Help! Sims take hours to perform one action

[erialc.claire]

I've only just recently installed sims 3 on my mac pro, and everytime i play sims they take ages to complete one action, half the time they are just standing around doing nothing. I realise lots of people had this problem after they installed late night and i have installed late night but i have also installed pets since and made sure everything is up to date and it still doesnt work. I'm not super good with computers so if there is a reasonably simple to way to fix this problem that would be great! Also i have enough computer space and i have tried un-installing sims, i also had this problem before i installed any custom content so i know its not that. Anyway hopefully someone can help!! thanks :)

[ellacharmed]

Sims 3 - Freezes and Lags
If you encounter any freezes or lags in gameplay, try the suggestions in Game Help:Intermittent Freezes.
If issue persists, please also answer the questionnaire in the Intermittent Freeze Sticky (http://www.modthesims.info/showthread.php?t=425027)


Do you still need help? Have you tried the above FAQ? If yes, please post back here with the answers to the questionnaire, thank you.

[Esmeralda]

How old is your Mac, and what processor speed, RAM amount and graphics chip type? I had the exact same problem with my 2008 MacBook (2.1 GHz Intel dual core processor, 4GB RAM, Intel x3100 graphics) when TS3 first came out in 2009 and I attempted to play it on the MacBook. Despite the MacBook being within the system requirements for the vanilla base game back at the time, and not having any custom content at all because there wasn't any yet, my sims just stood around for sim-hours staring into space when they were supposed to be doing things, as if Free Will was turned off.

Finally, by poking around in the program files I discovered that the 'Mac' version of TS3 was actually the Windows version running through a Windows emulator, not a real Mac version at all. So, of course that's going to be very slow. I decided to use Boot Camp and installed a Windows partition on the MacBook, and then installed the Windows version of TS3 (the TS3 DVD comes with both Windows and Mac versions) onto the new Windows partition. It ran perfectly, really quick and smooth - I couldn't believe the difference.

Hence why I wondered if your Mac was new or older - if it's older, Boot Camp is probably going to be the only way to go. But if it's new, I would think a new Mac Pro should be able to run TS3 properly, so following ellacharm's advice is going to be your best bet.