Simcity4 problems on laptop

Hi, i'm playing Simcity4 on my laptop and it is starting to drive me crazy. I have a W3J, which I THOUGHT should be able to play this game without blinking an eye (x1600, 2gb ram, 1.83ghz Core Duo). But, In the largest of the 3 grids, after my population hits a certain point (lets say 70-80k) the 'fastest' game setting slows to a crawl and instead of watching months tick away, I sit there and literally wait as each day passes....slowly. I tried turning down a bunch of graphics settings, which, seemed unnecessary, but it made little difference. Is my process just not up to snuff or is there a game flaw of some sort?

 

Try the patches.They might improve the performance.
BTW, Have you plugged in the laptop and set the P4G settings on Super-Performance?

 

Its a bug with the drivers.

Somewhere after Catalysts 6.3-6.4 they messed up performance in SC4 with newer drivers. Meaning if you want to play SC4 at acceptable levels use software rendering (which sucks) or use earlier catalysts, thing is, that you need catalysts 6.3 and up for the x1600.

 

I have it up-to-date patch wise. I'm running in 'high performance', but I have all my ati, link, and processor settings set to the highest level available for the 'high' mode. P4G for Vista. I'm confused to be honest.


EDIT: Ah. So is it the graphics drivers or the game? Does updating it to the 'newest' version cause the problem?

 

It is the graphics driver.

But the older graphics drivers that do not have the problem are not compatible with the X1600.

On the other hand try upgrading to the latest graphics driver and see if it helps, maybe ATI fixed the problem and I did not notice.

 

Just quick update. I installed Rush Hour (which is simcity4 deluxe) and it SEEMS to have taken care of the speed issues. But not on already existing cities...Just the new ones I start. Anyway, for the future, if anyone has this problem, try to get your hands on Simcity 4 Deluxe/Rush Hour

 

Thats what I have but it didn't make a difference.

 

It helped speed up the passage of time, but with like 300-400k people, my system still REALLY slows down, but it is much better than before. Before, it was literally taking about 20 seconds to tick off 1 day.