Performance poll/survey - how does cities skylines run for you and what hardware are you using ?

[MarkJohnson]

I have an 8-core FX-8230 8-core and it runs the game just fine. I play my 600k 25-tiles full map about the same as my i7-49790k did. I upgraded to a i7-5820k (6-core) and it runs a little better than my FX-8230 (8-core).

Other games may play better on the i7, but this one does at least equal.

 

[Michael Matthews]

Thanks!

One more question, if you will. I see people saying they get benefits from having more than 4 cores. But on my FX-8350 CPU usage hovers around the 50% mark and never spikes above it. Technically it's a 4 physical / 8 logical core chip, with a lot of resources duplicated on each physical core. Seems like the game is using at most 4 threads concurrently. (This is on Linux.)

It's hard to tell how many cores are used by an app on modern operating systems because the OS will shuffle threads around all the cores. Probably something to do with equalizing core thermals and/or power.

 

[MarkJohnson]

My i7 4-core with hyper-threading (8-psuedo cores) were maxed out 100%.

My 8-core runs about a steady 75% (60% to 90%), or 6 real cores.

Linux and openGL aren't as optimized for this game like windows and Direct X. So Linux will never measure up to Windows. Same with Apple's OSX and Metal (or whatever they use).

If you wanted to test, you should be able to force affinity on the app so it uses only the number of cores you chose.

 

[Brecht165]

Currently, the latest patch has issues with bike lanes and surely other issues yet to be determined. so if currently it has gotten worse, it may take some time to find all the bugs. There should be a patch out soon.

Thanks for pointing this out. My Snowfall compact city has 25K cims and bike lanes everywhere (plus pedestrian roads to access tram stops). In its original state, couple of minutes after loading, a day takes 14,81 seconds. When replacing all bikelanes with regular roads, I drop down to 9,76 seconds for the fastest day. When I remove the pedestrian roads, the trams have no point in being, and once public transport vehicles (except taxis) are in their respective stations, I can get a 3-speed day in 4.60 seconds again.

I'm on Intel Core i7-4710MQ @ 2.50 GHz (3.5GHz Turbo)
8GB RAM 1600MHz
NVIDIA GEForce GTX 960M
W10 PRO
No mods

==================edit:
After having read https://www.reddit.com/r/CitiesSkyl...lse_having_abnormal_cpu_performance/?sort=new
I found loads of mobs in my slow running game to disperse (and replacing roads disperses many of them). I'm going back to the original bike roads and hope it gets fixed soon.

 

[dexter_s]

I have a 7 year old CPU (which was top of the line back then) and a new GPU

i7 920 OC to 3.2 Ghz
GTX 970
12 GB RAM

Runs fine on my 50k City; CPU usage at 30-40% ; I will usually hit around 70% at 100-150k

FPS ranges from 50-20 fps, but I have mods, the 20fps periods are when I'm using the FPS camera mod and moving first person in the city

Rainfall has made performance slightly worse, but it has already been noted there is a bug with bike lanes.

 

[primem0ver]

Remember this is an agent based simulator and cims needs to get from point A to point B in a timely manner. Your issue are two-fold, you use mods which increase the load on the CPU. I've seen Traffic++ alone double the load by cutting my FPS in half, plus poor city layout increasing traffic agents and other cim agents making you lose even more computer resources. early game it's usually imports/exports and not enough highways to cims to their destinations on time.

currently, the latest patch has issues with bike lanes and surely other issues yet to be determined. so if currently it has gotten worse, it may take some time to find all the bugs. There should be a patch out soon.

You sound like your other games aren't agent based simulators as they use lots of CPU and little graphics. Mods for this game are usually AI behavior people aren't happy with and modify it and it uses up even more resources. Your graphics card is way past the recommended and I can't ever see any reason your card would bog down. so no, your graphics card has zero performance affects on this game as it is mostly all CPU based. Tracking agents (CPU) vs. drawing agents(GPU).

Performance hit won't occur until you start saturating the agent limits. The game has built in limits, with the new patch you're experiencing these limits earlier than normal if you haven't played since October. Once the patch is out it should get smoother. Hopefully once patch is all that will be needed and you can be returned to normal play.

You can try upgrading (down grading) bike lane roads to normal roads. Bike lanes seem to be a major issue. Just don't over write your saved game if you choose to continue playing without bike lanes so, you can go back to your old game when the patch is finished completely.

I think a normal day takes around 8 seconds, although my new game with Snowfall takes 3-4 seconds. Maybe it just depends on your CPU loads. I don't use any mods except unlock 25-tiles which you can unsubscribe as soon as all 25-tiles are unlocked. But the key to best performance is no mods or assets. assets have a much smaller impact, but can slow down in some instances. especial when they are more than a cosmetic mod.

I do have a lot of bike lanes but my game hasn't changed its performance with the new patch unless the latest patch was out before mid-October. They need to get rid of hard-coded "agent" limits (based on processor usage) or let us set our own based on a computers performance level. My CPU usage during the came is currently only 50% (fluctuates between 47-52%).

 

[arrgy]

Intel i5-2500K CPU @ 3.30 GHz 4 cores
16 GB RAM
AMD R7 200 Series

Mine has been running ok, I did notice a slow down for the first time today on the ice islands map

 

[waway625]

i7 5820k
16Gb RAM
GTX 970

running @ 2560x1440 on my 27" Dell u2715h

only problem is loading times, even when the game is installed on my SSD. loading takes a few minutes. performance is OK even for my 300k+ pop cities

 

[Starr_Man]

Windows 8
i7 4790s quad-core @ 3.20GHz
GTX-970 4Gb
16GB HyperX Fury RAM
2560 x 1440 BenQ monitor

I usually have between 15 and 20 mods active, plus hundreds of custom assets. The only thing I notice is loading times. The game itself runs fine for any city I've built so far.

 

[Mirrrr]

i7 6700
GTX-960 4gb
16 gv ram
Same as above game runs like a sunshine but loading in game takes a while. But only with 600+ assets

 

[Diomedes]

I7 5820 OC'd @ 3.8 ghz
GTX 980 TI 6GB OC'd
32GB Quad Channel RAM @ 2133mhz
512GB SSD
Dell P2715Q 27" Ultra HD 4K Monitor

Even with those specs, this game loads as slooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooow as molasses when all the mods and custom assets I like are installed. Don't get me wrong, I really dig this game, but it's literally the slowest loading game I've played since the 1990s.

I've subsequently purged all custom assets and mods and the game's performance improved exponentially. The only problem is, this game's a lot more fun with custom mods and assets installed. If a sequel to this game is ever made, I hope the programmers keep in mind that people like using mucho custom assets & mods with games like this and optimize the game accordingly.

 

[MarkJohnson]

You don't seem to understand that custom mods and assets are basically hacks to the game. Then you load hundred if not thousands of these on your system and expect to loads these dozen or so gigabytes worth of files instantly?

Sounds like you just need to weed out your mods/assets. You likely have incompatible items and they will slow down load times even more.

Try the screen loading mod to see if it helps. But that many items is just going to take a long time.

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=667342976&searchtext=screen+loading+mod

Mt best suggestion for you is to just play the game vanilla and learn the mechanics of the game and you'll soon find you need very little mods and very few assets.

You seem to be bitten by the workshop bug and just got subscribe happy and then don't even use half the things you subscribed. just be more selective. It's not the game has issues, it's the operators.

so basically, if you load your system up with crap, it'll run like crap.

 

[Alex24]

@MarkJohnson Have you read his post completly? He mentioned doing most things you adviced him to do.

 

[waway625]

i7 5820K
GTX970
16Gb RAM

this is how it runs

 

[CaffeinatedNoms]

Bit of an odd combination here...

My daily machine is a 2011 15" MacBook Pro, with a 2.2GHz Core i7 2720QM, 16GiB RAM, and a woefully poor AMD Radeon HD 6750M with 1GiB shader memory. With the graphics set to medium I can run a city of up to 45-50,000 with minimal slowdown, but I pay for it with massively increased loading times. I have 40 mods installed, mostly for population rebalance, props, and road stuff, and a whole bunch of assets - and apparently I'm unique in not suffering too bad of a slowdown as the game runs.

Our gaming PC is a custom built tower with a 3.2GHz i5 6500, 16GiB RAM, and an nVidia GeForce 970 with 4GiB shader memory. For reasons that totally escape both myself and my partner, Cities runs like absolute horsedroppings on it. Oh, it looks really nice with the graphics pumped up to maximum, and there's no animation slowdown at all, but I can't tell you what my maximum population was on it because the game won't load without crashing. Or sometimes it will, and it'll run fine, and then it'll autosave and panic and crash. Sometimes it just won't start. Sometimes it won't exit properly after crashing. Sometimes, very, VERY rarely it works perfectly for a whole afternoon.

 

[SimbaIT]

I've a Intel® Core™ i7 740QM 1.73-2.93 GHz, Nvidia 460M 1.5 Gb GDDR5, 8 Gb, 256 SSD, Windows laptop. I "can" (somewhat playable) play Skylines with a few assets and no mods up to 100K pop (currently a 150K game), with 20-30 fps at low settings and 10-20 fps at high settings.

I don't plan to buy a new gaming desktop now, as I'd wait for the upcomming AMD-Intel-Nvidia war to reap the spoils

I'm upgrading the NAS system (a pentium G3220 3.0 Ghz) to an HTPC with a 750TI (best performance/power ratio under 75W). How do you think Cities would run?

 

[MarkJohnson]

Our gaming PC is a custom built tower with a 3.2GHz i5 6500, 16GiB RAM, and an nVidia GeForce 970 with 4GiB shader memory. For reasons that totally escape both myself and my partner, Cities runs like absolute horsedroppings on it. Oh, it looks really nice with the graphics pumped up to maximum, and there's no animation slowdown at all, but I can't tell you what my maximum population was on it because the game won't load without crashing. Or sometimes it will, and it'll run fine, and then it'll autosave and panic and crash. Sometimes it just won't start. Sometimes it won't exit properly after crashing. Sometimes, very, VERY rarely it works perfectly for a whole afternoon.

Sounds like you should start a new thread for your custom built PC.

I've a Intel® Core™ i7 740QM 1.73-2.93 GHz, Nvidia 460M 1.5 Gb GDDR5, 8 Gb, 256 SSD, Windows laptop. I "can" (somewhat playable) play Skylines with a few assets and no mods up to 100K pop (currently a 150K game), with 20-30 fps at low settings and 10-20 fps at high settings.

I don't plan to buy a new gaming desktop now, as I'd wait for the upcomming AMD-Intel-Nvidia war to reap the spoils

I'm upgrading the NAS system (a pentium G3220 3.0 Ghz) to an HTPC with a 750TI (best performance/power ratio under 75W). How do you think Cities would run?

Probably about the same, to maybe worse. Pentium is about minimum requirements or a little higher, 750 Ti is better and close to recommended requirements.

 

[Leeijo]

i7 5820K
GTX970
16Gb RAM

this is how it runs

@waway625 Your city is impressive and to be able to play that smooth would be nice!

My setup doesn't differ that much, same graphics GTX970, 32GB mem but a 6700K istead of your six core. For me FPS started to slow down at only 100k. I use a lot of mods though which leads me to my question; do you use any CPU intensive mods? Traffic++, TrafficPresident etc?

 

[waway625]

@waway625 Your city is impressive and to be able to play that smooth would be nice!

My setup doesn't differ that much, same graphics GTX970, 32GB mem but a 6700K istead of your six core. For me FPS started to slow down at only 100k. I use a lot of mods though which leads me to my question; do you use any CPU intensive mods? Traffic++, TrafficPresident etc?

hmmmm actually my CPU usage isnt that high so Im not sure if there is an advantage with the 5820k vs the 6700k

I dont use Traffic ++ or Traffic President though

 

[nismoz34498]

I7 5820K cpu
32GB 3000mhz ram
GTX1080 Gaming X 8G gpu
2560x1440 monitor

Dont currently have a city higher than 100k so im not sure how it is at higher populations, but so far smooth as silk. Previously had a gtx 980 gaming 4g and it would start to get laggy around 100k.