Thanks for that, Eskie! I really debated on whether it would even make a difference but your post shows it very well may! I also run densely populated hoods and I am very tired of the lag. I definitely notice a difference in a large family or house. Last night we discovered my CPU was working very hard so I think the better computer will definitely help. I also ordered a faster hard drive based on Pixelized's advice. I can't wait!

Defraggler works well, and has the option of defragging only specific files if you don't have the time to defrag the entire drive. Grab CCleaner while you're at it.

One word: CCleaner

His sidekick was funnier

Your graphics card would have nothing to do with your save time

Hmm, really? Well.... I guess I need to still look for help. I'll kindly back out of this thread now, and thank you for telling me that.

My laptop is 2 years old and pretty crappy. I managed to handle all the Sims 2 Eps and most SPs while having Sims 3 + Latenight on too. When it had all that (I never played Sims 2 so I uninstalled that) my loading time was roughly 1 and a half minutes to get into the main menu and 5-15 minutes to get into my game (depending on world and house)

Load time is entirely dependent on how much CC you have in your game...as long as your computer is capable of handling the game with EPs. So comparing the load time of a vanilla game to the load time of a game with 2-10 GB of custom content is really comparing apples to oranges. I have a rather long load time, although not 15 minutes. But I have so much CC that I am embarrassed to tell you the amount!!

About Sims 3 performance and how new ep's influence this. This is one of the few games where I feel that I have no control over the performance ingame. I can speed up loading times yes (combining CC in larger packages, weeding out corrupt stuff etc), but the weird lag in the game since I installed Pets, is something I can't get rid of. I don't experience crashes with any games (Sims also never crashes for me) and I my rig meets the requirements to play The Sims on high settings. I'm quite familiar with tweaking games for performance. Something that is very usefull especially if you also play niche MMORPGS. These gameclients are known for being badly optimized.

For me there are some clear indications that The Sims 3 is badly optimized and suffers from bugs that influence performance . One very clear indication is the horrible launcher. The way that launcher handles downloaded content is cumbersome in use and slow. That some modders can improve this with their custombuilt launchers is of course great. But ep after ep , EA doesn't seem to take the hint to come up with their own optimizations for the launcher. This eithers shows to me that they don't care or that they are not able to improve it. Another indication are the ingame mods that deal with Sims that get stuck in the worlds that EA delivered. Or modders that fix routing in the worlds delivered by EA. These actually improve performance. Again we should be thankfull for the modders that put a lot of effort in this. But these fixes and mods should be temporary solutions/workarounds for bugs that EA is supposed to fix! But it is almost as if they just act as if they can take a step back with the bugs that receive a workaround from the modding community.

The gamebreaker for this game for me is that they keep pooping out ep's that stack routing issue on routing issue and bug on bug which makes the game require more performance then should be needed, because their bugfixes are clearly lagging behind the new content. To me this shows very bad customer support and that the game is badly optimized.

I think you are right, Mithrak. As I was researching my computer upgrade, it became apparent that even people with really good computers could not get away from the little laggy glitches. The game is just not optimized properly and adding bugs upon bugs without ever bothering to patch them properly has added up to one messed up game. I had issues with Sims 2 also, but could almost always fix them by simply upgrading my computer. I wonder if that is going to work this time!

Thank you for all confirming what I said a few pages ago! x'D TS3 utilises resources very poorly. End of. I don't have much CC (at most, just mods) and it still laaaaags away. But when I get on other games like Skyrim I'm stealin' those sweet rolls and there's no lag to stop me! (insert evil laugh here). I've always just bypassed the launcher to be honest, it's a waste of my time.

Although not literally custom content, all those items that get installed with each expansion pack have the same effect on loading times as items downloaded from sites such as MTS.

Hi, your game taking forever to load or save has nothing to do with the number of expansion packs but your computer specs. My brother and i have the same EPS and SPs. I am the only one who uses mods between us yet his game has to be set on the lwest settings, takes forever to load detail etc. He says it also takes a long time to load and save his game. he uses a PC that is 5 years old. Less hard drive space then i have and most likely less RAM. I don't need to lower the game settings and my game loads and saves fast (2 minutes tops) So you see fellow simmers, the number of expansion packs has nothing to do with how long your game loads or saves.

Hm?

To prove that number of EPs does not make a difference, you'd have to test with exactly the same hardware and different EPs installed, which wasn't the test you did. Your test shows that hardware matters (which I don't think anybody doubted), but it doesn't show one way or the other whether number of EPs matters as well.

And this is a three month old thread, OP has not posted since May, chances s/he won't see your response