My game doesn't lag at all when I build huge cluttered lots but lags as soon as at least one sim appears regardless of the lot. It literally lags on a 1x1 empty lot with a one sim in it. It didn't lag on my old 3 times slower win7 pc but it lags on this one. I only tweaked with Graphics Rules maker and it did nothing and have GunMods lighting. Any tips?

Do you use custom content? A lot of lately posted Sims 4 hair and clothing conversions are super high poly and that sort of stuff affects how well the game runs.

Live mode is generally a bit more laggy than build mode because there is a lot more going on.

Shouldn't be extremely more laggy, but it would depend on the computer setup. Maybe this one can't handle shaders as well, or something like that. Just because the computer parts are newer doesn't always mean they're better.

@foxmanic I have a couple of them which I don't use and the didn't have issues on my old pc. The majority of Sims have 10 year old default replacement hairs created by Peggy, Raojena, Newsea and more.

@simmer22 Someone who's into computers told me that my graphic card isn't the best for gaming, but still, Sims 4 was more smooth than a 16 year old game.

Make sure you close down background programs so nothing is using resources. You may also want to have a look at CC and consider to remove high-poly CC (above 15k is on the high side, above 30k is definitely on the 'probably too high' side), and items with either very large textures (larger than 1024x1024), a lot of large textures, or very large file sizes (individual files over 2 MB), if you have a lot of those. Not saying you have to remove all, just that it could be an idea to reconsider if you really need them.

I think Newsea used to have somewhat high poly hairs, but Peggy and Raon usually wasn't too bad. Objects can be high poly, too. Weather can also be a huge lag on the resources (I had to turn weather off on one computer, because snow caused pink-flashing, and all the weather shifts caused the occasional laggy behavior).

That makes sence. I also have the problem of pictures taking too long to load. Oh well, I installed Sims 2 for the sole purpose of building, where it works fine but I wanted to try a challenge. It isn't some serious lagging, I was just surprised why it lags at all on new computers. I found a blog that has new s4 hairs converted with lower poly lol

It could help with fixes like 4GB and such, and you've probably already run GraphicsRules. Giving the game access to more memory does help a lot with the lag. If you don't mind a slight reduction in the looks, reducing some graphic settings can help a lot. Turning down or off shadows, off reflections and off shaders help a lot (I play with shadows off normally - that's actually a big help in itself, so I can leave the two other on). You can also let the graphic card do anti-aliasing instead of the game (there's a tutorial on that for Nvidia somewhere).

There's a limit, though. TS2 is an old 32-bit game and has on many occasions performed better with somewhat older hardware and operative systems. At some point TS2 may be outrun by hardware (and software - Windows is not making it wasy, that's for sure). Backwards compatibility can only take you so far. For instance, you can shove a lot of different discs into a BluRay, but I don't think a floppy disc will work...