Anyone using a i7-4770k - how is the performance for cities:skylines ?

[Pallidum]

In my days, I had to upgrade to 1 MB RAM, because 512 KB was just a little slow for Civ I on my Amiga 500.

Same. That was my first actual RAM upgrade. It cost me a fortune. Although, it wasn't Civ 1. It was actually Sim City. A few months later, Maxis released a version of Sim City that worked on 512kB of RAM.

I miss the old Maxis games.

 

[Woody Red]

Your processor should do better than mine. What video card do you have? If you use many mods/assets, then you may need more memory. But your 6-core should fill the default 9-tiles with relative ease. (over 250k pop.).

My graphics card is an NVIDIA GT 440 - and I notice significant slow down around 30k population - where the x3 simulation speed on a 30k city goes slower than I would see the x1 speed going on a smaller city. could be my road layouts causing the slow down maybe... Ive also noticed having elaborate public transport networks seem to cause slowdown.. but Im not sure really. Im hoping a i7-4770k will let me get up to 100k or so before slowing down too much.

 

[MarkJohnson]

That GT-440 is little better than integrated graphics and below minimum requirements. I'd go with a minor GTX-960 or so upgrade depending on your power supply. At least a GTX-750 Ti if you are on a tight budget as it won't need a power supply for sure. please post your power supply make and model number to make sure.

I'm sure your issues are more GPU related than CPU related.

 

[Woody Red]

That GT-440 is little better than integrated graphics and below minimum requirements. I'd go with a minor GTX-960 or so upgrade depending on your power supply. At least a GTX-750 Ti if you are on a tight budget as it won't need a power supply for sure. please post your power supply make and model number to make sure.

I'm sure your issues are more GPU related than CPU related.

So you think I could see significant improvement by just upgrading my GPU ? .. hmm.. I'll post what power supply I have when I get a chance. thanks !

 

[MarkJohnson]

So you think I could see significant improvement by just upgrading my GPU ? .. hmm.. I'll post what power supply I have when I get a chance. thanks !

It can hold you back. Your CPU is way above minimum and should run the game much better. It sounds like to me it's GPU just can't can't keep up and is slowing you down.

You CPU should get you 9-tile completely full with intermittent lag when your city is growing too fast. Maybe try balancing your city to see if it helps, but your video card is below minimum requirements.

 

[jamiechi]

In case anyone is interested. Here are the ram limits for Win7 64 bit :

• Starter: 8GB
• Home Basic: 8GB
• Home Premium: 16GB
• Professional: 192GB
• Enterprise: 192GB
• Ultimate: 192GB

I haven't found many games or programs that need more than 8GB total system memory. With memory as cheap as it is, you might as well start with 16GB.
If you can afford it, try to get an Nvidia GTX 970 or better with 4GB of Vram. (I don't care for non-Nvidia video cards.)
A GTX 960 should be fine for now if you are on a limited budget.

I have a GTX 650 with 1GB Vram, 16GB system ram, AMD Phenom 6 core. So far I haven't had any slowdowns, although my cities aren't very big yet.
For the latest video cards and gaming systems, your power supply should be around 750 watts or more.​

 

[SuiciSpai]

Im playing with and old Q6600 @ 3.000 gz with only 4 gb of ram (SSD disk on OS helps) and a GTX 660. Game runs fine at max 1920. The CPU is 7/8 years old so probably an i7 is more than you need for the game. better watch your GFX (probably you can save around 100€ or something like that changing that i7 for the best i5k, and use that money to buy a better GFX (for 220€ you can have a very very good one) (Only if you didnt buy the computer yet ofc)

 

[Azurespecter]

I'm using an i7 4th gen, 32 GB of RAM, and a GTX 770M (so yes, I'm on a laptop) - the graphics card isn't super amazing.

I run Cities: Skylines flawlessly, and as a community manager I subscribe to over 1,000 assets, and almost every single mod made. I would defintely say that an i7 will keep your game running well, assuming you have enough RAM too. I'd suggest 12 GB is great, 16 is amazing. My 32 is overkill, haha.

A SSD also helps with load times, but as others have said, it's mostly the initial load that gets long. It's not unbearable.

Additionally, i7's are pretty standard now, and aren't all that expensive. Intel hasn't announced a new line, so I'd bet i7's will be around for a while. Good investment.

 

[AlexTheCrate]

I have 2 systems (one faraway, one on my side). The faraway one sports a i5-4570K+2xGTX760 SLI, and the near one has a i7-4770K@4.2GHz+GTX780. Since CSL doesn't support SLI... There are some noticeable differences between each component, though the most impacting factor in gameplay is the CPU, and followed by a certain extent VRAM (since I use a lot of custom assets). In terms of RAM I transplanted my i5's 16GB RAM into my i7's 24GB RAM, so I'm currently running 32GB.

Between my 2 GPUs the only difference I noted is while my 780 can reach 60 np while focusing a small neighbourhood, my 760 can only reach 60fps on the ground level.
Simulation wise though... i7 runs much better than the i5. At the same clock speed, same gen.

I tested the two system in space of 2 weeks (I had to take a plane trip to actually test my current config), using the same city saved in the cloud. 120k pop, lots of custom assets.

 

[John Bon Jovi]

I´m running a i7 4770k, a gtx770 and 16GB ram and had no problems at all. I can even play the better ssma on 200% with roundabout 40fps. Only the speed doesn´t change from 1to3 since I reached 100k pop. But i play with allot assets and mods. I am about 200k pop by now and it´s not getting worse at all.

 

[Sanny]

Runs flawless with an i7 4770k and a GTX 780 and 16Gb DDR3 RAM, however I have quite a few mods so my RAM usage runs high whilst running the game and nothing else apart from Steam and AVG in the background results in 50% of my RAM being used (whilst having a <100,000 populated city). I'm getting between 30-40fps with the AA fixer mod (increases resolution you see )

 

[derek328]

Runs flawless with an i7 4770k and a GTX 780 and 16Gb DDR3 RAM, however I have quite a few mods so my RAM usage runs high whilst running the game and nothing else apart from Steam and AVG in the background results in 50% of my RAM being used (whilst having a <100,000 populated city). I'm getting between 30-40fps with the AA fixer mod (increases resolution you see )

I have a very similar setup right now too. Intel i7 4770k, 16GB DDR3 RAM, but my GTX780 is EVGA's Superclocked edition that enables higher boost clocks.

Despite the ridiculous number of mods in my game, I don't usually see any <40 FPS dips.
The game hovers around 50-60FPS even if I deliberately push some camera acrobatics.

 

[Metalpuritan]

I am using an i5 2500k and my PC eats this game alive. Though, my CPU fan is running high speed constantly. So while my PC is eating this game alive it is also exorcising. My video card is GTX GT 740, nothing spectacular in terms of the latest and greatest, but again, PC is eating this game alive. I actually had to upgrade to what I have now because this game fried my old RAM and video card when it released, the old GTX 460SE just couldn't handle the strain and it finally gave up and died, shame, it had a good 4 years of solid service. I suspected my RAM was going bad now for a while before the video card died so I replaced it at the same time, the RAM was over 6 years old.

I don't replace hardware until I encounter a game that I own and want to play very badly cannot run smoothly with no video lag or just won;t play at all or a part undergoes catastrophic failure. And when i do replace hardware, I don't just grab the latest and greatest, no need for that mess. I look at the latest and greatest, see its price, then slash the price by about $300.00 to $400.00 USD and get that product instead, that is for video cards specifically. For everything else I just get the second or third or fourth most expensive item that fits my motherboard.

Shame though, when and if this mother board goes I will have to upgrade to an i7 even though it is completely unnecessary, probably won't NEED an i7 of any model for another 3 to 4 or more years.

We are at a period of time right now where hardware has eclipsed the software by such a degree that buying anything current is just asinine. I actually blame the consoles for this, were the consoles not in the way software could advance unfettered, but software always has to hang back to cater to the console hardware that does not change but every few years.

Personally, I don't understand all the insecurity surrounding the ownership of computer hardware. Meh.

 

[78stonewobble]

In case anyone is interested. Here are the ram limits for Win7 64 bit :

• Starter: 8GB
• Home Basic: 8GB
• Home Premium: 16GB
• Professional: 192GB
• Enterprise: 192GB
• Ultimate: 192GB

I haven't found many games or programs that need more than 8GB total system memory. With memory as cheap as it is, you might as well start with 16GB.
If you can afford it, try to get an Nvidia GTX 970 or better with 4GB of Vram. (I don't care for non-Nvidia video cards.)
A GTX 960 should be fine for now if you are on a limited budget.

I have a GTX 650 with 1GB Vram, 16GB system ram, AMD Phenom 6 core. So far I haven't had any slowdowns, although my cities aren't very big yet.
For the latest video cards and gaming systems, your power supply should be around 750 watts or more.​

Hmm, admittedly I'm somewhat out of the loop on the hardware side, but if I remember correctly there could be a down side to getting 16 gb vs. 8 gb of memory... The 16 gb of ram might be slower than the 8 gb... But that becomes a rather technical discussion and how big a difference it would really make is another question.

Usually the tests I've seen measure performance difference between types of memory in something like 5 percent at most. Barely noticeable... On the other hand if you run out of memory and have to start using the harddrive. Now that's noticeable.

My recommendation would be to save the money on 16 gb memory and spend a little more on the graphicscard / SSD.

 

[NickSlip]

Thinking about grabbing a 5820k in the next few months and overclocking it to around 4.5. Can anyone here vouch for that processor's performance in game?

 

[MarkJohnson]

Thinking about grabbing a 5820k in the next few months and overclocking it to around 4.5. Can anyone here vouch for that processor's performance in game?

It is basically a normal quad core i7 with 2 extra cores. It should be appox. 50% faster than my i7-4790k that auto overclocks to 4.4GHz. Your trouble may be gettig 4.0GHz or better. There's no guarantee it will go above rated speeds. But you should be able to force turbo on all 4 core at 3.6GHz.

You'll need very good cooling and a very good motherboard. I have an Asus Maximus Hero board that has auto turbo, as well as my Gigabyte Gaming 5 motherboard.

Maybe look over at the overclocking forums and see who has overclocked that chip past 4.5 GHz and see what settings they used and on which boards.

 

[Angus725]

With mods and ~250k population, speed 3 isn't much faster than speed 1 on a 4790k @ 4.0GHz.

Wish I could bring home the 2x14 core Xeons we have at work to try Cities on.

 

[Balakompi]

I would think a Phenom II should be able to handle a city of 20,000 without issues. What's your GPU? It plays an important part as well.

32GB of RAM is overkill, 8GB should be enough.

I'm running the game on a 4770K @ 4.5 GHz, 8GB of RAM and a GTX 970. I was previously using a GTX 670 and that worked good too. I'm getting maybe 45 FPS with a big city.

The boy doesn't want to settle for "enough". It's comments like this that made me go for 32GB in my computer (2012) ... to spite Internet "gurus" advocating getting just "enough".

But it's nice, it's like having infinite memory, never any problems running out. I'm actually at 47% memory used now. I have so many programs open, probably 50 browser tabs, work stuff, photo editing etc ... and Cities: Skylines takes up 5 gigabytes of RAM alone (125k city running)! So right now I'd actually be close to running out of memory if I had 16GB. (It was worse earlier when my computer constantly ate more and more memory for no good reason seemingly infinitely, probably some memory leak that's gone now.) But anyway ... if you let it sink in that my city takes 5 GB on its own, you know 8 GB is never going to be "enough" if you want to do like me and add lots of mods and resources and build a large(ish) city, basically doing whatever you want without worrying about reaching hardware limits.

 

[brownie24]

I'm not running i7-4770k but i7-4790k and my game has slowed down.
My system specs are:
Win 7 64bit
i7-4790k cpu
Nvidia GeForce GTX 960 gpu
8gb ram
On my current game the slow down started when my population hit around 68k. I'm not running Snow but am running After Dark and I do have some assets. According to Windows Performance Monitor Cities is using 75% to 85% of my cpu. I don't have anything else open when playing (but steam). When nothing else is running but background apps my performance is 2% of the cpu. My drivers are up to date and I am using the default nvidia 3D settings for this game. I realize the game has a lot going on what with all the people and traffic and such but at this point there is no difference between speed 1 and speed 3. Any tips on how I might speed it up again?

 

[MarkJohnson]

Another necro thread. You probably should have created a new thread rather than resurrect an old one that's nearly a year old.

Your likely causes are mods/assets. There was a patch released a week ago and modders have to update their mods/assets for the new patch and are currently likely conflicting with the patch causing you issues.