Ok, I've been chased off the thread about game issues involving cc so I'm making a new thread for those of us with a particular problem. The game is lagging even without cc. It sticks for about two seconds then starts again.

This didn't happen to me right away, I played France no problem but when I took my sim home, it started to happen in Sunset Valley. I did try the game with cc but found it crashed so I have no cc, no hacks, cc has been disabled in the launcher. I have cleared my cache files many times. My graphics card is an nVidia GeForce 7600, the game only needs 7300 to run.

The game loads fine and at a normal pace, well I don't notice anything unusual there.

So is anyone else having the lagging problem without cc in their folder?

Well theres two things to bear in mind here

1) The game lags - to a degree - even for those of us with NASA strength computers.
For a 2009 game, the movement is pure 20th century.
None of us has a constant 30 fps game.
Its a badly optimized series.

2) The EP is a 5.5 gigabyte mod. There is a lot more information in there now than there was before.

Hope that helps!

No it doesn't really help. It isn't lagging to a degree, it's lagging every 10 seconds or so for a second or two at a time. Of course you know I am able to play the same with or without cc. The lagging is an issue and I'm sure others must be having it. I played the France neighbourhood with cc in place and this didn't happen till I got back to sunset valley.

I still have 157gb of free space on my pc after the install of the EP, so space isn't a problem.

If you think the game is now too big to play, what will happen when the stuff pack comes in the spring or when the next EP comes out, will nobody be able to play it at all?

I also doubt that anyone really has a NASA strength pc at home. This is not an issue with my hardware, it's a game issue which has been talked about on other sites, I'm just trying to get people with the same issue to chat here and see if we can work this out.

Are you SURE it's not a hardware issue? Try playing with all the graphics settings on low. If it runs properly, then it is a hardware issue. Just to test.

I would try running the game with fraps on, then you can tell just how smooth its playing.

And of course the obvious ones, dont leave firefox running, shut down antivirus etc.

Perhaps try Gamebooster to give you more horsepower. Or a FPS limiter.

That actually seems to have worked. I set it all to lmedium and the game is running without lagging. I did a post over on the pc upgrades area with my dxdiag to see how high a graphics card I can get with what I have already. If any of you two know anything about hardware, I'd appreciate you taking a look and see if you can work out what I can do to upgrade. I want a new graphics card anyway as this one won't last me more than another year or so with this game.

Thanks for your help. I'll put my cc back a few at a time now and see if I can play with it like I could before.

Then when it starts lagging again you can post back in the other thread

Sounds like you were simply trying to run the game with better graphics than you're capable of.

Inge, I can say here that I have all my mods back in and they are all .package files. No core mods and the game is running smoothly. I'm going to add the cc a bit at a time and see if I can identify a culprit for the issues people are having. I can't say on that thread that I don't believe the cc is the problem, it's only for people who do have a problem with cc.

I'll let you know how I get on. I'm putting my own cc in first as I need to check that it's compatible for the site anyway, in case I need to pull it down

fluttereyes--one thing you might want to do is also go to the fpslimiter thread at MATY. There was some talk about problems occurring because the game was running at an insane number of fps (should be 30 but closer to 90-100). This was due to poor programming by EA, not from peoples machines. And the better the graphics chip, the worse the problem.

So the game was messing with the graphics chip on many computers in some weird way. I'm not a technical person, so I can't explain it but I think a lot of people found that using the fpslimiter fix addressed their lag problems on the game.

I did use this before the patches/expansion to address lag problems. This is what allowed me to maintain what CC I did have (before a lot of it became unusable with WA). So I think you may find it helpful and maybe that will allow you to return your settings to a higher level.

I plan to use it as a just in case once it is updated for WA--even though I don't have lag problems right now. What I have heard is that the high fps can eat up your graphics chip and burn it out. Sims2 destroyed one of my graphics chips so I don't want to have to replace it on my relatively new computer.

Not sure if you would find this helpful, but I thought I would mention

I'll look into that. One thing though and I hate saying this. Some of the issues over there are caused by a different reason.

So are you saying you don't have WA installed yet?

I had a Nvidia 7600 graphics card and had a difficult time running Sims 2 with all the expansions. I gave it to my husband and bought a 8800 GTS. It seems to be working fine but I was getting lag before installing the recent patch and WA so really don't know if it was the graphics card or something else. With Sims 2, I discovered a good card could really help with lag issues, especially ones that required me to play with less detail. You might consider upgrading although I would go with the best card you can afford. With new packs the demands will only go higher.

fluttereyes,

I do have WA installed and MATY just updated the 3booter and fpslimiter to work with it. I have not yet tried these out. These are not mods, they sit outside the mod folder and affect how the game is booted up and limits the fps on the graphics chip I think. I only used these programs before the updates and expansion and it fixed my lag issues then. I plan to continue using it now because I think the game probably still runs the graphics too high and i don't want my graphics card burnt out (but lag is not currently an issue for me).

One thing you could try is to use as much sims3pack content as possible and limit the .package stuff to things you can't live without. This is what I did and I have found an equilibrium. I don't have as much CC as I would like to have, the game does not load all that quickly, but I still have enough CC to make the game enjoyable.

I have close to 450mb in .packages and probably about 512mb in my Downloads folder. So my game takes a long time to load, but the game does not lag. I don't know why. But if it starts to lag, I probably will not add any more CC for the time being.

FYI--I have a pretty good graphic setup--dual NViDIA 9800S SLI and 4GB RAM. But I was having terrible lag problems before making these changes that made the game unplayable.

Taizhu, I'm going to look into this further. For one thing I reduced just to 30mb of mods and no cc, it started to lag again within about 20 minutes of play. I reduced all the settings to ridiculously low and still it's happening.

I don't think this is a hardware issue as surely there would be improvement with lowering the graphics. I know there isn't a heating issue as I have a coolerblaster. Also, I just noticed my sim skilled up speedy fast in handiness due to the skill books mod, but he can't get the timer above his head for athletics skilling. This game is borked in many ways. We're woking our butts off here to fix something that EA has likely screwed, not us.

Thanks for the tips on 3booter and fpslimiter, I'm going to try them now, if I can work them lol

Nope, they didn't work. I'm removing them. They are more for loading crashes. According to Pascado



I really think this is a game issue, plus there is so much borkedness in the game now that I can't even be bothered to play it. So many issues, food being bad quality on and upgraded stove, etc. Cooking skill and athletic skill don't work. They messed up this time, really big. I'm sick of the sims and its problems, taking a break from it for tonight, lol

yes, I agree about the general borkedness of this game. You'd never believe this is EA's biggest selling franchise. The game designers and engineers seem clueless. with all the problems, I feel that fans of the sims are not being repaid for their loyalty to this game over the years.

sorry you are having so many troubles--I will keep my fingers crossed and hope that my game remains playable.

The irony is NASA use old as heck computers for reliability... I think they had a 20Mb Hard Drive in one.



No matter what EAxis say about that.. That's only the minimum to get it to run, not the minimum for a playable game.. The 7600 is a very old card, but going from what you've said I doubt it's the source of the problem..
What Operating system are you running? Maybe your Hard Drive is being bogged down with requests from something, causing the game to lag every now and again when it loads data.

If you're running Vista or 7, disable indexing.

This definitely sounds like a hardware issue though, update your drivers to the latest.

And the WA stuff seems to be harder on your PC than the normal S3 stuff, my HD4890 1Gb, AMD Phenom II x4 and 8Gb RAM got over 200FPS on normal Sims 3 while this same rig gets about 140FPS on WA stuff.

Brutuz, I'm using xp right now, I only have vista on my laptop. I did update my drivers and also did the updates suggested by callistra above. I came back here to find those again as the one for realtek audio has stopped sound from working in youtube and msn videos, really weird as it does work in sims 3, lol. I need to find what i did and roll it back.

I know the 7600 is a couple of years old but people with higher cards are having these issues too. I'm going to upgrade. My dxdiag is over here where I was trying to work out the hardware issues and see if that was the problem

http://www.modthesims.info/showthread.php?t=379413

Your video card must be positively bleeding.
If you value your hardware get a fps limiter, and set sims3 to 30 fps.
Otherwise bye bye videocard.

I'd just like to say that ever since I installed WA and the patches my game has begun to lag as well, and it never did before. Mostly happens when switching between sims or using the inventory, but happens during normal gameplay as well.

BoPeep, I noticed it happens more when I do something like switch from their needs to their career or whatever. It's really annoying. Can you tell me what graphics card you have, I don't know if it's worth upgrading mine if it isn't going to help. I want to upgrade but would rather wait till after Christmas if I can get away with it

What skill books mod are you using exactly? If it's an older one it can't work with the EP/1.6.6+ and is the cause of the problems above.

Ok so after installing n updating sims 3 / WA i lagged heavily. each load to new areas seemed like a download that takes 10 mins or more. i have a good graphics, up to date. it uses my whole duel core processor even when i put all graphic to the lowest and in windows mode. i meet all requirements and above. and i only have 300mb of mods. any ideas?

It doesn't kill the card to run at 30FPS+, or anything for that matter.

Besides, I put vsync on now for 60FPS since that matches the refresh rate of the monitor.

Yes, it does. THe game is trying to run itself at much faster than it can. It's rendering faster than ti can. The card is killing itself to do that. You're going to experience some damage if you don't use a limiter.

I do not have WA installed, but do have the latest patch. I have no cc in my game right now except store content. The amount of store content is even minimal. I have all the free items and have only spent 400 of my original 1000 sim points. I am having the weird 2 second lag thing going on also. It did not start until after I played for a bit post patch. I did a "save as" on the neighborhood in question right after the patch and before it was played just in case. (I waited to patch from 1.4 untill 1.7 was out). I was experiencing this while furnishing a house as well as when I was testing the layout and placement.

My computer is low end, and I have options turned down appropriately, so I believe the lag fluttereyes is referring to is not just WA related. Nor is it cc related as it seems to be some problem with the patch itself. My game loads quickly and before the patch I did not have any lag issues, (not even with cc I have since removed). By the way I did not remove the cc because of the lag, I did so voluntarily to build more houses without cc and it was out of my game before the patch was applied and all caches were deleted before patching.