Sim City 4 sucks on my TiBook

monkeyastronautmonkeyastronaut
Posted:
in Mac Software edited January 2014
I just purchased Sim City 4 this weekend and I must say I'm very dissapointed by the performance I'm getting. The game runs like crap, and if I want to get good graphical performance I have to dumb down the visual effects, turn off some of the graphics goodies and even after that, running it is a pain.



I gave up on it.



I have a 1Ghz TiBook (the very last one, the superdrive one with 512 MB in RAM and 64 MB of video memory). I thought the game would run better with my specs.



I ended up installing an old copy of Sim City 3K Unlimited for WINDOWS and running it on Virtual PC. It runs much better. I'll play with that one for the next few years until my next Mac can handle SC4.



So if you're thinking of buying this SC4 thing, well, be cautious and make sure you have a better video card.



Okay, I had to vent.

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 17
    aquaticaquatic Posts: 5,602member
    I have a 12" with half the VRAM and all settings on MAX and 640 RAM it runs decent. it stutters and has that "image shift" of "lines" that all 12"ers have but it's alright. how many people did you have in you City? I just became mayor so I believe that's 1000. I hear with more people it gets real slow. I'll see what happens in the next few days. But hopefully the performance will be fixed in an update.



    SC3 had the Apple Campus. Is there one for SC 4 yet! And is there a 128 by 128 icon for SC4? The SC4 icon is retarded, it's an OS 9 icon on an OS X app.
  • Reply 2 of 17
    nebrienebrie Posts: 483member
    The slow Simcity 4 performance isn't your TiBook's fault. Read this thread: http://forums.macnn.com/showthread.p...hreadid=163271



    There's a quick fix somewhere in there that will make it smoke.
  • Reply 3 of 17
    aquaticaquatic Posts: 5,602member
    Thank you Nebrie that was informative. Apparently it doesn't utilize Radeon 9000 cards right. However I am on a PBG4 12" with Geforce 4 Go graphics so that doesn't apply. My city only has a few thousand. It is getting a little slower. It also doesn't utilize dual processors very much apparently, only for sound and music. The porting company is posting on the MacNN board which is good to see. Man I need cash I'm in the red every month because I paused, built a town with services, and unpaused! I even accepted a military missile testing site. Hmmm.
  • Reply 4 of 17
    monkeyastronautmonkeyastronaut Posts: 1,343member
    WOW, that really worked! Thanks a lot. The game runs perfect now.



    Now if I could find a way to make my city profitable... hehe. I'm losing cash fast. It was much easier to make money on SC3K.
  • Reply 5 of 17
    nuggetnugget Posts: 19member
    Even with the hack mentioned in that other thread it's completely unplayable on my 1GHz, 1GB 15" PowerBook. Total waste of money. I'll never play it with it as slow as it is.
  • Reply 6 of 17
    flick justiceflick justice Posts: 632member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Nugget

    Even with the hack mentioned in that other thread it's completely unplayable on my 1GHz, 1GB 15" PowerBook. Total waste of money. I'll never play it with it as slow as it is.



    does this update help?

    simcity 4 v1.0.1

    flick
  • Reply 7 of 17
    nuggetnugget Posts: 19member
    The update helps, yes. The game is playable after patching to v1.0.1.



    It's not /fast/, but it's playable. After a few minutes, the sluggishness feels normal.



    Thanks for the link.
  • Reply 8 of 17
    t'hain esh kelcht'hain esh kelch Posts: 1,274member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Nugget

    The update helps, yes. The game is playable after patching to v1.0.1.



    It's not /fast/, but it's playable. After a few minutes, the sluggishness feels normal.



    Thanks for the link.



    You must have done the 'hack' wrong then, because the update (almost) just fixes that bug on TiBooks...
  • Reply 9 of 17
    nuggetnugget Posts: 19member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by T'hain Esh Kelch

    You must have done the 'hack' wrong then, because the update (almost) just fixes that bug on TiBooks...



    I'm quite confident I did not, thanks for the slam, though.



    Jeez.
  • Reply 10 of 17
    giantgiant Posts: 6,041member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Nugget

    Even with the hack mentioned in that other thread it's completely unplayable on my 1GHz, 1GB 15" PowerBook. Total waste of money. I'll never play it with it as slow as it is.



    The game runs perfectly fine on my Ghz Ti with 1 GB of RAM. And I got some big-ass cities (and some small ones, of course).



    I did have to edit the file at first to make the graphics actually work, but now it's a-ok. Sure it gets a little sluggish, but that's life and computers. If you don't like it, move to the year 2050.



    JK
  • Reply 11 of 17
    wmfwmf Posts: 1,164member
    Still slow on my 800MHz TiBook after the 1.0.1 update. I guess the old-school Radeon just can't handle it.
  • Reply 12 of 17
    aquaticaquatic Posts: 5,602member
    Does the update help for PowerBooks with NVIDIA? It's sooo slow
  • Reply 13 of 17
    ghost_user_nameghost_user_name Posts: 22,667member
    I've said it before... SimCity 4 is one of those games that is going to be fun in about 12-18 months when we buy new hardware. When SC3 came out, it ran just awful on my system at the time. I upgraded to a new G3 about 12 months later, was bored one day, installed SC3 and it ran without flaw.



    I think SC4 is going to be like that. When you guys upgrade to a G5 or whatever in about 12 months, give it another whirl. It'll probably be fun then.
  • Reply 14 of 17
    nuggetnugget Posts: 19member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by LoCash

    I've said it before... SimCity 4 is one of those games that is going to be fun in about 12-18 months



    I think you've got it exactly right.

    It makes me wonder what kind of monster systems the developers at aspyr have.
  • Reply 15 of 17
    dstranathandstranathan Posts: 1,717member
    It sucks. Period.





  • Reply 16 of 17
    matt dangermatt danger Posts: 170member
    Hey thanks for that link Nebrie! it fixed up y TiBook quite nicely.
  • Reply 17 of 17
    aquaticaquatic Posts: 5,602member
    Whatever. EA writes crap code. A G4 867 shouldn't have problems esp with over half a gig of ram.
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