Hello there.

I recently posted this under a thread about using RAMDISK with sims 3 and there I was guided to the help forum. So I am posting here. Below is my original post from that thread.



Here is a helpful insight from igazor for my post:



And following this reply, i turned VSync on so it limited my FPS to 60 but it didn't stop the lagging/freezing. Here is what nitromon suggested afterwards:



So I took my time and did more than suggested. I am already using NRAAS mods. My current world is Sunset Valley but it is fairly crowded. I have added a few lots and households and some of these are pure custom content. Actually some lots are really very detailed with custom content with tiny decorations such as cakes, trays and bags of stuff. Also I am using rabbit holes so all my sims get jobs with the NRAAS story progression.

I knew that unparking the cores wouldn't do too much of a trick so I went one step further. I synchronized all 6 cores at bios so that all of them works, got some tweaking and overclocked my DRAM to 3.000 mhz and cpu to a 4.5 mhz. Now all the cores work all the time @4.5ghz. I did my testing and yes cores are actively working but no they never ever even intend to come close to %30 load in total while playing and this is while my antivirus and system sits on nearly %10-%12. So I don't think anything with CPU will help me anymore about it. Good news is, just because of this I stopped being lazy and did my long awaited overclocking lol. I will provide a few screenshots and the deviceconfig.log as nitromon suggested (sorry for being lazy and not trimming the screenshots). These screenshots are taken while the game runs with the whole user files are running on a 10gb virtual ram partition with RAMDISK.

I am posting this but to be honest, I think what I am trying to do is not possible for some weird reason. I know my game is pushed too hard with custom content, high settings and DLC's but i hoped a system @2020 could handle all these. It simply does not while literally nothing with my system is even remotely stressed with the load of the game. I am failing to understand why. If anyone who is so patient to read all of these can make sense of it, i will be as patient to listen If not, I am also ready to give up after all lmao.

Thanks in advance.

In addition to (not instead of) the above, do we not also think that the OP may have gone a little overboard on their RAM Disk size? With only 2.4 GB remaining to service the running of the actual game and anything else that comes along at the instant the game starts up, it seems to me like their system will start paging out like crazy just to keep the game running. I realize they are showing us that their game is using less than 2 GB, but in my experience paging doesn't wait until 100% of the available resources are used up before it takes over.

Not so in this case?

Have you ever tried playing TS3 without any mods whatsoever to determine the performance as is?

Personally, I think you have the wrong idea about what TS3 can handle. It is a game from 2009-2013. Actually, it is a game engine really from around 2004- June 2009. TS3 may still be able to utilize some of today's technology but not to the fullest extent like newer games and would need to be built all over again from the ground up to accommodate taking advantage of the latest technology. Too much CPU/GPU intensive mods/cc, overcrowding lots, overpopulating, etc are all ways to destroy good performance. It does not matter what 2020 computer you have because the game engine is outdated. Not to mention, all video games and computers too has a limit to what it can and cannot handle.

In-game settings can also slow down the game such as high detail lots. I stopped playing with it above 1 unless I want to take a serious screenshot. The rendering gets to be way out of hand with this game when traveling around the neighborhood with all EP's/SP's/Store Content. Currently, all of my settings are maxed out except for high detail lots. I've been playing in several worlds now and so far they are all fine performance wise though some better than others. For example, Starlight Shores lags a bit because there are so many students, I think, in one school including my Sims so I put down another school and now there is not any more lag pertaining to that. Then there are a lot of Simfests that causes a bit of lag because of so many Sims. Though I don't have much of an issue with that except when it first starts up.

TS3 runs well on my computer and yes I have a 9th gen CPU as well and a RTX graphics card. So no, I don't think TS3 runs poorly on newer CPU's or newer graphics cards whether with or without mods. Of course, this is just from my personal experience. I do use mods/cc but I don't go overboard. I try to be careful about the population in each world because the more Sims means the more simulation work for the game/CPU. I try not to over decorate community lots or residential lots. I try to make sure when I build that routing won't be a major issue. So on and so on. I also still play without any game altering mods in some of my other TS3 folders and I always enjoy how much quicker and smoother everything runs compared to my modded games.

Hope you find the right balance between quality vs performance. Good luck!

Hello,

Thank you for the reply. To your question if I tried working The Sims 3 without mods and CC, yes I did and yes it works without any problems. Actually I am aware that the problems arise after overloading the game with CC but I am trying to find a way to play it with them. About playing The Sims 3 without CC and DLC spam, no I wouldn't Years ago, I cleaned my CC and reduced it to a 6.5 gb by picking out the messy designs which seem problematic. This 6.5 gb of CC is now packed in 17 packages making each one under a 300mb. I did not group the mods, they are in their seperate packages. This was the maximum I could sacrifice. I honestly kept the ones i couldn't let go.

About DLC's, I have the ones that I like. I never installed or had supernatural or seasons, because I simply do not like them. I mean, come on.. supernatural, really? Here I have an idea about DLC: CC is my responsibility but DLC are not custom content, they are Electronic Arts sales politics. So if they are releasing bazillion DLC and making gazillions of dollars out of it (numbers might be exaggerated), THEY ARE OBLIGED TO balance it so that all of them work together. Otherwise it is fraud. So if Electronic Arts is releasing DLC that won't work all together even with high end computers, than we should sue them. Well actually we should sue EA anyway (and I can't stress this enough, really) lol.

Of course I will have to agree that less DLC and custom content could make my game more playable but it would also make it less exciting. What I am trying is to find a trick that makes the game playable with what it has right now. I am not talking about %100 smooth. I will be ok with seldom freezes that won't last more than a few seconds. I can lower the graphics too, i don't mind them but i tried and it didn't help. You can see this is important to me, I overclocked my PC for this and I never ever overclock an Intel CPU. I did this just to make Sims 3 smoother. You have a point that I have a wrong idea on what TS3 can handle. I am just trying my chances because I like the game if it can work this way. If it works, it works. If it doesn't, I have more than 90 games installed and I won't hesitate to play the others (hear this EA, I'm talking to you, some of them are activison/blizzard and ubisoft games. You are warned!) :p

Hello,

I see what you mean. My game does not recognise my graphics card so it reserves a 32mb video ram for it and probably using my DDR for it. I'm on it. Will report you results.

Hello

I have a total of 16gb memory. I reserved 10gb for the RAM disk and felt that the existing 6gb would be enough for the rest but now I will reduce RAM disk to 8gb and leave 8 gb free. Will report the outcome soon. Thanks.

I did as discussed above. I reduced the RAM disk size to 8gb and tried to fix the Vram (I hope i did it right, the device config is attached). It is still freezing. I will start another household in the same neighborhood and test when the freezes start. This household has way too many plants and auto sprinklers and I am starting to think they are causing a problem. There are more than 350 plants and nearly 60 auto sprinklers here. I will report with a test with a new household as soon as possible.

That's better, but your card is still not recognized properly (not that this makes too much of a difference really) and you can't have 6 GB of texture memory to replace the 32 MB override because the game cannot use that much. A better entry there would be 1024 no mater how powerful your GPU is.

According to MC, what is the resident population of this world? On City Hall or an in-game computer, NRaas > MC >Demographics > Population > "X" to dismiss the filter, the most interesting number there is usually Residents although there shouldn't be thousands of unnecessary service or homeless sims reporting in either of those categories for any world.

On the 350 plants and 60 auto sprinklers, those almost have to be a factor. I would say that a better baseline to use would be a fresh, stock instance of Sunset Valley, not the world you are really trying to play. If you can get a much simpler world to run in an acceptable manner with your hardware reconfigured, the RAM Disk, and your particular sets of content no matter what kind it is, then you can move on from there to a more heavily populated one (within reason) with some more lots added. And then with the active lot being more complicated, but not to the point as described (how about maybe 70 plants and 5 auto sprinklers for a start) and slowly ease into a point where gameplay is acceptable and performance has not yet begun to degrade all that noticeably. Note that another factor to watch for would be community lots where there are far too many Role Sims assigned and perhaps too many rabbitholes added. Exactly how many of each is too many is difficult to say. Many players make mistakes with lots they are designing to be like large shopping malls or that serve far too many purposes at once and since these lots are always open and simulated, game performance even with NRaas mods in play will drop like a rock on them.

Well, the creator of The Sims didn't originally like supernaturals either, lol. But then came the suggestions from his team and that is how supernaturals/life states become a part of The Sims. Quite frankly, I'm not really into supernaturals either and prefer the realistic aspects of the game.

It is infuriating when you buy something that does not work as intended and never fixed including all the leftover glitches from the base game, EP's/SP's. Quality control could have been a lot better but fortunately it is not the worse either. But like I said, nonetheless it is still frustrating.

"You have a point that I have a wrong idea on what TS3 can handle."

The reason why TS3 is a 32-bit application, I take an educated guess, is because they wanted to make this game as accessible to everyone as much as possible. And even though 64-bit probably would have been the better option performance wise, they most likely stuck with 32-bit so most could play as they said even on your grandmother's computer. However, that meant that any more potential this game had went down the drain catering to the largest Sims demographic possible. I agree though, it did work in their favor as well as the Sim's fans. However, I do think a new request has been in place for the more serious and hardcore Simmers without the restraints of holding back. So as to say, a Sims life simulator spin-off specifically catered to the mature audience with high-end computers.

"If it works, it works. If it doesn't, I have more than 90 games installed and I won't hesitate to play the others (hear this EA, I'm talking to you, some of them are activison/blizzard and ubisoft games. You are warned!) :p"

Hmm, didn't I hear about Activision, Blizzard, etc besides EA getting bad rep with some of the consumers? Not too many honest video game developers/publishers these days. Fortunately, there are still some developers and publishers who march to the beat of their own drum.