a clue?

And as last a general question: what is the advantage of Windos 7 compared to Win XP. Is it quicker? Does it work easier? Or is it just more beautiful? Does it support more and newer hardware? Do I need it for the newest motherboards and/or cores?

Somehow I always get the feeling that a new OS needs a quicker computer to work at the same speed as the old OS on the old computer. The graphic quality of the interface does not really interest me. If it would be quicker I'd be perfectly happy to work with an interface that looks like Win 3.1.

About the hardware, well, I am not "The Right Expert" for your answers.

About Windows 7, well Windows 7 RC is faster than XP on my old machine on almost all aspects. And it is the first Windows ever and the second commercial OS since OS/2 that completely convinced me.

Does that answer your question which OS is best?

your amount of RAM depends greatly on the kind of OS you want (32 or 64 bit) on a 32 bit system, the max amount of RAM is limited to 4GB, on 64bit systems it's unlimited I think, however most programs are written for 32 bit systems so 64bit is not very interesting in that perspective. The general rule concerning RAM is: the more, the better.

Concering CPU's nowdays you can't have fast, powerful systems without dual/quadcores, so you'll have to hove one of them. One other thing: are you planning on building it yourself, or are you going to buy a readymade one?

Good news is that this is probably the best time in 10 years for "bang for the dollar".

The new architecture core-I7 intel 920 is mucho fine, costs about $200 and is very overclockable. Unfortunately the LGA 1366 cpu mount motherboards are rather expensive at 250-400 each! For going for excellent value for the dollar I'd get a decent core2 duo or quad core intel (excellent values as they are just out of date and the LGA 775 motherboards can be had very reasonably.. decent one for about $100-175).

In terms of memory.. this is probably your best-spent money on a new board..  Even DDR3 (the new standard for memory) is "reasonably" prices, but DDR2 is nearly a steal. I'd say straigtout go I7 if it weren't for the mobo issue. I'd go with 6-8Gig of memory.. DDR2 is unbelievably cheap.. around $32/G and go with the LGA 775 boards.

In terms of video both nVidia and ATI offer very fine value cards in the $100-150 range. You should be able to build a fine pc for your 650 ..though you'll push it pretty hard.. :) For op system I'd definitely go Windows 7 in 64 bit

I'm hoping you have case, keybd, mouse etc already. If you have an old mouse the new LASER (not optical, laser :) ) mice are significant improvements and similarly priced. You may or may not need a new powersupply. I'd recommend maybe an Antec "earth watts" or whatever its called at about $75 and 500+watt.. its efficient, reasonably priced, good quality and would support any hd's or addons easily

So in summary to meet your 650 goal you'd go say Core2 duo or quad (they are remarkably similarly priced since the I7 came out) I'd go quad if it were me, but hey... For the mobo go with LGA775 and DDR 2 memory with a MINIMUM of 4G, a very nice video card,  Windows 7 64bit OS

In terms of HD's you can get whatever you think you need.. they're unbelievably cheap.. a terrabit (1000G) is under $100 now  &hlp

Windows 7, no question about it.

When I got Windows 7 RC I decided to go for 64-bit, (from Vista 32-bit) and I've had no problems, but I know there some problems with 32-bit software not working on 64-bit OSes, but they seem quite specific and advanced(well for me at least). 64-bit is going to be the future, and so I'd go with that unless you for some reason you need to be on 32-bit. Also Windows 7 comes with a 32-bit disc and a 64-bit install disc, so I guess if 64-bit didn't work out for you you could reinstall Windows 7 32-bit for no extra cost.
Also I know in the UK PCWorld (the shop) is running a preorder offer for Windows 7 until the 9th August, where you can buy Home Premium for £49.99 and Professional for £99.99(the RRP is about £220). I'm not sure if there's a similar offer in the Netherlands. But if you buying the PC ready made the the 32-bit and price of the OS will pretty much be decided already.

Jonathan

I agree with Jonathan...Win7 is far better all around then Vista. I bought my computer with Vista64 pre-installed...I dual boot win7 and have not switched over to Vista since. No driver issues and almost any app that I've tried work fine.
As far as CPU...I am running a quad AMD processor and 8 gigs ram...no problems with speed!

Jayson

Since you're looking for a computer that should provide a good performance for SimCity 4, here are a few general hints:

- Quite a lot of people reported graphics issues with their ATI cards, so maybe nVidia is the better way to go. There were also people complaining about their GeForce cards, and older cards/drivers seemed to work even better, so you really don't need to invest that much money into a graphics card, since SC4 is not that graphics-intensive after all. If you don't play other games, a mainboard with built-in GeForce chip might be more than enough. Personally, I prefer ASUS mainboards, as they are reliable, and they also provide lots of options, in case you might want to try overclocking and such.

- Again, quite a lot of people were reporting that the game crashes randomly with their dual or quad core CPUs, esp. from Intel. I also read reports that it runs fine on AMD CPUs with multiple cores. Since I'm a bit of an AMD fan, I recommend one of the new AMD Phenom II models, which have a great performance for a reasonable amount of money. And if you still encounter problems with your multiple cores, restricting SC4 to one core might do the trick, and that single core should provide a good performance if you pick a fast CPU. SC4 does support multiple CPUs, and if it crashes, it's most likely the CPU driver that doesn't work properly - apparently, AMD did a better job here.

- RAM is pretty cheap these days indeed, so get 4 GB RAM, which should be enough for most applications. SC4 won't need more, and I doubt it can handle more, even if you have a large plugins folder. The Windows 7 64 bit edition is probably the way to go indeed, I haven't tried it myself so far, but I heard a lot of positive comments from other users. Buy a 2x 2 GB kit, so you can run the RAM in dual-channel mode. The RAM speed should match your bus speed of the mainboard, faster RAM will allow some overclocking experiments.

- Since the models/textures are loaded after every every zoom or rotation change, your harddisk quickly becomes the limiting factor in your system. Buy a fast HD, or even build a RAID-0 system. A DATpacked plugins folder will boost the performance greatly, since the handful of large files can be read from two HDs at the same time, definitely speeding up the loading process a lot. Of course, the risk of HD failure is a bit higher since one damaged HD will result in a complete loss of data, but regular backups are a must anyway.

- Solid State Disks might provide a very fast read access to large data files (such as a DATpacked plugins folder), but unfortunately, they are still very pricy, esp. when they use the faster SLC chips (they are about twice as fast as MLC chips). I do wonder if it would be viable to buy a small SSD and put only your plugins folder on it, though. Alternatively, one could buy a lot of RAM and use it for a RAM disk, where one could place the plugins folder. I assume this would speed up the loading times a lot, but someone who has such a thing should do some performance tests first.

I am considering to build a new computer myself within the next few months, since my current one is about 4 1/2 years now. It's still running fine, but for "advanced" stuff, like handling large amounts of RAW files, you can see the limits. If I can sell the old one for a reasonable price, upgrading won't be that expensive, and I don't plan to spend more than some 500,- € on the parts as well. In this price range, you should get the most for your money, and maybe one can save a few bucks, i. e. with the built-in VGA chip - and if the performance turns out less than stellar, you can still buy a dedicated card afterwards.

Just thought I'd add, my PC has a Intel dual core CPU, my mums PC has a Intel quad core, and my dad's laptop has a Intel dual core. All of them have SC4 on and I have never had any problems with crashing randomly. I didn't change any settings, just installed the game and plugins and it worked from the word go. So I don't think there is a problem with all Intel CPUs.

Jonathan

Hmm, I also have Intel dual core, but the game crashes a lot! &mmm

When the game crashes it crashes.. No one actually understands this phenomona.. It's been investigated ad nausium by some very bright folk, but nada.. and it has crashed from the FIRST ISSUE to NOW .. on a relatively unpredictable basis. But whatever it is it IS NOT processor related unless you have a dualprocessor AMD without the dual processor optimizer installed. I have a dual core AMD and in the last two months its started CTD's on a regular basis.. on the other hand I have a plugins file in the many gigabytes (4+) and I expect that is far more likely the problem than the processor or the video card (mine is ATI and I've had no problem .. its 4.5 yrs old now and only lately started the CTD's so clearly not ATI related either.

In regard to my advice above, my advice assumed you have applications in mind far beyond SC4 including media over networking, games of various sorts, the occasional drab work activity, etc. If SC4 is all you're interested in, add more memory and don't upgrade at all.

WRT to comments on HD's most new drives are quite capable. I'm operating on a 3 disc RAID 5 setup with various auxilliary and backup drives. At todays current prices, plus the fact that almost all modern motherboards come with relatively sophisticated software RAID, I'd buy (at about $40 each) 4 or 5 100G to 320G drives and stack them in a RAID 5 array. (of course as mentioned you can use fancy 15K rpm fast access drives or SolidState Drives (SSD's) but either one of those is getting heavily into about the price of what you want to pay for the entire pc.. :)

Thanks a lot, all of you.

Apparently Win 7 did something right that we all wanted form the start, so I am convinced in that respect.

Andreas told something I was really curious about.
The real question I had was: what parts of the computer are most vital concerning gamespeed in SC4.
I thought SC4 is a game that requests a lot from the graphics card, because at every move the whole image moust be built up anew. This is also the aspect of the game that causes the most slowliness in my case. So I guessed that I'd need a real fast graphics card.
Andreas told me the HD is crucial. I already thought of making a RAM disk. I just don't know ho to do it... But I am sure I can find someone to help me with that.
So maybe I can upgrade my computer, because in fact not-too-quick-SC4 performance is the only reason I am considering a new machine.

Thanks guys!

Regarding the RAMDisk, please read this: http://www.mydigitallife.info/2007/05/27/free-ramdisk-for-windows-vista-xp-2000-and-2003-server/

Andreas,
Thanks for the link. I read the article and I could try this. I have 3GB of RAM in my computer. You think that I could set the RAM disk to 1,5GB? For my pluginsfolder is that size....

Yes, that should be possible. It would be even more interesting if you could install the entire game (needs some 1.2 GB, I think) in the RAMDisk, and then open one of your older cities with lots of Maxis content (if you have some) and check the performance regarding zooming and rotating.

Yes, sure...
Maybe I can try that also. Don't know if I manage to check this tonight at home...

Yesterday I edited my former post and added the text underneath the dotted line.

Does an edited post show up in the "Show new replies to your posts" listing? I never found out, but as I expected an answer by Andreas (who is on the site very often and usually answers a question very quickly), but did not get it, I fear it does not and so I decided to make it a double post.

Now is my new question: how many rules of the site have I broken by this action?
Hopefully I won't be banned now.... :-[

-------------------------------------
So I did install Ramdisk. It worked ok. I filled up my RAM disk with all plugins an regions and fired up te game.
What happened? The machine was slower than ever. And I could have thought that out before.
Because:
- When I bought my computer it contained 1GB of RAM. Last year I added 2 and now I have 2,5GB (???), so my computer tells me. There must be something rotten there, but that is not the subject now.
- So I have 2,5GB and I directed 2GB to the RAM disk, because my Plugins and my regions together are about 1,8GB.
- Firing up the game made my computer read all SC4 data from HD and all region and plugins from RAMdisk. But then, as it went quite slow, I realised that the computer was probably reading these data into the RAM, which was only 0,5GB, so the rest went onto the virtual memory on HD..... Hence the slowliness in reading.

So I guess that a RAM disk will be usefull if the remaining RAM is large enough to hold: the OS, SC4 data and all plugins. Which would mean at least 3GB. Plus 2GB RAM disk makes 5GB. But with XP I can have only 4GB, isn't it?

Is there something wrong in my conclusions? Please tell me.
Anyway, I uninstalled RAM disk, because the game was slower than ever.

Yeah, edited postings don't show up in the "new replies" list, unfortunately - but don't worry, a follow-up posting is not a double posting. :)

Anyway, thanks for the testing; with "only" 2.5 GB RAM it's probably not that useful to dedicate some 2 GB to the RAM disk since the game alone needs some 500 MB RAM at least, not counting Windows itself and possible background programs. I'd leave at least 1 GB RAM for Windows XP and SC4, with Vista, you probably need even 1.5 GB in order to prevent performance problems. In case you still have a city that doesn't use as many plugins, maybe you could test with a reduced plugins folder and a RAM disk of only 1.0 or 1.5 GB - or someone else who has more free RAM (3 GB and more) could give it a try.

Quote from: Andreas on August 12, 2009, 07:25:27 AM
Yeah, edited postings don't show up in the "new replies" list, unfortunately - but don't worry, a follow-up posting is not a double posting. :)

Well, phewwww...., now I dare to breathe again. ;D

Anyway: is it indeed so that the plugins are stored in RAM before gameplay begins? Or are they read from HD each time they are needed?

best CPU for the money?

AMD XII Calisto core.....less than $120, unlocked multiplier, 6MB L3 cache.....and as a bonus, get a motherboard with the AMD750SB southbridge and get 2 free cores!  the AMD750SB has a feature to turn on the 2 disabled cores in the Calisto, which is really a Deneb core downgraded to meet a price point.  Intel can't comete with the Calisto at that price point.....and the motherboards are alot cheaper (AM3 socket) compared to the LGA's

all the other stuff is more preference.  but the most important thing about building a rig:

do NOT be cheap with the power supply and RAM. 



edit: XP only supports 3GB RAM.....x64 bit is needed for anything more.

I think the in-game stuff and the whole plugins folder is read from the HD during the startup of the game, in order to create an index of all IDs that are used - together with the actualy game (simulator and stuff), this probably needs 100 or 200 megabytes, depending on the size of your plugins folder. Whenever you rotate or zoom the game, it will load the models and textures for this view (which you can easily see, as the game is "building" the new view, starting from the center of your screen, spreading to all sides, adding more items, while your HD is working hard until everything has been loaded. Scrolling is a lot smoother once this has been done, and the whole process will start again once you change the zoom or rotation again.

So that's why I assume that the game would be a lot faster if the models (both in-game and plugins) are kept in a RAM disk, since your RAM is a lot faster than your HD. But then again, maybe the background loader is programmed in a way that it won't read the files that fast. Depending on the amount of stuff that you have in your city, the RAM usage of SC4 will go up to 500 MB at least. There is a command line parameter called "-BackgroundLoader:on/off". The description says

QuoteEnables or disables the background model loading system. Normally, when you switch the view zoom or rotation the application loads only the visible objects first and makes a background task of loading the additional models. This allows the game to be more responsive during view changes, but it has the side effect of slowing down the game for the next few seconds or minutes.

I figure that if the background loader is switched off, all models are loaded as fast as they can be read - now if you have ample amounts of RAM and a large RAM disk, you might get a huge performance boost, since everything is basically loaded within a split second. Needless to say, this is only a theory, I wouldn't test that with less than 8 GB RAM or so. ;) But even with activated background loader, the loading process will be a lot faster for sure. IIRC, you can adjust the loading speed in the game options as well, setting them to "fast" will definitely help (and setting them to "slow" might help if you have a slow system, making the whole process even longer, but leaving more resources for the actual game).

all i can say is WAIT FOR Se7en TO RELEASE FIRST because u don't wanna have to get a code and then get the upgrade because there is a hacking problem with the codes

Quote from: SC4BOY on August 06, 2009, 02:33:40 PM
When the game crashes it crashes..whatever it is it IS NOT [generally] processor related ... I have a dual core AMD and in the last two months its started CTD's on a regular basis..plugins file 4GB+...

Just a followup to further reinforce my campaign against the "your computer makes your game crash" idea. When I wrote the above, I had just returned from about a year of not playing SC4 and was still playing the same region as before. However, since being away for so long, I was slowly in the process of upgrading my plugins as many had been revised, merged, added to, etc. During that time the CTD's were almost intolerable! It would crash every minute or so.  Now that I have pretty much completed those upgrades and am no longer "in transition" with the updates, it has almost totally stopped the CTD's. In the last week (dozens of hours of play) I've probably had 4 CTD's..

"So what is it you're trying to say?", you may ask. I'm reiterating that 99% of CTD's (other than the two or three well-known issues such as hovering pieces over transit lots, etc) are caused by poorly designed or incomplete plugin content.. :)

So now the time has come to decide.
And I still have some questions.

1. Is a dual core more useful for SC4 than a quad core? I am trying to compare the Intel core 2-duo E84 with the Intel i5-750. The latter being a bit more expensive, of course. My dealer told me that SC4 is a bit older game and probably won't take advantage of the multithreading possibilities of quad core. Is this true? Is quad core a waste of money?

2. A graphics card. As I said in my first post: I have the darkest suspicion that a quick graphics card will speed up my game enormously. But Andreas (whose opinion means a lot to me) said it doesn't really matter. Are you sure? Is an expensive graphics card a waste of money?

3. 64 bit or 32 bit. With 64 bit I have the advantage of more RAM, which is obviously better (maybe I even can make a RAM disk then: I'd install 8GB immediately). Apparently SC4 works in 64 bit machines, but how do I find out if stuff like Adobe Photoshop, Microsoft Office 2003, and other older programs I use work in a 64 bit machine? Does anyone have a clue?

Let me specify the three options I am considering:

Intel core 2-duo E8400
Asus PSKPL C2D FSB1333
Geforce 9800GT 512MB PCIe
4 GB RAM
HD: 1TB 7200rpm
Including Win 7 home premium about € 750,--

Intel i5 750
GeForce GTS250 512MB
Motherboard not specified (interesting isn't it?)
4 GB
HD: 1 TB
Including Win 7 Home premium about € 880,--

Intel Core 2 Quad Q9550
Also no motherboard specified
Graphics card should be added. Let's say about € 100,--, I thought.
4 GB
HD:1 TB
Including Win 7 Home Premium about € 820,--

The price is not really a problem... But please comment on the system?

1) While SC4 itself won't use both cores, other applications running at the same time in the background will be able to use the other cores SC4 is not using (as well as the core SC4 )

2) I have heard that a few modern graphics card actaully cause problems with SC4, but I don't think it is very true. A really good graphics card will only give better performance on games that are very good quality 3D, like CXL.

3)Photoshop has has its own 64-bit version, and any 32-bit applications will run fine, it is the dirvers you need to check. If you buy the retail Windows 7 you get both the 32-bit disc and 64-bit, so you can decide when you install W7, and if you don't mind doing another clean install you could change your mind later. (personally I've gone for 64-bit, mainly because I had no problems with it when using the RC version of W7 and because I "planned ahead"(more like didn't know what 64-bit was at the time, nor that 32-bit OS had a limit :) ) and installed 5GB of RAM when I built my PC.

I have no idea about the 3 options you are considering, and if I were you I'd wait for someone else to either correct or agree with me :)

btw, I would went for the Home Professional (because of XP mode and Remote Desktop, and because Ultimate was too expensive comapred to what it offered over Home Pro)

Jonathan

Well, I built myself a new computer some weeks ago as well, so here's what I can report so far:

1) I bought an AMD Phenom II X2 550 BE, which is a dual core CPU with 3.1 GHz and free multiplier, so overclocking is very easy. When I ran SC4, it appeared that it only uses one core, although the list of command line parameters mentions a "-CPUCount" command, saying that by default SC4 is using all available CPUs. I assume that even though Windows displays several performance diagrams in the task manager, a multi-core CPU is still treated as one physical CPU, so a quad core won't be faster for SC4 than a dual core, only the clock speed is relevant. Personally, I'm an AMD fan, so I don't know that much about Intel CPUs, but compare the models and see that you find one with a fast clock speed, rather than multiple cores. Newer programs might be able to use multiple cores, but older programs that only run on one core will perform better on a CPU with a higher clock speed.

2) I don't know a whole lot about those new graphic card models, and since SC4 even ran fine on my old Matrox P650 card (only in software mode, so I wasn't able to use shadows, but it worked fine otherwise), I decided that an on-board graphics chip should do fine. I bought an ASUS M4A785TD-V EVO, which has an integrated ATI Radeon 4200 HD with 128 MB dedicated graphics memory. Since there were several reports that SC4 doesn't run as well on ATI cards, I was a bit wary, but unfortunately, there was no other proper on-board graphics available for the AMD AM3 socket platform. So I said to myself "what the heck, if everything fails, I can still buy an external graphics card", but to my surprise, SC4 runs pretty decent, and although I didn't have time to play for more than a few hours, I had no crashes whatsoever so far. :)

3) If you don't have any 64 bit programs, 32 bit should be enough, but of course, you can't use more than the 3.something GB of RAM with a 32 bit system. Since all 64 bit systems have built-in 32 bit support, you can go with 64 bit without any problems. Just check in advance if you have some older hardware (such as a printer or a scanner) that you want to keep, and look if there are 64 bit drivers available. I originally planned to keep my 32 bit WinXP Pro, but unfortunately, I can't get past the installation, the first start always results in a bluescreen right away due to some S-ATA RAID driver incompatibilities. I don't want to lose my RAID, since it has proven very performant when dealing with large files (videos, DatPacked SC4 files :P ), so I decided to use the 64 bit Win7 RC version. SC4 and all other 32 bit programs seem to run fine, except some system utilities and other programs that integrate into the system very deep.

All in all, I'm very pleased with my decision, and although I had somewhat of a hard time to get used to Win7, the system performs very well. I was even able to unlock a third core, and overclocked the CPU to 3.6 GHz without any problems so far. I assume I could even go a bit higher, but there's really no need for that at the moment. I opted for 4 GB RAM, and for the programs that don't run properly on Win7, I installed Sun VirtualBox, where I run my good old WinXP inside a virtual machine. Since I now have a "free" additional core, and 4 instead of some 3.25 GB RAM that I would have been able to use with WinXP, there's no loss at all if I dedicate those to the WinXP virtual machine. SC4 performs greatly, the medium speed is now as fast as the fast speed setting on my old machine (AMD Athlon 64 3000+), Videos convert with some 80 or 90 frames per second instead of 15 or so, and the whole system runs smoothly.

The best thing is probably the price I paid - it was a mere 350 EUR for a new case, the mainboard, CPU, and RAM, and since I sold my old machine (plus a few spare parts I had laying around) for 150 EUR, I basically got a new computer for just 200 EUR (and some work, plus cursing about the non-functional WinXP S-ATA RAID drivers). I'm continuing to use my old HDs and the old DVD drive, plus all external components, so the only thing that I'd need to buy next year is a new copy of Win7 (or try and see if there is a new version of the S-ATA RAID drivers which finally works properly). Personally, I think that Intel machines are overpriced; with a little work and some knowledge, you can max out those new AMD CPUs very well, and they basically come at a bargain price if you don't need a hyper-fast computer for the newest games and stuff.

Andreas,

Thank you very much for the elaborate answer.

Maybe I specify waht the thing is that I don't like on the old computer.
I speak now of region with 18 large tiles, of which 13 are completely empty and 3 have a population of 400k together. Not a too large development, I guess? And a pluginsfolder of about 1,3GB.
My screen has a resolution of 1024x768.
Gameplay is slow: If I select a menu and I scroll, the menu often stops.... and goes on suddenly a second later.
If I zoom in or out or change view the time to rebuild the screen is about, lets say.... 2 or 3 seconds? 5 maybe?
Loading of the game plus the city takes about 5 minutes. I relly fear for the time that the region shows real development with all cities and millions of Sims.
Is this normal? Will it help to invest in a new machine? What are your findings?

I was told that Intel cpu's were better for gameplay then AMD. I myself have always had AMD cpu's and I never did any kind of comparison, so I don't know about this.
But your explanation about 64 bits and the multi cores is very clear to me.

I am not able to fool around with cpu's. So overclocking or unlocking cores is not my cup of tea. Except maybe if with a very simple process and certainty of no overheating or other troubles...   

I guess that the best choice now is
- Not a too large graphics card, you say it does not really bother.
- A CPU with high frequencies and because of the price better invest in a quick dual than a slower quad.
- Motherboard: i don't know, the shop will advise me.
- 64 bit install and a lot of RAM (place for a 2 GB RAM disk with all SC4 files!)
- RAID for two hd's (If new HD: a quick one) for quickest reading of models and props. or maybe one of these new flashmemory "disks"? Don't know if they are available already.

Well, what I noticed is that whenever I scroll through a large menu, change the zoom or rotation, or load the game or another city, the most busy part in my system is the hard drive. So that's definitely the bottleneck, and after changing the zoom level in a large city with many trees, or a lot of buildings, it takes some 30 seconds to one or two minutes until the harddrive finally idles again. Since the game starts loading items from the point on your screen and continues in a concentric circle around it, it doesn't really matter how long it takes, but during the loading time, gameplay tends to be a bit jerky, even the traffic animation is stuttering a bit, at least on my machine, but that might be related to the somewhat "low-end" graphics chip. But once everything is loaded, all animations are smooth again, so it has to do something with that, I assume.

I have not used my DatPacked plugins folder for my preliminary tests so far, since I changed something in the plugins folder recently, but I'll plan to do some more testing in that regard, and see how smooth the game will be when getting the max out of large DAT files on my RAID-0. Obviously, you need two identical HDs for this, so if you need 1 TB, get two 500 GB HDs - and as myself, you might need to use a more modern OS, since WinXP isn't able to deal with S-ATA (only with additional drivers, and who knows if that works). Overclocking my CPU, on the other hand, was really easy - just setting the clock frequency to "Manual" in the BIOS, and picking the desired frequency. One thing I did was using another CPU cooler than the standard one, but that only cost some 15 EUR, so it wasn't a big deal. Most time, the CPU runs with 800 MHz anyway ("Cool'n'Quiet"), the full clock speed is only unleashed if it's really needed - browsing the web, using office programs or listening to MP3s doesn't need more than 800 MHz, so the system stays cool, silent, and doesn't need as much energy as under load.

I don't know how well those hybrid flash HDs are performing, they seemed to be a very big hype when Windows Vista was released (so they could make use of the "Ready Boost" feature), but I don't know if you can control what happens to the data that is loaded into the flash memory. If you could select it manually, that would be similar to a RAM disk, but if the OS decides what goes into those flash chips, you might get a better system speed, but your loading speed inside SC4 might not change. Using a dedicated solid state disk might provide an awesome performance boost, but if I look at the prices for the faster models, I think I can safely say that it's still a waste of money - maybe in a year or two...

Anyway, I wouldn't waste my money on a dedicated graphics card if you don't need it because of other programs/games, since I doubt a more powerful one would bring a notable performance boost. Try the integrated onboard graphics (as long as it is from nVidia or ATI), and if you think it's way too slow, upgrade to a dedicated card later. Onboard VGA only costs some 5 or 10 EUR more than board versions without them (at least for AMD boards, dunno about Intel), so it's really a no-brainer. Check for a fast HD or two; RAID isn't that hard to set up, but be aware that there's a slightly higher risk of failure if you use RAID-0 (striping), since you'll lose all data even if only one of the HDs fails. But making regular backups is necessary anyway, so don't worry too much about that. I need to check if the RAM disk software that I mentioned a while ago works with Win7 as well; from what I see, Windows itself doesn't have proper RAM disk capabilities built-in. As for the mainboard, I like ASUS, but other brands like Gigabyte or MSI should perform nicely as well. Personally, I would avoid cheap brands like AsRock, but I hear from other people that they also run fine.

With your former post in mind I went to the shop after I had finished my lunch.

I found the AMD II X2 250 CPU, dual core with 3.0 GHz. And it's 64 bits. maybe I should then buy an extra cooler so that I may try to overclock it a bit.
Motherboard: Asus with GeForce 8300, 128Mb on board.
Then I thought: let's try 64 bit (so I need Win7 Home Premium), which gives me the opportunity to install 8 GB. So I can make a RAM disk of 2 or 3 GB for my plugins. (Does a RAM disk mean that I have to copy my plugins into this RAM disk every time I fire up my computer? Guess so.. But that can be made easy with some Xcopy script file.)
Another possibility is to place two identical HD's and RAID them as you do. I could even do both.

Intermezzo: I am in the happy situation that I am not a rich man, but that I have enough to throw some money at it without getting into trouble.

The flashdisk option is not yet available, or it will be way too expensive. So I forgettaboutit.

Maybe there is some faster CPU avaliable somewhere else....?

I even have another option: in fact the computer I have now is appropriate for most activities I do. So I could use this one for usual work, like Internet, office, etc... This means I could dedicate the new one to only heavy duty activities (SC4, Photoshop, Music editing...) and let everything like virusscanners, firewalls and that kind of business out of the system. This will give the computer a lot less to do. I guess that might be good for gameplay too.
Only thing I must do then is always use the old computer for scanning new files for viruses etc.

depending on what the main usage of the PC will be I'd go for a better GPU (atleast Nvidia 8800GT or 9-series)

Andreas, so your saying if I installed SC4 on a pen drive ( USB stick) it would run faster than if on my HDD?

@Jonathan: Only if the USB stick is faster than your HD - which I doubt, unless you buy a really fast (and expensive) stick. There are various types of flash memory, and some of them are a lot faster than others (those for solid state disks are usually fast, hence the hefty price tag). The main advantage of flash memory is the shorter access time, since there's no mechanical part that needs to move around the read/write head and such. Plus, USB 2.0 is slower than a S-ATA connection, so this might reduce the maximum performance as well. I guess that "ready boost" feature is only nice if you have to load a large number of smaller files that are scattered around your HD otherwise. For large files that are not fragmented on your HD, a RAID-0 is definitely faster. The only thing that is definitely faster is proper RAM - but that is always volatile, needless to say.

@Frank: Keep in mind that not all AMD CPUs have a free multiplier (which makes overclocking really easy). Only the "Black Edition" (BE) usually work that way. And yes, you'd have to "re-load" the RAM disk every time you'll restart your PC, but as you said, this could be done by a script or something like that. As for using two different PCs, I had simiar thoughts, i. e. buying an ASUS eeeBox, which is basically a netbook without screen, that you could mount behind your TFT. It's very silent, powerful enough for the usual internet/MP3/office tasks, but then again, if you need more power, you have to switch to another PC, accessing files only works with a network (requires both PCs to run) or an external HD (requires constant unplugging and replugging). If you get a fast PC that also features silent and energy-efficient components, there's really no need to have a second PC. Yes, you could leave out the virus scanner etc. on your gaming machine, but then again, with modern PCs, resouce consumption isn't that much of a problem anymore.

Can anyone please answer this?

I have installed a new graphics card (nVidia GeForce 9400GT, 1GB) and everything works fine, except for a problem in the UDI missions: the image is flickering and unstable, and the automaton is often darkened. The previous card was a very weak onboard chip, and the (new) card was installed after installing the game. Is there something I can do to fix this?

Did you install the drivers from nVidia or from you card manufacturer ?
Always prefer nVidia drivers

Try also to reinstall DirectX

Andreas: with 2 PC's I meant the option of keeping my current PC (the one I work on at this moment) and connect it with a switch box together with the new PC on one screen, one mouse, one keyboard. Depending on what I want to do I fire up PC one or PC two.
This also takes away the need to back up current files, reinstall, configure etc.... The new PC will be clean and efficient. And maybe one day Someone will like to have my current PC and I can give or sell it.

I'll start a search on the fastest AMD black edition CPU I can find around here.
Let's see what they come up with.

And WC Eend: so you think a fast GPU helps?

With tons of plugins, the bottleneck for SC4 will be the hard drive, the faster you can buy the faster SC4 will run
As SC4 is a 32 bit program, it will theorically deals with a max of 3GB, but as windows and other concurrents programs will reclaim RAM at the same time, I guess SC4 use around 1.5 Gb and the others 1.5 is paged from HD, and SC4 itself use HD as it can't load 4GB in memory
I think the top could be ( only a guess as I can't buy that ):
-Win7 x64 with 8GB of RAM so SC4 can really use 3GB of physical RAM
-a 150GB Velociraptor 10000 rpm for your plugins

Quote from: FrankU on November 11, 2009, 12:53:54 PM
This also takes away the need to back up current files

The rest yes, but you should backup the files of every PC in more or less regular intervals. ;)

Sure, I make a backup of my files every day:
I have written a small script that copies "my documents" to a second HD in my computer and then automatically shuts off the system. So vereytime I used my computer a copy is made.
And, not often enough I must admit, I copy this whole stuff onto my external HD.

And I found the processor you bought for about € 100,--. Wou's advice will be taken into account.
And I am considering to buy 8 GB RAM for a RAM disk with my plugins in it.
To overclock the AMD Phenom, do I need special memory that can be overclocked also? Is there a place where I can find info on that?

100,- €? Is that a local shop or an online store? I paid about 83,- € or so in a German online store. The native memory clock speed of the AMD Phenoms is 1333 MHz, so you can get those. Most mainboards also support faster RAM, but if you just overclock the core (by selecting another multiplier or another core frequency, depending on the mainboard), all other components won't be touched at all. These days, some mainboard manufacturers even provide software, so you can overclock the CPU from inside Windows. If you google for "overclocking AMD Phenom II", you should find enough guides that provide you with some information about the process. Needless to say, be very careful, and only do it in small steps, but I think with those unlocked CPU models, overclocking has become a lot easier than ever before.

It was in a local store. There is also one where I'd pay about € 90, but that shop does not provide other things I want. And Germany is traditionally a bit cheaper in electronics than the Netherlands, has to do with taxes, I guess.

I am not the kind of guy that assembles the thing himself, so I will not buy from several shops and put it all together. I go to a store and select the components and let them put it together.
My favourite shop does not even provide the CPU, but maybe they can order it for me. I'll phone them.

Anyway. I also read that it is easy to unlock two extra cores on the CPU.... And overclocking? I am not sure I dare to experiment with it. Probably I won't do it.

Thaks for your help. I'll let you know when the machine is here...

Ah, ok, for a local shop the prices seem reasonable, esp. if they also build the machine for you. And overclocking and unlocking cores is purely optional, of course - usually, it won't do any damage if you're careful, but of course it's on your own risk, and not covered by any warranty. The main reason why it is so easy for the current AMD CPUs is because AMD is using the very same chip design for an entire series of CPUs. All AMD Phenom II processors are originally quad core CPUs, and they just disable those cores that don't work properly, re-brand them as triple or dual core and adjust the max. frequency to what they can guarantee for any system, even with the CPU fan that comes with the box. But naturally, if more people want to buy dual core CPUs because they are cheaper, they might have to disable cores that actually work fine, so if you're lucky, you can unlock one or even two disabled cores. As I said, I was able to unlock one of them, and it seems to work fine. I haven't made a stress test that lasted for hours (if you really want to know if your overclocked/unlocked CPU works fine, you should do so), but on the other hand, the system runs stable, so I don't worry too much. But as I said, it's more of a thing for the advanced users who know their hardware inside out, like car enthusiasts who are spending their time in the garage in order to tweak their engines and such.

Andreas, I think your post served as a good quick guide for people so I thought I would just add a few comments.

Quote from: Andreas on November 10, 2009, 02:25:21 PM
Well, I built myself a new computer some weeks ago as well, so here's what I can report so far:

1) I bought an AMD Phenom II X2 550 BE, which is a dual core CPU with 3.1 GHz and free multiplier, so overclocking is very easy. When I ran SC4, it appeared that it only uses one core, although the list of command line parameters mentions a "-CPUCount" command, saying that by default SC4 is using all available CPUs. I assume that even though Windows displays several performance diagrams in the task manager, a multi-core CPU is still treated as one physical CPU, so a quad core won't be faster for SC4 than a dual core, only the clock speed is relevant. Personally, I'm an AMD fan, so I don't know that much about Intel CPUs, but compare the models and see that you find one with a fast clock speed, rather than multiple cores. Newer programs might be able to use multiple cores, but older programs that only run on one core will perform better on a CPU with a higher clock speed.

This was true for the old hyper-threaders but the modern multi-core cpu are actually seperate processors even though they are on the same chip.
The rest of what you said is very true. While my 2.66 quad is great for any modern game that supports multiple processors, SC4 only uses 1 core so a faster single core would perform better.
I've an Intel man myself, AMD I've seen too many thermal failures for my liking, although in their defense it is often the end-users fault. A layer of dust acts like insulation and couple that with the typical poor ventilation spaces people keep their computers in, or the personal space heater under the desk and it is a recipe for disaster. It is important to keep your computer innards clean, and AMD requires a little extra care in that regard but otherwise it is mostly another Coke vs Pepsi debate.

Quote from: Andreas on November 10, 2009, 02:25:21 PM
2) I don't know a whole lot about those new graphic card models, and since SC4 even ran fine on my old Matrox P650 card (only in software mode, so I wasn't able to use shadows, but it worked fine otherwise), I decided that an on-board graphics chip should do fine. I bought an ASUS M4A785TD-V EVO, which has an integrated ATI Radeon 4200 HD with 128 MB dedicated graphics memory. Since there were several reports that SC4 doesn't run as well on ATI cards, I was a bit wary, but unfortunately, there was no other proper on-board graphics available for the AMD AM3 socket platform. So I said to myself "what the heck, if everything fails, I can still buy an external graphics card", but to my surprise, SC4 runs pretty decent, and although I didn't have time to play for more than a few hours, I had no crashes whatsoever so far. :)

Once again newer hardware doesn't really help this old game much :(
My 8800 is a couple years old now but I can run any DX10 game full bells and whistles without a stutter.
Old DX9 games, forget it. SC4 still brings my computer to its knees.

Quote from: Andreas on November 10, 2009, 02:25:21 PM

3) If you don't have any 64 bit programs, 32 bit should be enough, but of course, you can't use more than the 3.something GB of RAM with a 32 bit system. Since all 64 bit systems have built-in 32 bit support, you can go with 64 bit without any problems. Just check in advance if you have some older hardware (such as a printer or a scanner) that you want to keep, and look if there are 64 bit drivers available. I originally planned to keep my 32 bit WinXP Pro, but unfortunately, I can't get past the installation, the first start always results in a bluescreen right away due to some S-ATA RAID driver incompatibilities. I don't want to lose my RAID, since it has proven very performant when dealing with large files (videos, DatPacked SC4 files :P ), so I decided to use the 64 bit Win7 RC version. SC4 and all other 32 bit programs seem to run fine, except some system utilities and other programs that integrate into the system very deep.

The only argument against 64 bit OS is that most of the drivers were horrible. While driver issues seem to be a problem we've always had and always will, the situation for 64-bit is much better now than it was a few years ago. Application compatibility is as you said pretty much a non-issue.

Quote from: Andreas on November 10, 2009, 02:25:21 PM
All in all, I'm very pleased with my decision, and although I had somewhat of a hard time to get used to Win7, the system performs very well. I was even able to unlock a third core, and overclocked the CPU to 3.6 GHz without any problems so far. I assume I could even go a bit higher, but there's really no need for that at the moment. I opted for 4 GB RAM, and for the programs that don't run properly on Win7, I installed Sun VirtualBox, where I run my good old WinXP inside a virtual machine. Since I now have a "free" additional core, and 4 instead of some 3.25 GB RAM that I would have been able to use with WinXP, there's no loss at all if I dedicate those to the WinXP virtual machine. SC4 performs greatly, the medium speed is now as fast as the fast speed setting on my old machine (AMD Athlon 64 3000+), Videos convert with some 80 or 90 frames per second instead of 15 or so, and the whole system runs smoothly.

Seven also has an improved virtual machine (the exact name escapes me at the moment). It doesn't come installed but is a free download. I haven't gotten around to upgrading yet, I have only played with it a bit in a lab at work so I couldn't tell y'all the ins and outs of it, but generally one of the really great things about virtualization is that to the guest system you can present it with a single core but in reality you can allocate as many cycles of all your cores as you want, letting that old single threaded app like SC4 take advantage of your new multicore CPU. I can say this with certainty about VMware. I expect it to be true for the new MS product as well, but I am not 100% sure.

Overclockers. Again let me stress how important keeping your computer clean and well-ventilated, for overclocks this is even moreso critical. The leading cause of hardware failure is excessive heat.

Another heat tip for people building their own or having one custom built. Get a bigger power supply than you need. The higher the capacity the power supply as opposed to the drain on it, the more efficient it is going to work (think power plant in SC4,running at capacity it degrades faster :P ) , in the electronic world efficiency translates to, you guessed it, less heat. Keep it cool!

Oh, other odds and ends from various posts in the thread.
Yeah, ready boost turned out to be a disappointment. For gaming it is actually worse in most cases (reminds me I should pull mine out).
The flash-hdd while looking very promising initially is also proving disappointing...the transfer rates are not very good. Even with USB 3.0 finalized I think this is still a technology that is going to take some time to mature; even though prices are dropping, I would give it a miss for now. You can buy nice big SATA drives cheap, get 2 or 3 and stripe them for added performance.

So it's time I tell you all that I got my new computer!

It has a AMD Phenom II X2 550 BE, a RAID-0 set of HD's, 8 GB of RAM! and so forth. And Win 7-64bit of course.
And it works fine.
It is already quite a bit quicker than my former machine.

But now, Andreas, you wrote about unlocking a third and maybe even fourth CPU. Could you tell me where to find info on how to do this?
An a Virtual Machine: how could I make one, and what are the advantages in SC4 gameplay? Do you have a hint?

A virtual machine will not help you play SC4. In windows 7 professional and above you get a free XP Virtual machine. So you can most programs that worked in xp but not windows 7. Just typing XP Mode in the search box in the start menu should take you to where you can download and set it up.

Jonathan 

Quote from: FrankU on December 14, 2009, 07:16:25 AM
But now, Andreas, you wrote about unlocking a third and maybe even fourth CPU. Could you tell me where to find info on how to do this?

It depends on your BIOS, so you should google for your mainboard model, and see if you can find some hints where the options are hidden. Usually, it's combined with the "ACC" settings, in my ASUS BIOS, the option is called "Unleash Mode" or something like that. Be careful with those settings, though, and write down your current BIOS settings. If the computer doesn't boot anymore after unlocking another core, you might have to do a BIOS reset, which puts all values back to default.

The problem with the virtual machine is that it doesn't work with Direct X.
I was under the impression they had found some way around this with the Windows 7 release but apparently this is not the case.

Just adding to this - I did a test loading my plugins to a 3GB RAM disk and I didn't see much speed improvement in loading the models. I might try to load the whole game into the RAM disk, but as I only have 6GB of ram a 4GB ram disk might be pushing it. Maybe if I just put the textures and game itself on the ram disk, while leaving the mega packs on the HDD (after all they only need read for a small amount of content)...

I'll be ordering anohter 2gb\x2 pair of sticks soon so maybe after that.

Anyone want me to run a specific kind of test?

The biggest thing I've found is that the bottleneck is CPU and the model rendering algorithm that they used, since it doesn't seem to use the GPU to render the models. My GTX 275 is no faster than my old 7600GS.

I get terribly slow performance while playing large tile cities with over 1kk population.

This is on an AMD Phenom 9500 2.2ghz, 2 GB ram, ATI 2600XT.

Tested on 3 OS's, openSUSE (linux), Windows 7 and Windows XP.

By terribly slow i mean, more than 1 minute per ingame month using cheetah speed.

I don't know what cause my problem. SC4RH and the  Lot Editor open very slow but it's work well after enter the city.
My plugins now 1,5gb.