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You are here: MacNN Forums > Enthusiast Zone > Gaming > I feel ripped off - Sim city 4 'rush hour'

I feel ripped off - Sim city 4 'rush hour'
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tkmd
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Aug 5, 2008, 08:30 PM
 
So I bought this game and really started to get into it. About 3 hours into it the game freezes. Start it again, once again as my city started to grow- freezed. I searched google, updated to 1.1, still the same problems. I am shocked that Aspyr or EA actually let this buggy code out, not to mention its slow as hech on my 2.66 MP.

Does anyone know of some trick to make it more stable/quicker? Otherwise, I just threw away $39.

Is the windows version more stable (Im thinking bootcamp)?
Pismo 400 | Powerbook 1.5 GHz | MacPro 2.66/6GB/7300GT
     
@pplejaxkz
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Aug 5, 2008, 08:33 PM
 
To be honest, I never had the patience for Sim City so hats off to you for even playing it. Now The Sims in general I could throw away countless hours. But back to the topic, I usually play the Windows versions of my games. They seem to run a bit better, at least for me on my Macbook.
     
sek929
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Aug 5, 2008, 09:05 PM
 
Hmm, I have a friend who runs it just fine on a 1.67GHZ iBook G4. Maybe the Universal version has stability issues.
     
Chuckit
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Aug 6, 2008, 04:19 PM
 
Do you play a lot of other games on that computer? I know some people report similar problems in general with Nvidia cards in MBPs.
Chuck
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goMac
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Aug 7, 2008, 04:12 AM
 
The NVidia drivers in 10.5.3 have inherent problems, and they could lead to instability. My understanding is that Apple will eventually fix them, it's just a long process.

That said, I play Sim City 4 (w Rush Hour) on Windows (it was cheap, but I keep my eye on the Mac version for when prices go down), and it also has stability problems. Some days it runs fine for hours. Some days it just crashes every half hour or hour.

Sim City 4 was known to be slow, both on Windows and on the Mac. In fact, on my old Pentium 4 3.2 ghz PC, it was nearly unplayable when the city grew large. On my Macbook Pro, it's choppy when the city becomes large, but it runs pretty smoothly on my Mac Pro. It seems to like a lot of RAM, and my GeForce 8800 might be helping.

At some point something I did actually made it run very fast on my Mac Pro. It was either the Rush Hour expansion or the extra 2 gigs of RAM I added. But before it wasn't uncommon for a month to take 15-30 seconds at the highest speed.
8 Core 2.8 ghz Mac Pro/GF8800/2 23" Cinema Displays, 3.06 ghz Macbook Pro
Once you wanted revolution, now you're the institution, how's it feel to be the man?
     
tkmd  (op)
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Aug 7, 2008, 06:19 PM
 
Originally Posted by @pplejaxkz View Post
To be honest, I never had the patience for Sim City so hats off to you for even playing it. Now The Sims in general I could throw away countless hours.
Originally Posted by Chuckit View Post
Do you play a lot of other games on that computer?
Yes, I do play games like this when I have work that I need to do- Perfect for procrastination.

The game will crash (freeze) in about 1-2 hours. When the city does grow it becomes choppy and briefly unresponsive. I am shocked to hear that the same thing happens on windows! How in the world does EA games expect to move this game with such problems?
Pismo 400 | Powerbook 1.5 GHz | MacPro 2.66/6GB/7300GT
     
ginoledesma
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Aug 7, 2008, 07:53 PM
 
You're lucky you got that far. Most of the time, Sim City 4 just refuses to display the mouse cursor during gameplay, which makes it almost impossible to play it properly (road construction, etc). I've since given up playing it and found it a big waste of money.
     
Big Mac
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Aug 8, 2008, 12:47 AM
 
Sim City sucked after 2000, at least on the Mac. Of course, that was back when Maxis was independent and gave a damn about the franchise.

"The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground." TJ
     
Rumor
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Aug 8, 2008, 01:39 PM
 
Originally Posted by goMac View Post
The NVidia drivers in 10.5.3 have inherent problems, and they could lead to instability. My understanding is that Apple will eventually fix them, it's just a long process.
A fix to revert to the 10.5.2 nVidia drivers. http://70.181.80.166:82/blog/archive...56-colors.html
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goMac
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Aug 8, 2008, 04:36 PM
 
Originally Posted by Rumor View Post
A fix to revert to the 10.5.2 nVidia drivers. http://70.181.80.166:82/blog/archive...56-colors.html
Yeah, that's one of the options. I have an 8800, so I haven't really felt comfortable rolling back to those drivers. The 8800 seems to have issues no matter what drivers you use right now.

I hoping 10.5.5 ships with better NVidia drivers.
8 Core 2.8 ghz Mac Pro/GF8800/2 23" Cinema Displays, 3.06 ghz Macbook Pro
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bpl323
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Aug 20, 2008, 05:23 PM
 
Expansion packs are ripoffs in my opinion.
     
   
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