Hardware and Software in SC4 ???

[Silur]

Hi, Magicians of SC4 Devotion ...
One question - what difference  between Hardware and Software in Renderer of SC4 De Luxe
Who knows about «plus» and «minus» of this
I have normal water picture with some Water MODDS with Sortware, but different color of some objects and speed of game are slow, - and I have fragmented water with the same Water MODDS and good speed with Hardware - ARE this NORMAL
Thank You ...   

[xxdita]

It's to be expected that you see some differences between the two, as one will no doubt work better than the other on your computer. It all depends on your video card (for hardware rendering), and your processor & memory (for software rendering). Obviously even most onboard video chipsets have advanced since the release of SC4, but that doesn't mean they're up to the job. Whereas dual or quad core processors with the current standard amount of memory can churn it out in software rendering mode without a hitch.
Your best bet is to use the setting that looks best to you, and that you get the best performance out of. As for me, my laptop's video set can't handle it, so I switched to software rendering, and haven't had a problem since. All those brown boxes come through loud & clear. Hehehe

[Silur]

Thank You, xxdita ....
But my question not about my COMP and my VIDEO - this is excellent ....
I work with Windows XP SP3, my Video is NVIDIA GeForce 7600 GS (Driwer 6.14.11.6371 at 17.09.2007) ...
My Question about  difference  between Hardware and Software in Renderer of SC4 De Luxe  !!!
I haven't any problems with brown boxes - this is another theme ....
No More ....

[xxdita]

Hmmm... well, really that IS the difference between hardware and software rendering. SC4 was released a few years ago, when video cards were constantly one-upping each other, but PC's were made available on the cheap as well, with substandard video chips, often right on the motherboard. For this reason, Maxis added the software rendering option, so that, if necessary, the polygon crunching and whatnot for the game could be handled by the processor itself, and not rely on the video card/chip. This allowed the game to be played by even those of us that couldn't afford to upgrade to the latest video card.
Using hardware rendering, I tend to have a lot of problems, and crashes to desktop. For me, software rendering has eliminated all of these issues, so I can go about playing my game without worries. Since I have a dualcore Pentium chip, and 2GB RAM, I don't see a performance loss at all. But the 32MB of that RAM dedicated to the video card just isn't enough to handle it, especially once I started using the CAM, and having a lot of bigger buildings growing at once. But I would imagine that if you have a better video card, then the hardware rendering would work better for you.
Hope that helped.

[Silur]

Thank You - xxdita, for Your answer ...
But my mind about this is - Hardware and Software have many differences - and i don't know anything about this ...
Some years ago with GeForce 5600 I haven't any problems with water MODD's pictures in Hardware position, but now I have it ... 
This is very sad for me ...
Thank You once more ....