New PC for SC4

[RickD]

I am considering to upgrade my PC. Mainly because SC4 is running awfully slow. I am currently not playing anymore because it is a frustrating experience. 

Anyway, since SC4 is such an old game I guess there might be all kinds of problems with new hardware. Can anyone give me some advice on what to look out for?

I currently have a Core2Duo E6400 processor, ATI Radeon HD6870 graphics, 8 GB RAM and a SSD.
I plan to buy: Intel Core i5-4670K, Nvidia GeForce GTX770, 16 GB RAM. I'll keep the SSD and install my Win7 again.

Any advice is welcome. 

[Kitsune]

That looks like it'll run it with no issues, that is a really nice computer - it should last you quite a few years.

[art128]

It even is overkill if it's used just for SC4.

Also you might want to look into the Radeon R9 270X/280X series, as Nvidia cards are still greatly over priced for what they're worth.

[RickD]

It even is overkill if it's used just for SC4.

Hehe, no, I am also looking forward to play Rail Simulator and Flight Simulator in high resolution and full details.  And since I am not very impressed by the Xbox One and the PS4 I might play more PC games in the future.

Also you might want to look into the Radeon R9 270X/280X series, as Nvidia cards are still greatly over priced for what they're worth.

I will but I heard the fans on the new Radeons are very noisy.  My computer is in the living room so it needs to be quiet.

[art128]

Casper, this might be true for the R9 290 considering non reference coolers aren't out yet. The non-reference 270-280 run quite correctly.

I'm basing myself from the review I read of people using 270X/280X under BF3.

[droric]

I would recommend getting the highest possible clock speed you can get in an intel core chip (number of cores doesn't matter much).  This has had the biggest factor in my Simcity 4 performance over anything else.  There is a very noticeable difference from 3 Ghz to 4.9 Ghz.  Video card for Simcity 4 should be pretty non impacting.

Just my 2c

[cogeo]

What's so slow really? Your computer may not be at the edge of technology, but it's indeed a very fast one, and has a lot of RAM.
I would rather recommend that you try to find which component is the bottleneck. The CPU, the RAM, the SSD, the HDD, or maybe some wrong BIOS settings? Also take into account that SC4 not just allocates memory from the virtual memory space, it employes memory mapping techniques as well (you can see a temporary process in the Task Manager - only while SC4 is running) which makes things quite complicated. Add to these that on a 64-bit system SC4 actually runs under wowexec (which in turn is a process on its own) and you may find it hard to make meaningful conclusions. You need to determine whether your system CPU- or I/O-bound. In the former case a CPU upgrade would help, but it may not be possible to put a much faster CPU on a older system, as the other components might keep performance low. So it might be best to try to find out what happens with temporary files and the swap file. On my computer I have moved the swap file and the TEMP folders (and set the TEMP environment variable) to another partition on a another HD - the partition was fresh (no fragmenation) when I first allocated the (large) swap file there. Not sure about the SSD. Fast HDDs with a large amount cache may actually perform better than SSDs in many cases.

[NCGAIO]

...Also take into account that SC4 not just allocates memory from the virtual memory space, it employes memory mapping techniques as well (you can see a temporary process in the Task Manager - only while SC4 is running)...

This is new information for me about a subject that has always had another explanation (~ e5d141.tmp)

then If you could  consult the links below and check the accuracy of the statement would be useful for  reviewing this concept that spread through the web for various others softwares.


- Trouble with a file called ~e5d141.tmp

- Error in Module ~e5d141.tmp (or similar)