OS X SimCity 4 PPC Very Slow Performance

I recently got a copy of SimCity 4 for Mac OS X 10.4. Since my Power Mac far surpasses the minimum requirements, I figured it should run quite admirably. But, it's far from it. It's really sad since the game performs better on my less powerful Celeron based Dell Latitude. The game is especially slow in larger, more populous cities.

If it helps, I got SimCity 4 Deluxe for Mac. My Power Mac is a Dual 1.25GHz based system with 2GB of RAM and ATi Radeon 9000 Pro graphics. I'm also running the game on lowest graphics settings and a 1080p monitor, but the game does not run at that resolution, but Mac OS X does.

Any ideas?

No one has any ideas?

Cougarcat said:

Is there some reason you're running Tiger? Leopard might help a bit, with newer graphics drivers.

But the port was never very good. You're better off getting the recent re-release and playing it on a modern Mac.

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Yeah, there's a reason I'm running Tiger. I can't get Leopard because I don't have the money. It might help, but I can't try as of now.

Cougarcat said:

Considering Leopard is ancient at this point, Apple doesn't sell it anymore, and they have made OS X free, I don't think it's a big deal of you download it.

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I don't think it'd be too big of a deal if I just download it either, but the thing is, I don't have any dual layer DVDs. I can't burn it and install it. I do have a 16GB USB flash drive, but I don't know if the PowerPC Macs are capable of booting to and installing Mac OS X through USB.

Cougarcat said:

They are as of 10.4.3 and later. Looks like it's a bit more complicated than just restoring to usb, though you could see if that works (http://lifedigital2010.wordpress.com/2011/04/03/how-to-install-mac-osx-from-usb-on-powerbook-g4/)FireWire drives
and single layer DVDs, provided you delete unneeded languages, will also work.

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I'm going to follow through the tutorial. I scoped out the closest Value Village to me to see if by luck I might find a copy of OS X 10.5, but as I expected I didn't. So, I'll try to obtain a copy by other means.

Cougarcat said:

They are as of 10.4.3 and later. Looks like it's a bit more complicated than just restoring to usb, though you could see if that works (http://lifedigital2010.wordpress.com/2011/04/03/how-to-install-mac-osx-from-usb-on-powerbook-g4/)FireWire drives
and single layer DVDs, provided you delete unneeded languages, will also work.

Click to expand...

That was actually quite painstaking. I had to figure out that I could not prepare the USB on my Power Mac because it would be so slow it caused errors. That took a few days!

But I did manage to install Mac OS X 10.5 via USB. Not hard once you've done it once.