Hey i've just got a brand new laptop can play tropico 4and any other game i've tried on the top graphics settings, every time i place it on its highest settings after a couple of minuets the game music cuts out then then it minimises and says APPCRASH? anyone got any ideas on how to get around this problem or fix it i've tried uninstalling then reinstalling as well as try to play it on the lowest settings to no avail.

(06-11-2011 11:51 PM)Swixel Wrote:  So that other forum users (like me) can help, and maybe so Kalypso can see if there's already a known issue, could you please post the following:

• Your system specifications;
• A list of your Anti-Virus, Anti-Spyware, and other-intrusive-services list (e.g. debuggers);
• Is this the steam or retail version?;
• Do you have PunkBuster running, and is it A or B? (check processes in CTRL+SHIFT+ESC and look for PnkBstrA.exe and PnkBstrB.exe)
  

EDIT:
Also, Start -> run (If you don't have run, Hold down the Window Key and press R, then release both)
Then type in 'services.msc'
Check that "Application Experience" is running. If it's not, you might be getting file locking due to the cache being serious funky.

System specs

OS Name Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium
Version 6.1.7601 Service Pack 1 Build 7601
Other OS Description Not Available
OS Manufacturer Microsoft Corporation
System Name TINKELBURG
System Manufacturer Acer
System Model Aspire 5560
System Type x64-based PC
Processor AMD A8-3500M APU with Radeon™ HD Graphics, 1500 Mhz, 4 Core(s), 4 Logical Processor(s)
BIOS Version/Date Phoenix Technologies Ltd. V1.07, 24/06/2011
SMBIOS Version 2.6
Windows Directory C:\Windows
System Directory C:\Windows\system32
Boot Device \Device\HarddiskVolume2
Locale United Kingdom
Hardware Abstraction Layer Version = "6.1.7601.17514"
User Name Tinkelburg\Ryan
Time Zone GMT Standard Time
Installed Physical Memory (RAM) 8.00 GB
Total Physical Memory 7.47 GB
Available Physical Memory 4.91 GB
Total Virtual Memory 14.9 GB
Available Virtual Memory 11.3 GB
Page File Space 7.47 GB
Page File C:\pagefile.sys

McAfree Internet security suite

and am running it on steam

and i have no punkbuster

Thank youu

(07-11-2011 08:51 PM)tinkelburg Wrote:  Processor AMD A8-3500M APU with Radeon™ HD Graphics, 1500 Mhz, 4 Core(s), 4 Logical Processor(s)

You do not meet the minimum system requirements.

This plays battlefield 3 on its highest settings no lag how can that be not meeting the system requirements?

Battlefield 3 has a relatively low CPU draw for real-time simulation purposes. It relies primarily on the GPU. Tropico runs millions to billions of individual simulations in a 30 minute playing session, and doesn't draw as heavily on the GPU.

As for it playing Battlefield 3 on the highest settings, I'm sure that if you tried playing it for several hours you would hit a performance wall, and hard, given that even at the maximum "burst" speed your CPU is actually below what it requires too (not to mention the increased heat from running at the maximum rate for an extended period of time).

Tropico 4 requires a dual core 2.0GHz processor, and the A8-3500M only "bursts" past 2.0GHz. Clocking up and down upsets threads, which Tropico 4 uses for a lot of its core functionality.

So how come when i play on tropico 4 on the highest settings it runs smooth and i mean as smooth as games like ANNO 1404, or Company of heroes, it has no lagg issues the CPU usage isint high at all it runs fine played it for a couple of hours now but it keeps just shutting down the sound cuts out for a second and then quits. if your telling me that the laptops not good enough then id understand but if it wasnt good enough then how come the game plays fine just quits after 15 to 20 minuets?

When you start playing, what's the population? When it crashes, what's the population?

I can play the game happily on an old Dell XPS M1210 (2.13GHz dual core, 7400M, 4GB RAM) up to 4,000. From profiling the game on lower-end systems (though the lowest I have is literally a 2GHz dual core), crashing mid-to-late gametime has to do with a combination of RAM usage and CPU, and very rarely the GPU.

As your GPU is also an interesting case (we've actually already discussed that CPU/GPU combination here before) I wouldn't rule that out either.

As for CoH, try playing a prolonged skirmish with plenty of siege and see if the terrain damage doesn't lag you out.

Anyway, Anno 1404 has a much lower CPU draw and a much higher GPU draw, and the same goes for CoH (which is unit limited). Tropico simulates people, buildings, trees ... everything! Anno and CoH only simulate what they need to simulate and use shortcuts around the rest.

Ohh okay thanks for the info on the games, and my population isint anywhere near the max its at the bottom really between 50 and 200, its just that i cant really understand why the game can run so smoothly with no problems even my CPU isint at its max when am playing it i looked at my CPU at the time of playing one of the missions and its at 12% to 25% usage? if the game shouldnt run then why is it? and if its something to do with my CPU whys the CPU usage soo low wouldn't it be higher?

25% of an A8-3500M is a whole core -- Windows calculates CPU usage as a percentage of the total, so you're maxing out a core.

There's also the possible issue that it's threading onto the same core (which would be the fault of Windows, as it handles threading and the proper development route is to let the OS handle things like this so as to not conflict with IRQs).

But if i am maxing out the core how is the game working so well as well as everything else on the laptop ive just loaded up tropico 4, supreme commander:forged alliance and Empire total war at the same time and the laptop is lagging quite abit and now its saying the CPU is at 75 to 100%? with nothing running at all the CPU is at 1 maybe 2percent with just tropico on its own running its at 10 percent ? how can i be maxing out the CPU when everythings still Running with no problems?

---

it hasn't crashed for quite a while now ever since i turned the game sound off its been working fine, because whenever the game crashes a few seconds before the sound cuts out then starts again then the game dies. but even so the games too quiet without music or a random person talking ????

Factually, on a quad core system, when it reads "25%" it means that it is using a whole core (or a quarter of your maximum power, usually on the one core).

As for everything else, SC:FA and E:TW tend to run on a single core (though both also use Lua for scripting, and E:TW at least has the theoretical capability to thread though Lua 5.1.x, though I haven't looked at it). Running multiple applications to stress test only demonstrates that you can put load on a system.

As I've already said, Tropico 4 produces a load which you won't find in any other available game (I could only name one other game which outdoes Tropico for system load, and it hasn't been released due to that problem), save maybe Tropico 3 (for obvious reasons). Tropico 4 has a massive overhead that requires a lot more than the relatively trivial level of power the other two do -- SC:FA is dual 1.83GHz and E:TW runs an a single core P4. SC:FA would be a better comparison than a lot of other things, but only once you've tacked up a few thousand units on the map.

Turning off sound appears to disable FMod's functionality, which will also lower the overhead (substantially, due to the number of sound ticks).

However, the point remains, the 1.5GHz doesn't meet the minimum requirements in the same way that a low-end i5 which could burst beyond 2GHz on two cores does not.

So in other words i can only play the game if i upgrade or turn the sound off?

I don't know if turning the sound off is a complete fix, but as your system does not meet the minimum system requirements it isn't supported, so if it crashes constantly Kalypso can't be expected to support it.

Is there anything you can advise then to help me it really is a great game and i dont wanna have to play it without any sound on?

All I could guess at suggesting is that you play it with it on lower (lowest?) graphical settings. Hopefully dropping some of that will make a difference to your integrated CPU/GPU's temperature and stop any potential throttling.

Cheers for your help, do you know why it only seems to be using one of the CPU's?

Only Microsoft or AMD could answer that. Windows 7 has relatively intelligent threading, and most of the time when I do tests I see it on more than one (look under "performance" to watch the graphs).

There's also a chance the AMD Fusions have something akin to the burst limitations early 'i' series Intels had in laptops (read: only two cores at high speed, only one at max speed), but I don't know, I tend to avoid AMDs in laptops due to power consumption alone. I've had to look at a few Fusions lately, and they seem like decent general purpose, but fall down hard for medical visualisation and gaming. Seriously though, they're cheap laptops, so the fact they can game is a bonus, not a base feature.

Again thank you for your help i'll have a look next time, before i buy the game.

(07-11-2011 11:20 PM)Swixel Wrote:  Factually, on a quad core system, when it reads "25%" it means that it is using a whole core (or a quarter of your maximum power, usually on the one core). ...

I am finally going to by a new PC (surprise to many), and I thought a quad core was desirable. Btw, I consider "lap-tops" to be toys and not serious personal computers. (Another discussion about 'chips' which can be hidden in body cavities while being called computers.)

Now I am concerned that I shall have to become a software engineer to use the damn thing.

O.K. - I'm lagging behind the times; but can't anyone explain it in plain language?

(08-11-2011 08:46 PM)CoconutKid Wrote:  I am finally going to by a new PC (surprise to many), and I thought a quad core was desirable. Btw, I consider "lap-tops" to be toys and not serious personal computers. (Another discussion about 'chips' which can be hidden in body cavities while being called computers.)

Quad core (or better) is really the place to look. Things like the i5 2500 or the i7 2600 are considered to be the top of the tree for most user needs. Presently, from the benchmarks (public and private) I've seen, the AMDs are ... yielding performance that I don't want. It's a troubling time, again.

(08-11-2011 08:46 PM)CoconutKid Wrote:  Now I am concerned that I shall have to become a software engineer to use the damn thing.

O.K. - I'm lagging behind the times; but can't anyone explain it in plain language?

As a raw %, Windows lists CPU draw based on the % of the maximum, so if you have four cores and one is maxed out, it'll show 25%. On a new quad core intel with Hyperthreading, it'll show 12 or 13% for max draw on a core, because Hyperthreading effectively gives you two hardware threads (or "two virtual cores" as several friends enjoy saying), even though you only have four logical cores.

So on a Q9550 (what I have), when I look at "Performance", I see four CPUs at the top showing performance graphs. On an i7 2600 (which I use from time to time at a friend's place), I see eight. Similarly my dual core i7 laptop (with hyperthreading) has four graphs. If you want to know the draw on each CPU instead of a raw number, look at the Performance tab.

If you're getting performance issues in something and you have a second monitor or can use a window (or can alt-tab crazily fast/repeatedly), then you can look at the performance tab to see if it's maxing out at the top. Tropico 4 on my Q9550 yields "55%" when I'm doing really nasty things to it (note: this is NOT the vanilla game, this is heavily modified), and it spread over four cores if I launch via "Run as Administrator", and over two if I don't (Thank you Windows!). Note: I can't replicate the core splitting admin weirdness on anything else I've used, only on this Q9550 setup, which makes me wonder what I've done to my Windows install.

Fun fact: Tropico 4 can run on 5 year old notebook
I have ASUS F3T AMD Turion 2.21GHz (single-core) 2GB of RAM and GeForce Go 7300
and I can play on lowest settings, after about 700 people it became laggy, but still playable!

(07-11-2011 08:23 PM)tinkelburg Wrote:  Hey i've just got a brand new laptop can play tropico 4and any other game i've tried on the top graphics settings, every time i place it on its highest settings after a couple of minuets the game music cuts out then then it minimises and says APPCRASH? anyone got any ideas on how to get around this problem or fix it i've tried uninstalling then reinstalling as well as try to play it on the lowest settings to no avail.

If the game constantly crashes and if you wish to help identify the problem, please send us the crash information found in %appdata%\tropico 4

I just experienced my first crash last night with T4, playing the 'Best player in the world' challenge. Population was about 1100. Sad times

However, this wasn't unusual for me in T3, with my ancient system:

P4 3.2 Ghz
3GB RAM
Nvidia GTS 250 1GB

I can play T3/T4 with the highest visual settings, but anything over population of 500 it tends to slow down... considerably.. then the fans start blowing really hard, and boom - crash.

These games are absolutely more limited by CPU than GPU as Swixel noted. When I get that four- or six-core whatever beast machine I can dream up, hopefully it will be resolved.

Now with Skyrim AND T4 both out, it's TIME TO UPGRADE!

Wow, great read. Didn't know the upkeep for Tropico 4 was so high in comparison.

As for the APU vs. CPU, I've been having problems ever since I installed the game. Now lowering the graphic settings from High (ave. 20 min game time) to Medium (ave. 1h30m game time) does make a difference. But I don't know whether it's just my processor that can't keep up..

Processor: AMD A6-3400M APU / Radeon™ HD Graphics 1.40GHz
RAM: 4GB

And where do you find %appdata%\tropico 4 on a Windows 7 OS?

(26-01-2012 07:59 AM)KellhusV Wrote:  Processor: AMD A6-3400M APU / Radeon™ HD Graphics 1.40GHz

This CPU/GPU combination is well below the minimum hardware requirements of the game.

To find the Tropico 4 user config folder, just type %appdata%\Tropico 4 into the search bar.

(25-01-2012 12:01 PM)svetlio Wrote:  Please use this thread to report game CRASHES.

To the PC users: Before submitting posts here you might want to do some self debugging including these steps (sorted by importance):

1. Make sure that your system meets the minimum system requirements (test).

From another thread, but I had taken the test; wish I could show you a screen shot but this was basically what I got:

CPU
Minimum: Info
You Have: AMD A6-3400M APU with Radeon™ HD Graphics

Click here for the latest CPU drivers.

CPU Speed
Minimum: 2 GHz Dual Core CPU
You Have: 1.4 GHz
PASS

RAM
Minimum: 1 GB
You Have: 4.5 GB
PASS

OS
Minimum: Windows XP SP3 (32-bit), Vista / 7 (32 or 64-bit)
You Have: Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium Edition Service Pack 1 (build 7601), 64-bit
PASS
Click here for the latest Windows drivers.

Video Card
Minimum: Shader Model 3.0 (NVIDIA Geforce 6600 or higher, ATI Radeon X1600-Series), 256 MB, DirectX 9.0c
You Have: AMD Radeon™ HD 6520G
PASS
Click here for the latest Video drivers.
Features: Minimum attributes of your Video Card
Required You Have
Video RAM 256 MB 2.0 GB
Pixel Shader version 3.0 5.0
Vertex Shader version 3.0 5.0

Free Disk Space
Minimum: 5 GB
You Have: 202.4 GB
PASS

(26-01-2012 11:06 AM)KellhusV Wrote:  CPU Speed
Minimum: 2 GHz Dual Core CPU
You Have: 1.4 GHz

I do really enjoy the APUs in other contexts though ... just not here.

Unless you can force it to hold above 2GHz on both cores you're not meeting the minimum.

EDIT: The only reason lowering the graphics might have helped is thermal (CPU and GPU in the same silicon, so while the overhead is greatly decreased for the transfer between them, the heat from one hits the other).

Before anything else, Timo & Swixel, thanks for the help so far!

@Swixel: Definitely makes sense, definitely on the ignorant side on the differences but quickly read up on it. As for the game, (didn't mention it was a laptop that I'm using), in order to play it I might as well wait to get a desktop or being alright with playing with the lowest of settings and having it crash on me from time to time..

Well, having been able to have a good play with an APU recently, I can confirm they deadlock like crazy as they ramp up and down the base speed. The technical reasons behind this are beyond me, other than to say stability below base specifications isn't guaranteed (which is true outside of CPUs which give "ranges" of performance too if they're below spec.).

I really like where APUs are going, it's just a shame they lack the power in the laptop releases at the moment. The new ones are looking really interesting (and cheap!) too.