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Instructor
Original Poster
#1 Old 23rd Nov 2022 at 4:29 AM
Default How long does your save take to load?
Hiya!

The past few days I've been on a mission to decrease my load time, reduce lag, etc while still feeding my obvious addiction to CC. It's a constant struggle

I was able to get my Packages folder to under 5GB (thanks in part to switching from alpha back to mm again), cutting it by around 60%. I was very proud of that. But then when I loaded up my game it still took just as long to load as before. This confused me as I was sure that getting rid of that much would have at least some impact on load time, but nope still 20 minutes.

I then did some googling and learned about save cleaners. I tried Kuree's (V1) and while it did make the nhd smaller, once again made zero impact on load time. Still 20 minutes.
So I then tried the Regul save cleaner instead and voila, 10 minutes.

Now I'm sure that still could be considered quite a while for people who get their games to load in like 2 minutes, but I'm going to consider the fact that this laptop is nearing the end of its lifespan, my save is many sim weeks long, very heavily nraas sp influenced, big family, big house, etc. There's a lot happening in that save. So I should honestly be really happy with the now 10 minutes. And I am!

But the entire 10 minutes it was loading I was sitting there staring at it, fully expecting it to take longer, like watching the minutes was borderline anxiety inducing. I guess that's why there's the saying a watched pot never boils or whatever it is. It made me think about how I've in a sense been conditioned to expect this game to take eons to load and that whenever, if ever, it loads faster than my expectations that it catches me off guard because I expect it to be longer.

And then that made me wonder how long all of your games take to load, so I thought I'd ask. How long does your game take to load, and are you okay with that time?
Even if you don't feel like replying, thanks for listening to me vent about mine
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Instructor
#2 Old 23rd Nov 2022 at 4:49 AM Last edited by legacyoffailures : 23rd Nov 2022 at 5:00 AM.
It takes around 5 minutes to load. I got 6 and a half gigabytes custom contents, mostly store ones converted to packages and I'm playing on HDD and I bought this laptop in 2017. I rarely travel to the World Adventure worlds, only Sims University for my household's future generations and sometimes Oasis Landing, and I'm playing with a super long age span so I don't rush anything on my sims. Regul's save cleaner is indeed much better than Kuree's. I tried Kuree's once and my save got corrupted.

You might want SSD as your solution.

LGBTQ+. Fans of RAMMSTEIN, GOJIRA and Architects. Check out my favorite YouTube channels: Second Thought, Adam Something, Climate Town, and Not Just Bikes
Scholar
#4 Old 23rd Nov 2022 at 10:27 AM
I think that the slow loading on my previous laptop was mostly due to senility (No, not mine, the computer's - it was over ten years old) because, on average, saves took around twenty minutes, it depended on what world I was using and how old the save was. But it never used to be that bad. I did everything I could to speed things up: drastically removing cc that wasn't vital, installed most of it with CCMagic, used Save Cleaner, Razer Game booster, the Smoothness patch and an FPS limiter. And once saves were loaded that improved game performance a lot, but load speeds were no better. When the laptop began seriously overheating I knew the writing was on the wall.

My new machine has an SSD, and an i9 processor. Average loading time for saves is now around 3 minutes - and many of those saves are old ones I've rescued from the old laptop, (I used Save Cleaner to clean them up). I've been able to re-install a lot of that cc I discarded and the stuff installed with CCMagic takes up around 3Gb I think.

Naturally, I'm delighted.

Legend is history as we would like it to be. We pick through the dusts of time for what is worth keeping and, here and there, we occasionally find treasure.

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Forum Resident
#5 Old 23rd Nov 2022 at 4:29 PM
MANY factors to load times! I push many of the the limits, but average 5 mins. That is after the save is cleaned (manually).

Content matters. Check with dashboard. Messed up, corrupt, conflicting packages will slow things. Right now, I run 7.44 GB of mods. What is bad, is that many are my test packages, and so 200 to 300 separate packages. Generally not good idea! But...

Your machine and it's internals matter. My older gaming laptop is HDD, but will load in 5 to 7 mins. The newer one is SSD, and loads in 5 mins +/-.

I also have a Lenovo Ideapad. Last time I used that, it took more than 30 mins to load, and I had less CC.

There are various programs that help, but none will be a magic bullet to fix all.
Forum Resident
#6 Old 23rd Nov 2022 at 7:39 PM
The more content there is to load, the longer the load times. Having just the base game and nothing else is lightning fast, obviously, but it's nice when I go back to basics every now and then and be amazed all over again every single time. With all EP's/SP's/Store Content to load up will add more time depending on the individual's computer configuration. On top of that adding mods/cc will also obviously add to the load time and depending on the mod/cc can make loading times really drag on. Poorly optimized mods/cc, the wrong version such as it's for TS2 or TS4, it's corrupted, wrong patch level or not updated, too many mods/cc, known or hidden incompatibilities, etc can be other reasons why it takes so long.

My game used to take around 8 minutes or longer to load but usually it takes around 5. Now after having learned how to merge cc so that the game has less to read at load up has helped a lot. So now my load time is around 2 minutes with all EP's/SP's/Store Content and some mods/cc that currently equal to 3.29 GB. I don't merge NRass mods, script/tuning mods, custom sliders or default replacements. I found out the hard way of why not, lol. I try not to add too many script mods or at least keep the ones I pick and choose which I'd rather play with than without and are optimized that doesn't cause my game to become unstable with error code 12 and/or crash to desktop. I mean most of those adorable infant and toddler mods are a must for me because I'm love playing with families and generations.

Previous Game: Batman Arkham Asylum GOTY Edition (100% riddles completed; now I know why I've always been fascinated with The Riddler, lol.)

Next Game: Batman Arkham City GOTY Edition
Instructor
Original Poster
#8 Old 24th Nov 2022 at 12:28 AM
Quote: Originally posted by nitromon
It shouldn't take much more than 5 mins on a typical modern system. If it is taking longer it is likely due to save game corruption of some kind or you have outdated mods.


I can get 5 minutes if I only run the basegame in an otherwise empty test folder. If I add any other EPs, or play my normal CC-laden game, no chance. How would I know if a save was corrupted? I don't believe I've done anything bad at all tbh I didn't know ts3 saves could get corrupted, I thought that was only a ts2 neighborhood thing. And an outdated mod would be just one that is really old and not for 1.69? Or?


Quote: Originally posted by legacyoffailures
You might want SSD as your solution.

Quote: Originally posted by nitromon
This is why "merging" CCs helps a lot, put them into fewer files to load. BUT... and the big BUT... this is only a problem for HDD. SSD has much faster random short reads, since it is not a mechanical disc with a needle, so this problem no longer persists in modern systems running SSD. In theory anyways, of course if you have 20,000 CCs... there might still be latency.


Ah, yeah I've been reading lots of things about how sims 3 is better on devices with an SSD than an HDD because it tends to fry the HDD or something like that? I am not a particularly tech savvy person. I also did not buy this laptop myself, my parents bought me it when my previous laptop died as a gift so I didn't even realize it was an HDD, but SSD is definitely on my list of requirements for the replacement when this one goes kaput.
Forum Resident
#10 Old 24th Nov 2022 at 1:22 PM
Quote: Originally posted by nitromon
The game actually doesn't load all your CCs during initial loading. That's a common misconception. I mean think about it. Your CC is 7 GB, but the game only uses 3+GB of RAM. What it loads is the header/index of each CCs. This is why if you have 7000 CCs of 3GB it will load slower than 1000 CCs of 7GB.

This is why "merging" CCs helps a lot, put them into fewer files to load. BUT... and the big BUT... this is only a problem for HDD. SSD has much faster random short reads, since it is not a mechanical disc with a needle, so this problem no longer persists in modern systems running SSD. In theory anyways, of course if you have 20,000 CCs... there might still be latency.

Anyways I'm running a 2012 i7 laptop and it averages 2.5min to 5 mins depending on the content of the save. Homeworld tends to load longer. Recently it has been loading at closer to the 5 min mark and after a quick inspection, I had a broken sim. I deleted it and replaced the sim, now it is fine.

Which is why I made note that I have between 200 and 300 separate test packages. Probably another 200 separate packages in several other subfolders. As for merging, been doing that since... forever. 3 GB of hair packages alone, in 3 merges.

And on my HDD or SSD, the mess I run loads about the same.
Instructor
Original Poster
#11 Old 24th Nov 2022 at 5:26 PM
Quote: Originally posted by nitromon
perhaps you can post the tech aspect in the deviceconfig log so we know what system you are running?


I hope this stuff is what you meant. I'm not sure why it says windows 8, if I run 10 now but maybe this laptop was 8 when I got it, don't remember.

=== Rating info ===
GPU: 5 GPU Memory: 4 CPU: 3 RAM: 4 CPU Speed: 2592 Threading: 3
Adjusted CPU: 3056 RAM: 12151 Adjusted RAM: 11639 Cores: 4
=== Machine info ===
OS version: Windows 8 6.2.9200
OS prod type: 0
OS major ver: 6
OS minor ver: 2
OS SP major ver: 0
OS SP minor ver: 0
OS is 64Bit: 1
CPU: GenuineIntel
Brand: Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-6700HQ CPU @ 2.60GHz
Family: 6
Model: 14
Cores: 4
HT: 1
x64: 0
Memory: 12151MB
Free memory: 6692MB
User: [REDACTED]
Computer: DESKTOP-36I9847
=== Graphics device info ===
Number: 0
Name (driver): NVIDIA GeForce GTX 970M
Name (database): GeForce GTX 970M [Found: 1, Matched: 1]
Vendor: NVIDIA
Chipset: Vendor: 10de, Device: 13d8, Board: 11401043, Chipset: 00a1
Driver: nvldumd.dll, Version: 31.0.15.2647, GUID: D7B71E3E-5098-11CF-A479-4F310EC2D235
Driver version: 2647
Monitor: \\.\DISPLAY1
Texture memory: 2048MB
Vertex program: 3.0
Pixel program: 3.0
Hardware TnL: 1

--
This laptop isn't particularly old, I got it somewhere between 2015-2017 I think? But I know I am not gentle with my tech (or tbh any of my possessions), and this poor thing has many other issues besides ts3 load times. If I accidentally close it while on it gets stuck on the welcome screen, if I let it do any updates it gets stuck on the welcome screen and I have to boot into safe mode, sometimes it just gets stuck on the welcome screen... It also can not survive more than about a minute off charge which makes it near impossible to move if it's turned on. It takes a good 5-10 minutes to even just turn on. Amongst some other issues, which my dad who is very tech savvy was not able to find any of the causes of. So while I feel like this laptop should be good, it just unfortunately no longer is.
That being said, other programs like ts2, medieval, and my video editing software run just fine. So my main thing I hope to improve on when I get a new laptop is ts3.
Instructor
Original Poster
#13 Old 25th Nov 2022 at 3:43 AM Last edited by CASnarl : 25th Nov 2022 at 5:05 AM.
I didn't intend for this to turn into basically a help thread, but thank you nonetheless!

Quote: Originally posted by nitromon
So that's the 1st thing I would check, are you running in "maximum performance" mode? Make sure the system is running at 3.5Ghz (for your system). But this also means your laptop, especially the GPU, will heat hotter. In fact, if you have not done any maintenance to this laptop, it is likely due to overheating that your system might be throttling the CPU down to 2.6GHz or even lower.



Is that like how there's the bar with one end being "best battery" and the other being "best performance"? Because I've always kept that in the middle. Otherwise, I'm not sure what "maximum performance mode" is or how I'd tell if it was enabled or not, or how to see what Ghz it is running at.

Quote: Originally posted by nitromon
Your CPU should run around 70-80*C on all cores while in gameplay with a GPU at most 70-75*C. If the CPU runs upwards to 90-100*C it will throttle down to 2.6GHz or lower to protect your system, the GPU is around 91*C.


I downloaded what you said, and I just looked at what it is without the game running and they're both about ~40-50C. I have to turn my game back on to see what they get to then, and will update this post once I do but I didn't want to forget my other thoughts. I also do have a usb cooling pad thing, but I'm not sure how much that actually helps if the laptop gets too hot but thought it was worth mentioning that I do have.
ETA: while game was loading core 1 did jump at one point to 91, so it has a little ! by it now. But after I was on main menu it went back to jumping between 60-80. GPU for Intel floats around 73, GPU for nvidia stayed at 63. Haven't gone past main menu yet though to test actual real gameplay.

Quote: Originally posted by nitromon
The other thing from your information is that you have 12GB yet 6GB is already in use when you started the game. Are you using a RAMdisk? If not, you are running a lot of other programs in the back. This explains why it takes you 10 mins for the system to boot up while my older system takes about 1 min to boot up and I'm on a HDD. So you need to go through your start up programs and see what is going on, disable or remove any unwanted programs and run a malware check to see if you have malware infection, likely bitcoin miners.


If I look through task manager, the only things it shows Enabled for startup are ROG Gaming Mouse and Windows Security Notification Icon. I don't know if I should Disable those. I then went and actually looked at services and I disabled a few things like Surfshark and whatever Origin Web Helper was from automatic startup. The rest either told me not to disable or I didn't know what they actually did. On average I have anywhere from 80-100 background processes running and around just as many windows processes. Many of the background processes are either ASUS, Intel or other things from the system32 folder that I don't know what do.
As for malware, I run a quick scan weekly and it always comes up fine. Full scans always either go on for so long it gives up, or detects something inside the recovery folder that I've researched off and on for a few years now and seems to just be an ASUS thing and articles all instructed to not worry about. I've also tried numerous other antivirus & malware programs which always turn up clean as well. So I'd like to believe an all clear on the malware front.
ETA: Windows Defender's Antimalware Service Executable is the main memory hog in task manager, anywhere from between 150-250mb. I did just follow a few articles in hopes to lower that, so we'll see what happens next time I restart.

I'll look into cleaning out the inside and a replacement battery. It took me a few months to convince my parents to buy me a new laptop (they're just waiting for me to tell them what I want) (they'd buy it because I'm unemployed per mental health reasons) but I'm sure they'd rather spend $20-30 than $2000-3000. What gets me is this battery was already sucky to start with. I always had to sit near outlets whenever I used this laptop during college because it would die after an hour or so even back then. Yes an hour is much longer than a minute but still..
Instructor
Original Poster
#15 Old 25th Nov 2022 at 5:53 AM
Quote: Originally posted by nitromon
Are you running full screen mode? If so, then it is hard to get a good measure unless you're using dual screen b/c you have to alt-tab and once you alt-tab the game is basically paused.


No, I use smooth patch and one of the requirements for borderless is to play in windowed. I also really like the ability to be able to flip between the game and other things if I need to look something up, or if I have music playing if I'm building or whatever to change the song. I just prefer windowed with smooth patch's borderless feature. Should I test it in fullscreen?

Quote: Originally posted by nitromon
Since it is winter, they should not be anywhere near the 90s.


What about if we have the heat on, and I always sit with a blanket, and I have an elderly cat who sits on my lap in between myself and the laptop's keyboard for the majority of the day? Should it still not reach that, even in winter? I basically just described how I'm sat at this particular moment. Laptop, blanket, cat. But as mentioned I do have a cooling pad. Is it obvious I have no concept of how temperature actually works?

Quote: Originally posted by nitromon
Without chrome running, I'm averagin 40-50 processes including windows processes. Chrome is a huge program so it increases it to 70.


Yeah, if I have Opera open it has a lot of processes. Also for whatever reason there's 8 QTWebEngineProcess from Origin, I'm not sure if there's supposed to be.

I did also manage to free up an extra 2 GB doing everything you said to do, so now the DeviceConfig showed 8380MB free instead of 6692MB like it was before.
I'm not sure if it's possible (probably?) to upgrade this laptop's RAM, but would doing so help? Since I'm not sure what else I can stop from running to get the used memory lower.

In fact, doing everything you said to do also increased my laptop's start up time overall. It only took a bit over a minute (hopefully not a fluke!), and I let it do updates and the updating went faster than normal, and didn't get stuck on the welcome screen. You may just be preserving this thing's lifespan here.
Instructor
#17 Old 25th Nov 2022 at 12:12 PM
OP is on Windows 10, right? Windows 10 tends to get high RAM usage as several unnecessary programs run in the background.

LGBTQ+. Fans of RAMMSTEIN, GOJIRA and Architects. Check out my favorite YouTube channels: Second Thought, Adam Something, Climate Town, and Not Just Bikes
Instructor
Original Poster
#18 Old 25th Nov 2022 at 10:49 PM
Quote: Originally posted by legacyoffailures
OP is on Windows 10, right? Windows 10 tends to get high RAM usage as several unnecessary programs run in the background.


Yes I am, and it also tells me my device does not meet requirements for 11 so I believe I'm stuck with 10. Not that I'm complaining, I like 10. But it does seem like there's a lot of background processes all the time (like why is calculator there if I've not opened it?)
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