Developers, developers, developers, developers

[donavannj]

Is it on single-core or multi-core mode by default? I haven't touched any settings and play it on a dual-core 1.4 GHz E-series AMD processor; it's only crashed once on me, and that only happened when the lag got so big from playing a large city at Cheetah speed that it just quit.

Since multi-cores did not exist at its release and modern OSes treat multi-cores as a single CPU, it's running in "multi-core" by default, since it's looknig for a single CPU rather than a single core, but it crashes when its process threads get split and processed out of order. It's very particular about that. If you're running just the game itself without mods, you'll rarely encounter this problem until you get large cities in your case, and with powerful enough cores, you may luck out and not get a CtD ever. It's also a game that throws fits when presented with a graphics card newer than it's capable of recognizing, though that can be changed in the .ini file, iirc.

 

[Tsutarja]

Heh, just found out that my laptop's memory is expandable up to 16GB DDR3.. wondering if I should save up a little more and actually buy more RAM or just keep it at 8GB for now.

I was also considering getting Virtualbox onto the laptop and downloading a Linux distro to use as well just for the heck of it.

 

[Alexander Nicholi]

Heh, just found out that my laptop's memory is expandable up to 16GB DDR3.. wondering if I should save up a little more and actually buy more RAM or just keep it at 8GB for now.

I was also considering getting Virtualbox onto the laptop and downloading a Linux distro to use as well just for the heck of it.

I don't see the use in having that much RAM, but if you can see a reason to, then do it. :)

Linux is cool, man. Just don't expect to get internet easily when using a PC wireless adapter for Wi-Fi.

 

[Tsutarja]

I guess I'll go ahead and give Ubuntu a try. It's been several years since I last Ubuntu o.o

 

[Legendary Silke]

Heh, just found out that my laptop's memory is expandable up to 16GB DDR3.. wondering if I should save up a little more and actually buy more RAM or just keep it at 8GB for now.

I was also considering getting Virtualbox onto the laptop and downloading a Linux distro to use as well just for the heck of it.

You should be fine with 8 GB of RAM for the foreseeable future.

As for virtual machines, that's usually the best way to use a Linux distribution on Windows laptops - Linux distributions in general tend to be fiddly with laptop hardware.

 

[Cordelia]

I don't see the use in having that much RAM, but if you can see a reason to, then do it. :)

Linux is cool, man. Just don't expect to get internet easily when using a PC wireless adapter for Wi-Fi.

I've never had a problem getting WiFi on a laptop running Linux o.o

 

[Legendary Silke]

I've never had a problem getting WiFi on a laptop running Linux o.o

Not all laptop hardware are the same ;)

The worst thing to be able to get while setting up Linux as a native operating system might be "display backlight permanently turned off" :P

 

[Alexander Nicholi]

Oh, sorry, I was thinking of those Netgear or Belkin adapters used with desktops that don't have wireless NIC cards. My bad ^^';

I've always used Microsoft Virtual PC for emulation. Is there VMWare that allows me to control things such as processor architecture, CPU clock speed, BIOS set used by the hardware, and total media hub customization to allow complete control of all of the USB connections and optical drives and whatnot?

 

[Legendary Silke]

Just remember that when it comes to setting up virtual machines, the default settings are there for a good reason.

I think I'll get my laptop serviced this March.

 

[Tsutarja]

Sometimes though default settings aren't the best performance-wise :P

I guess I could try and set up a virtual machine with default settings to see how it runs.. luckily I have a Windows XP install CD with me at all times that I bought several years ago to install that into a VM.

 

[Legendary Silke]

Sometimes though default settings aren't the best performance-wise :P

I guess I could try and set up a virtual machine with default settings to see how it runs.. luckily I have a Windows XP install CD with me at all times that I bought several years ago to install that into a VM.

The default settings are also safe settings that won't give you unexpected behaviour under most circumstances... as I found out the hard way. (VMware's multi-core implementation may cause issues.)

 

[Tsutarja]

So does Virtualbox adjust the defaults according to the OS minimum requirements? I don't think I'd be able to run Windows 7 with 64MB video memory :P

 

[Legendary Silke]

So does Virtualbox adjust the defaults according to the OS minimum requirements? I don't think I'd be able to run Windows 7 with 64MB video memory :P

You can. My desktop has 64 MB of video memory and it runs it with Aero effects to boot.

In fact, the minimum requirement for Windows Aero is 64 MB of video RAM (alongside Shader Model 2.0 (equivalent to DirectX 9.0 (not 9.0c) on the main GPU).

Anything worse than that, Windows will just shrug and do it the old-fashioned way with Windows Basic. If you're running on Windows 8 or newer, though, this point is moot, as WARP will be used instead, giving you a nice desktop without the GPU. (Software mode, though... it's gonna be slow.)

 

[Tsutarja]

Wow, I didn't actually realize that a modern OS like Windows 7 had that low of video requirements to run, although I'd imagine performance and smoothness may not be the best with 64MB of VRAM.

Also, have I ever mentioned how horrible my school's wifi is? It's a college of course, and the network there is slower than the network from the public school district.

 

[Hiatus]

I always take my phone with me when going to school, but never use wifi there. It's absolutely terrible. :P Sometimes, it'd take about six minutes to completely finish loading a webpage. Thank god I have 3G, haha.

 

[Legendary Silke]

It's not too bad, but I usually just keep it on Windows Classic, as Aero, in any of its forms, takes up a lot of memory to run.

Using Windows Classic instead of Aero on a remotely capable GPU setup can be best described as "false economy". Even if you're still running Windows Vista, given a good enough GPU (and that now includes most integrated GPUs), you're flushing the performance down the drain with Windows Classic, as non-Aero themes run mostly on the CPU.

 

[Tsutarja]

Our school's wifi is awful. There's days where it grinds to a halt and nobody likes using it.

For a college though, wifi should not be 1Mb/s down and 1Mb/s up.. that's just beyond horrible for a college if you ask me. Dunno what the speeds are like with ethernet though.

 

[Hiatus]

Are you sure, Zach? Where I go, speed always seems to be slower than that. Can't confirm what it actually is, though, as I've never bothered to check. xD"

 

[Tsutarja]

Are you sure, Zach? Where I go, speed always seems to be slower than that. Can't confirm what it actually is, though, as I've never bothered to check. xD"

Is this at your college/university though? It's bad enough that sometimes I get disconnected when actually using the wifi at my college.

 

[Cordelia]

This is going to make me sound old, but whatever. When I was in college, we didn't have WiFi except in two of the courtyards haha. Our rooms never had it D: