posted 06-28-99 10:25 PM ET        

Well, i underclocked my p133 to 100 Mhz and now SMAC runs just fine.
What's the lesson? After reading dozen of messages i've come to the conclusion that SMAC is a real sloppy coded game. I'm not saying that it's bad because i couldn't run it, i'm saying that it's bad because even those who got a p2-300 (not overclocked) had to face those infamous crashes. What does that mean? It means that SMAC makes use of 100% of the CPU cycles the 100% of the time (no matter what system you have). Some CPU can be overclockable (so they don't fail even at high temperatures), others can't. It depends on the "batch".
To sum it up, IMHO SMAC is a CPU sucker, otherwise i fail to figure out why ppl having a "powerful" no-overclocked CPU got the game crashing.
I'm sure not every system crashed for the same reason but most of them did. Different ppl in different threads pointed out what i'm telling you right now. One of them solved the problem with a better cooling, another one had to restore the cpu clock to its default, a third one noticed that the CPU usage gets pushed to the max from the start to the end of the game session....and so on.