For those having issues with ATI's 7xxx series ... I have a fix

[Kitsune]

I fixed the biggest issue with ATI 7xxx cards - those that prevent the RHW / houses / etc from appearing when scrolling or in region view, cursor issues etc. The first problem of the intro skipping I havent fixed - but just alt + tab and it fixes the issue. To fix the scrolling issues / region view / whatever else this may effect, browse to your SC4 main directory, in windows 7 the path is C:\Program Files (x86)\Maxis\SimCity 4 Deluxe. Next in this folder find a file called Graphics Rules.sgr. You must open this with admin rights or right click > properties > select the security tab > select users & check off full control. Open this file with notepad or any other text editor.

Once opened ... you now need to do a search and search for this line: 7?00. You'll be brought to this line: stringMatch cardIdentity "*7?00*". Delete it - save the file, and sc4 will now work fine.

A little background:

We can derive from this text that old 7x00 series did not work well with SC4:

# The Radeon series has a very slow path for partial
   # depth buffer copies. This has apparently been
   # fixed for 9500 and later models in the latest drivers,
   # but cannot be fixed on previous Radeons because of
   # hardware limitations.
   # NOTE: disabling this rule unnecessarily may lead to
   # very poor graphics performance.

And the rule "partialRule "SlowSubrectDepthCopy" -any
         stringMatch cardIdentity "*7?00*"
is instructing sc4 to neuter the performance. It cannot tell the difference between the two 7x00 series, so even though we have modern video cards its treating it like a bad card from the early 2000's. Simply deleting the line for 7x00 removes the instructions and sc4 works mostly flawless, aside from the intro issues, which really is just a minor cosemtic issue (aka after digging through files I'm lead to believe this is a hardcoded issue).

[z]

I went through the Graphics Rules.sgr file when I got my HD 7950 and removed these lines.  However, like you, I am still plagued by what you call "intro skipping" - the intro screen flashes on and off.  And then once in the region view, the buttons at the top and the graphics at the bottom flash frequently.  I quickly discovered that Alt Tab does indeed fix this issue, but it's a pain to do whenever I start up the game.  I've also had problems such as windows occasionally flashing on the normal desktop, which I've heard other users have as well.  I had none of these problems with my old HD 4870.  Is this just a driver problem - do you know?  My impression is that that's the case, and that exchanging cards won't help at all.    Do you know any workarounds for these other problems?

[jdenm8]

I had none of these problems with my old HD 4870.  Is this just a driver problem - do you know?  My impression is that that's the case, and that exchanging cards won't help at all.    Do you know any workarounds for these other problems?

Give updating the drivers a go, it never hurts.

Modifying the line of code so it reads

Code Select Expand

stringMatch cardIdentity "*Radeon 7?00*" should also fix the problem.

[z]

I had none of these problems with my old HD 4870.  Is this just a driver problem - do you know?  My impression is that that's the case, and that exchanging cards won't help at all.    Do you know any workarounds for these other problems?

Give updating the drivers a go, it never hurts.

Well, that was my first thought.  I tried all the drivers starting from April of this year going up through the current driver and even the beta driver.  Nothing helps.  Apparently, this is consistent with the experience of many other people.

[Kitsune]

I too have the flashing issue... and I'm 99.9% sure its another application causing the issue. If i minimize everything and then launch sc4 - I dont have it flash. The intro skipping is annoying as hell, I agree - but I have not yet found a solution. It's much more then a driver issue. I was using briefly the same drivers with my 5850 as my 7850 and did not have the issue. So its either a) hardware or b) something somewhere in sc4 that is causing the issues.

[Uzil]

Thanks for your fix, my Simcity 4 works fine now with my 7950 

[z]

I am happy to report that the blinking and flashing that happens with SC4 and many AMD 7xxx video cards, and that typically requires alt-tabbing to get rid of, has been fixed in the latest AMD driver, which you can find here.

[CasperVg]

That's great news. The flashing issue was also plaguing me on my 7870 occasionally (not always) and from my limited testing seems to be gone now

[Shark7]

Just noticed this thread today and going to do it to fix the issues.  I'm running a Radeon 7770, so this does explain the issues I have.

I also have to wonder, will I see an improvement in draw speed when the fix is applied?  Right now, if I zoom in or out, it takes a bit for the game to redraw the scenery.  I assume this is going to be a part of this 'bad old card' issue.

[jdenm8]

What you're seeing there is a memory issue. The game doesn't keep the models from the other zooms and rotations in memory so has to reload them from the disk. SC3K did it as well from memory.

Running the game and your plugins from an SSD may speed up caching.

[Shark7]

So is it an actual memory (RAM) issue or a HD access issue? 

I have 16 GB of RAM, but still use an old SATA HD.  So it may just be something I have to live with if it really is a HD access issue.

[APSMS]

It's a hard disk access issue. The game, being written as a 32-bit application, will only be able to ever access at most 4gb, and will often use less than this for display caching. The 16gb is more of an overhead for you to do other stuff at the same time as the game and not experience a blue screen. Adding an acceleration cache on your computer/motherboard will also help with this issue, and should be much cheaper. Your computer might support it, if it can handle 16gb of RAM.

Often in my biggest cities and a 6gb plugin folder SC4 only tends to use about 1.8gb of RAM, and I have about 8 total and usually only Firefox running in the background (light load). This is also with the 4gb patch installed.

[Shark7]

I may already have caching.  The computer can actually have a max of either 32 or 48 (IIRC) RAM, I figured 16 was enough for the time being.

As far as the caching, is it something that can be added at home?  I'd be willing to do a simple upgrade for a performance boost, since other things would benefit as well.

I'm going to have to do some self education it appears. 

[jdenm8]

No, that cache is completely different. What we're talking about here is the RAM used to store assets not loaded into GRAM. What you're talking about is the memory on your CPU where in-process calculations are stored. SC4 is very restrictive about what is in its' cache (Your Chipset handles the other type of Cache automatically and regardless of what you have installed) and aggressively clears out what it thinks shouldn't be there because, with the rest of the simulation in memory as well, the developers decided that not being aggressive would heavily impair performance.

On a system from 2003, that is an incredibly valid decision.

There is literally nothing you can do to get SC4 to keep those models in memory.

What you can do is minimise the latency and increase the bandwidth between your Hard Drive and the Game by either installing it to a Solid State Drive or a created RAM Partition. This will minimise the amount of time it takes for the game to load the models back into memory.

[Shark7]

So basically, I need to upgrade to a SSD or just live with the latency.  Since I don't enjoy the idea of having to completely reinstall everything at this point, I'll just live with it for the time being.

In the future when I do have to replace the HD (it is inevitable after all), I'll look into a SSD rather than going back to SATA.

Anyway, thanks for the clarifications all, it is appreciated even if the news isn't as good as I'd like. 

[jdenm8]

Have a standard Platter drive as well. They're useful for things where very low latency isn't important (Your Operating System, Word, general file storage, many, many games, etc).

You'll still need SATA; all but the very top-end SSDs still use SATA3. In fact, their drive controllers still can't saturate SATA3 to the point where speed is impaired. It'll probably be a few years until they hit that point. In fact, getting a SATA3 expansion card for your existing machine and installing a new SATA3 platter drive (a brand-name 500GB one can be had for less than $60) may work just as well.

[Kitsune]

So basically, I need to upgrade to a SSD or just live with the latency.  Since I don't enjoy the idea of having to completely reinstall everything at this point, I'll just live with it for the time being.

In the future when I do have to replace the HD (it is inevitable after all), I'll look into a SSD rather than going back to SATA.

Anyway, thanks for the clarifications all, it is appreciated even if the news isn't as good as I'd like. 

And in the future - when you do get a new HDD, simply clone it... that way you do not have to reinstall anything.

[Shark7]

So basically, I need to upgrade to a SSD or just live with the latency.  Since I don't enjoy the idea of having to completely reinstall everything at this point, I'll just live with it for the time being.

In the future when I do have to replace the HD (it is inevitable after all), I'll look into a SSD rather than going back to SATA.

Anyway, thanks for the clarifications all, it is appreciated even if the news isn't as good as I'd like. 

And in the future - when you do get a new HDD, simply clone it... that way you do not have to reinstall anything.

It hopefully won't be that big of an issue, as I've invested in a USB external drive to simply copy the internal drive to as a back up.  I just hate making changes...I'm rather set in my ways.  Its just part of getting old. 

[Kitsune]

Ah... yes my current PC is going on 6 years ... but everything except the cpu and motherboard has been replaced at some point... so I'm quite use to change.

[Shark7]

Hehe, well my PC is only a little over a year old, so really still quite new...I was referring to ME getting old. 

Anyway, lots of good info in this thread, and I have at least solved a few of the minor issues with the graphics card, so over all, not a bad deal.