This is why I don't go out and buy PC games any more

[Raduque]

The issue I usually see is not so much that the card is not powerful enough, but that the game uses some kind of feature that JUST came out, and only new cards have it. You can have all the GB of ram you want on the card but if you don't have that one feature you're screwed. Stuff like pixel shader 1, 2, 3 or whatever they're at now. They seem to just be pumping these things out way too fast.

You should've read all the bitching and crying and whining from the cheap asses on the Eve forum when CCP announced they were dropping support for pixel shader 1 and 2. You'd think they were going around shooting people's dogs and raping their mothers instead of simply trying to keep up with graphics technology.

 

[Paktu]

so you ignored what the box says, and that's simcity's fault? ok.

No. I'm upset because the game worked fine with the older patch, and yet the developer is forcing me to use a patch that makes the game unplayable.

 

[Arkaign]

According to their website ....

What are the minimum system requirements for playing Cities XL™?

For a desktop
* Processor : Intel Pentium 4 – 2.5 GHz (or AMD equivalent) or higher
* Memory : 1 GB (XP), 1.5 GB (Vista)
* Video Card: nVidia GeForce 6600 GT / ATI Radeon X1600 or higher.256 MB minimum of graphics card memory


If the baseline performance is 6600 GT or x1600, well, X800xt is much faster than both of these options, thus, it certainly exceeds the minimum specs.


Now ... according to citiesxl support page the "recommended" video cards are as follows:
Video Card : nVidia GeForce 8800 / ATI Radeon HD 3850 or better. 512 MB VRAM or better.

OK, those are both better performers than the X800xt .... Still, it's well above the "minimum."

^^ This is very true, the X800XT is far quicker than the 6600GT and piece of crap X1600. If the developers weren't a bunch of incompetent douchebags, this wouldn't be a problem for the OP.

What is this doing in OT btw?

 

[Maximilian]

Can't play CitiesXL offline.

Of course if the OP bothered to read the posts about it in PCG, then the OP likely would have known better than to buy the game.

Exactly, my post release update says it all:

http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=205310&highlight=cities