ATI Graphics Card

[gabrielbyrnei]

Well, ive just installed and downloaded CAM on my new pc.
Quad Core AMD
2 GB DDR2
Hd 2600 XT ATI

When i try even playing on a large city with like 1 million on population, i get some SLOOOOOOOOW gaming, i mean reaaaaaaally slow. Like, days go by 1 by 1 very slowly.
I have Shadows set on Low since i read somewhere on google that new ati cards didnt go very well with SC4 Shadows.

IS there a solution or even a cause?

[Cosmic]

Try changing to an NVIDIA card of some sort, and using it. I did not too long ago, and now my game runs smooth, even on my largest city (with just over 200k pop and rising, not much high-density development yet, so yeah...)...

A good place to find Video cards would either be PCClub _{(http://pcclub.com)}, or at Best Buy or even Circuit City. Try looking in any of those places for an NVIDIA card. If you're like me, you'll enjoy the NVIDIA card more then you've enjoyed that ATI card. It'll last longer, too.
You could look for an NVIDIA E-GeForce 8800GS (like the one I have, sure it's not as fast as an ATI Radeon x1900 [my old card], but it's more reliable IMHO. You also don't have to worry about it being faulty within a few months.)

I am running all graphics settings on high, hardware rendering, windowed@1024x768 resolution, and Color Cursor with no slowdowns (as of yet, I'm not saying I won't ever, just that I haven't gotten any problems yet. Maybe it's because it uses DDR3 memory.)

[gabrielbyrnei]

yeah well just bought the pc so im not changing the graphics card for a while, or atleast the new HD4XXX and GT200 come out, like on july. This Hd2600xt im on is also DDR3. On regular cities with like 500-800k population it runs quite smooth though

[SC4BOY]

Turn off all ADVANCED settings such as antialiasing, etc as SC4 made no use of those.. the ATI should work fine.. I use one and have NO PROBLEMS even on large cities (X1900XT 512Mb).. to avoid making issues with your other games, make an application specific setting for SC4 as its pretty stupid, just like myself wrt graphics

[cogeo]

Do you have the latest version of drivers and DirectX installed?
Did you check if windows loads the correct driver, and not an earlier or some "default" or "stock" one?
Is hardawre rendering (in SC4) enabled?

[gabrielbyrnei]

yup, everything is at it should be. Latest DirectX, 8.5 Catalyst. Hardware Rendering aswell