Hi!

There are tips and tricks on the internet to increase the RAM allocation for The Sims 3.

From the standard 2GB up to 4GB, even beyond.

I tried both of them, like using the RAM tool, as well as manually edit the ini file.

But all of them don't work.

I checked Task Manager, and the RAM usage of TS3.exe is still around 2.5GB, not 4GB like I used to be on The Sims 4.

Is this normal and working?

For me, it seems it doesn't.


I wonder, how to make it works?


Thank you for all the help.

Those tips and tricks are just plain wrong, sorry.

TS3 for Windows is a 32-bit application only. It can and will use up to just under 4 GB of RAM all on its own when it needs to, provided that the physical RAM is there for it to use. The actual upper limit is ~3.7 GB due to some overhead. There is no need and no benefit to making it use more even if we could do that, if the world being played does not call for it. The 2 GB limit thing was back when the game was first released, before it became Large Address Aware (LAA) with the release of Patch 1.17 in 2010. The ini file edit that is so famous by now has nothing at all to do with RAM usage, that is the size of the game's script heap which by default is 20 GB (not 2 GB) and it really should be just left alone.

TS3 for Mac is also 32-bit only, is not currently LAA, and still has the 2 GB limit. And it will not run on 64-bit only operating environments like Catalina but there is a fix of some kind in the works for that on EA's end.

There is no way to get the game to use more than 4 GB (or actually ~3.7 GB) because 32-bit applications cannot do that without crashing or otherwise losing their mind. When worlds grow in population, complexity, and history over time, the strategy becomes finding ways to scale things back and make them more efficient so that less RAM is used to keep things running, not more.

No, after it breaches 3.2 GB you are getting Error 12.

Experiences here vary. I can run the main world of my ongoing game a little harder than that. It only takes one sometimes impossible to see microsecond spike up past 3.7 GB before the game session becomes toast and I think we all agree on that, but I am usually able to keep on playing and save just fine as long as I keep things below my own self-imposed danger zone of 3.5 GB. Not everyone wants to play the game with one eye on the Task or a Process Manager though and a travel transition while at that high level of usage would be impossible, so pushing the limits that way is admittedly not for everyone.

It also probably matters exactly how the RAM usage is being measured. I just use Task Manager as it comes and am probably not getting a very accurate reading that way as opposed to tools that others players may use.

LOL, fair enough and I guess I had that coming. But other players report in at NRaas all the time with what I like to call personal danger zones that range from 3.2 to 3.6 (some of them are more daring than I am by 100MB or so).



That doesn't eliminate the problem, for some of us it just kicks it further down the road. Ok, so now I can have an active household of 18 instead of 15, let's add a few dozen more households to that corner of the map that always seemed under-developed, etc. Often followed by one of my personal mantras, "Well, it seemed like such a good idea at the time..."

Those were just examples. But let's review the post just above this one, if we may, while stepping back a bit to take the entire thing in including the signature block.




Mhmm. You know what? The defense rests, may it please the court.