Cities:Skylines on Alienware Alpha R2?

[Stringer Bell]

Hello! I am thinking of buying an econ PC just to play Cities: Skylines on high graphics settings.

I am currently playing with a late 2012 iMac with an i7 3770 @ 3.4GHz, 16Gb RAM and NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680MX with 2Gb VRAM. It actually works fine when the city is still small, but it starts getting really slow once the population reaches ~120K. I suspect it has more to do with the CPU than the graphics card / RAM.

I have been looking at the Alienware Alpha R2. Has anyone used any of these and can tell me how it works with the game? Right now I am wondering if I should go for the basic or the higher-end model. I mean, if the basic model is good enough for me to run the game smoothly on a reasonably large city (150-200K) on high graphics, there's no reason for me to spend more money to get the higher-end model.

I also wonder if it's possible for me to load my Mac Steam cloud games on a copy of Cities that runs on Windows if I decide to go ahead and buy the Alienware Alpha.

Thank you!

[Verullus Forgefire]

Originally posted by StringerMarcus:

I also wonder if it's possible for me to load my Mac Steam cloud games on a copy of Cities that runs on Windows if I decide to go ahead and buy the Alienware Alpha.

You can save your games on the Steam cloud by enabeling this while saving the city next time you playing.
When you have you new computer it should be downloaded automatically.

[MarkJohnson]

The best Alpha R2 looks worse than your iMac.

Your iMac should have no issues with the game.

What problems are you having?

[FrameShy]

What are the specs on the one you want to buy?

[MarkJohnson]

Originally posted by Reme🏃:

What are the specs on the one you want to buy?

The best one is an i7-6700T, GTX 960, single channel 16GB RAM for nearly $1,000 and an extra $200 for a 256GB SSD + the standard 1TB hard drive.

It is also a console sized machine and you can't upgrade the CPU or Video as they are both soldered in place.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7RzUa5Rj9bE

[Stringer Bell]

Thanks rmjohson144, Imparja and Reme!

The issues I have is that once my city reaches about 120-150K everything just seems to move in a way that lags -- I imagine it's because the CPU cannot handle that many CIMs. Shouldn't the Alpha R2 with the i7-6700T processor be able to handle that better than my iMac i7 3770?

Ideally I want to spend a reasonable amount of money to get a machine that does not involve too much building and I can play the game smoothly with even a large population.

[MarkJohnson]

Originally posted by StringerMarcus:

Thanks rmjohson144, Imparja and Reme!

The issues I have is that once my city reaches about 120-150K everything just seems to move in a way that lags -- I imagine it's because the CPU cannot handle that many CIMs.

The game engine will likely give out before the CPU. Is your CPU 100% on all 8 threads?

My game lags, but it is the engine, my CPU is only using about 40% biy the game + agents slow it down early game.

Your issues may just be an imbalanced city (premature agent limit reached) or workshop slowing you down. Each workshop item is an add-on and slows you down a little, mods that alter the game play will slow it down even more.

Shouldn't the Alpha R2 with the i7-6700T processor be able to handle that better than my iMac i7 3770?

Not really. They are likely close in CPU power, but I'm sure the 3770 is a little better still. The 6700T is a low power chip. It's performance is reduced significantly in order to run in that tiny box. Likely not any better than a gaming laptop.

Intel has been mostly focused on GPU for the Core i series CPUs as AMD's CPUs are weaker in comparison, but AMD's GPUs are better. So Intel just makes the newer model just run a little harder (faster MHz) but the efficiency hasn't improved much.

Ideally I want to spend a reasonable amount of money to get a machine that does not involve too much building and I can play the game smoothly with even a large population.

I have an i7-5820k 6-core (3.3GHz), 32GB RAM, RX 480 GPU and I lag early in game and I don't use any workshop items at all. A newer CPU just won't give a real benefit.

I'd focus on game balance and less workshop for better performance. I find mods make good workarounds early game, but later game it hurts it badly and all of those workarounds that were bypassed have built up over time and now overloaded the game engine.

Try installing CSL Show More Limits and report your "Active Vehicles" and your "Citizen Instances". Those two are vehicles and pedestrian limit. You likely have reached your Vehicle limit and it is overloading the game engine.

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=531738447&searchtext=csl+show+more+limits

[Stringer Bell]

Thank you rmjohnson144!

So it looks like it's not worth buying a new computer? At least not the Alpha R2?

I subscribed to the mod you suggested and here are the numbers:

Object Type [#maxsize] | [#defaultLimit]: #In Use [ | #itemCount]
Net Segments [36864]] | [36352]: 14288 | [14289]
Net Nodes [32768] | [32256]: 13360 | [13361]
Net Lanes [262144] | [258048]: 41145 | [41146]
Buildings [49152] | [48640]: 13294 | [13295]
Zoned Blocks [49152] | [48640]: 13592 | [13593]
Vehicles Active [16384] | [16384]: 8283 | [8284]
Parked Cars [32768] | [32767]: 8549
Citizens [1048576] | [1048575]: 174387
Citizen Units [524288] | [524287]: 116423
Citizen Instances [65536] | [65535]: 47756
Transport Lines [256] | [249]: 136
Path Units [262144] | [262143]: 116000
Areas [25] | [9]: 9
Districts [128] | [126]: 44
Trees [262144] | [262139]: 249033
User Props [65536] | [65531]: 1

The only item that's not green is trees. Does that mean it might be what's slowing me down? But I can't imagine there are more trees on the map now than before : (

[MarkJohnson]

Well, you're at over half of your vehicle limits and over two-thirds of you citizens. That's a lot of agents. I'm sure it is slowing you down. You don't really say how much it slows you down. I'm sure your x2 aznd x3 probably make little to no difference.

Trees are always high. They maps come that way. If you want to add trees, it might be a good idea to bulldoze trees when you lay roads and zone. The trees are still there. Just hidden.

But the two vehicles and citizen are the only two that really matter as those two agents are constantly monitored by the game and use up all of your computer's resources.

How many workshop items are you subscribed to? and how many mods are there specifically?

[Stringer Bell]

Thank you.

I think it slows down to the degree where you see people walking in "pulses", like they move forward like normal, and then as if they hit some kind of invisible resistance that causes them to slow down and then they move forward again, like their speed, if you put them in a graph, would be like wave crests and troughs, with the crest being normal 1x speed, and the trough being, say, 0.5x speed.

The same goes for vehicles.

I am currently subscribed to around 400 workshop items, and I only use 3 mods: (1) restrict building level up; (2) first person camera; and (3) show FPS.

I don't really wanna turn on x2 and x3 speed 'cause I want to experience the game as "normal" speed.

So do you mean that even if I buy a new computer (i.e. Alpha R2 with the 6700T processor my gameplay experience won't improve much since the bottleneck is with the game engine and not my CPU or graphics?

I turned on activity monitor on my Mac and it says Cities is using 300-400% under the % CPU column when I load up the big city, although strangely it also says it is "4x.xx%" idle at the bottom. I don't know if that means Cities is 4x or 0.5x times my CPU can handle.

[MarkJohnson]

You may just be experiencing MacOS slowing it down. It is like 25% slower than Windows. Windows has DirectX that is proprietary to Microsoft and no one else has it.

Maybe try boot cam and install the free Windows 10 free trial. Then you can see what difference will be.

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows10

You may need a windows machine to create the install disk/usb.

[~Panda]

alienware sucks. well not sucks, but terribly overpriced for what it is

you can build your own pc much, much cheaper and with much, much better hardware

[Stringer Bell]

Wait, so you mean it's got nothing to do with my CPU? Like buying a 6700T isn't going to help much?

I am also curious about what the % CPU mean, I read somewhere online that if it reaches no. of cores in your computer x 2 x 100% (x 2 because of hyperthreading), then your CPU is maxed out, so it looks like my CPU isn't maxed out yet since I believe my Mac is a quad-core computer so the max would be 800%?

I actually have Parallel Desktop on my Mac running Windows 7 so maybe I will try running it on Windows and see. Thanks

[MarkJohnson]

Originally posted by StringerMarcus:

Wait, so you mean it's got nothing to do with my CPU? Like buying a 6700T isn't going to help much?

I am also curious about what the % CPU mean, I read somewhere online that if it reaches no. of cores in your computer x 2 x 100% (x 2 because of hyperthreading), then your CPU is maxed out, so it looks like my CPU isn't maxed out yet since I believe my Mac is a quad-core computer so the max would be 800%?

I actually have Parallel Desktop on my Mac running Windows 7 so maybe I will try running it on Windows and see. Thanks

It depends on your monitor program works. They usually list physical core (4-core) or Logical cores (8-threads) Make sure yours is set to logical cores if available.

but 4 core at max would be 400%. 1 core at max would be 100%. 8-logical cores would be 800%.

Some list by 100%, so 4 cores max would be 100% and 1 core 25%. 8 thread would be 100% and 1 thread would be 12.5%.

It all depends on your software.

Not sure how efficient Parallels would be. It is basically a virtual machine (VM) which run slower than physically run on your system. But Windows would probably run faster even with the Parallels overhead.

[MarkJohnson]

Originally posted by Cmdr McTosh:

alienware sucks. well not sucks, but terribly overpriced for what it is

you can build your own pc much, much cheaper and with much, much better hardware

You forgot to mention the many, many things that can go wrong, and the headache trying to diagnose a PC that won't turn on or boot and figuring which piece is the problem. Then you end up sending it all back or spend weeks or more trying to figure out which part is bad. Worse you spend so much time sending parts back you go past the return date and are stuck with it all and no returns.

I highly do not recommend building your own rig unless you are comfortable doing so. There are lots of caveats.

[ferk57]

Originally posted by Cmdr McTosh:

alienware sucks. well not sucks, but terribly overpriced for what it is

you can build your own pc much, much cheaper and with much, much better hardware

this. you should really look into building your own. You will getting a much cheaper and probably better build computer. The skills you learn will also help you fix things when they break.