Hi. I bought a new desktop a year ago and I was excited to play the sims 3 on it cus I figured it would work better but my map is white/grey. I've posted on the official sims forum about this problem but it never got solved and it's really bugging me. I uninstalled it then installed it again today. When I first opened it, it said it couldn't recognize my hardware or my graphics card. So, i left the game and I tried the sims 3 gpu add-on fix and it still didn't work. I changed from fullscreen to windowed mode by going in options.ini and changing the 1 to a 0. Still doesn't work. I do have an integrated graphics card and a NVIDIA GeForce 1660 so I went in the nvidia control panel and made a profile for it. Does not work. I'm getting so frustrated because the game works on my laptop but not a computer I spent so much money on. My laptop is new, too so I don't understand why it's not working.

Here is my dxdiag. My deviceconfig log is empty, all it says is === Options ===
=== Default Options ===

It's just sunset Valley. I didn't wanna download any expansions until I knew it would work.

Win10 + Nvidia 1000 series, most likely. Memory handling issues and graphic problems all over the place. New computer isn't always better, not with the older games.

Not sure if the 4GB fix or any of the other TS2 tricks work for TS3, but if it does it could be worth a try (TS3 is also a 32-bit game, with some of the same technical issues as TS2, but these issues probably show up differently. I can imagine grey screen in TS3 could roughly be the same as pink-flashing in TS2. I do remember my TS3 game having grey areas while stuff was loading in on the screen, but only for a few seconds or so).

Does TS3 have setup files similar to the GraphicRules and VideoCards files from TS2? If so, these may need some tinkering.
- If not (and probably in any case) you may have to go to the basic Nvidia control panel and manually set the game to run with your graphic card (especially important if you have dual cards!). You do this by right-clicking the icon you use for starting your game, choose "run with graphic processor -->" and "Change Standard Graphic Processor". This will make the Nvidia Control Panel pop up. It should show the "3D settings" window, and choose the Nvidia card from the dropdown list. If it doesn't load the program (like my laptop never does this way), open up Control Panel/Hardware&sound, and find the control panel there. You'll have to manually search for the EXE file you want to add.

I just did the 4gb fix and it didn't work. I figured that just cus I have a newer computer doesn't mean older games will run better but I see people with better specs and graphics cards than me able to run the sims 3 all the time so I figured I'd give it a go

I edited my post with a Nvidia tip. Have you tried that one? Sometimes it helps to simply give the graphic card a push in the right direction. They don't always auto-detect (I have an older Nvidia card on my old laptop, and had to do this trick to make my TS2 game work, and I think I also added T3 to be on the safe side).

This is probably not the entire issue, but one thing I see is that your C drive is out of usable space; Windows itself needs more room than it currently has to work with. Are the game installation and your Documents folder on C or on the much larger D drive?

^ That's another thing, too. You do need some space on your computer for the game to run, most likely due to virtual memory (which is usually by default borrowed from the main harddrive). There are ways to set this up differently in Win10, but I suggest you find a tutorial.

All of my sims games and the installments are on the D drive

Could it be? Because the sims 2 doesn't work either whenever I try to fix my graphics rules and when I've done it on past computers it's worked properly. How would I go about fixing it?

For TS2 there's two help topics in the TS2 Help section, one on 4GB and Memory Allocation Fix plus couple other things ("Sticky: How to Stop Sims 2 Crashing...") and the other on D9VK ("Sticky: Stop Sims 2 Purple Soup...") which you can try if the tips in the first topic fails. TS2 does have issues with the combo of Nvidia and Win10 if you're unlucky, and GraphicRules + VideoCards will most likely need several edits.

Not sure which, if any of them, works for TS3. I'm still not done with getting my TS2 game to run properly on my new laptop (Nvidia 1070 + Win10), and while I have installed TS3 I haven't actually tested it out yet.

Wait a minute here, if your games are installed on D and your Documents folder is redirected to D, then that's fine but you still haven't addressed the lack of free space on C. You have a less than 256 GB SSD there, and at the time your dxdiag was run, all but 16 GB of it was taken up. You should really strive for 35 GB of free space just for Windows to maneuver properly. Win 10 is a space hog, but by itself it doesn't take up over 200 GB unless you have too many Restore Points arranged for or something along those lines. If it can't page out (another way to say use virtual memory) then all kinds of things can malfunction. Might not be a cure-all for the games in question, but lack of enough space on C still can't be ruled out as a culprit.

After that, if these steps haven't been taken already, you will want to use the Nvidia Control Panel to set up a profile for TS3.exe (for Patch 1.69) or TS3W.exe (with the "W" for 1.67), specify that the High Performance card be used for the game (that means the Nvidia and not the Intel), arrange for Vertical Sync to be On (or Adaptive, whichever one works better) and Triple Buffering should be On. Then if you can get the game to launch, see if you have a DeviceConfig that isn't blank and check on your frame rates within the game (awful looking still or otherwise) to ensure they are staying at or below the refresh rate of your monitor. I can't tell if your monitor is 60 or 75 Hz because the dxdiag is reporting it both ways (unless you have two screens at different refresh rates?) but a right-click on the desktop and then Display Settings > Advanced should reveal that.

The dance with the sgr files, for TS3 anyway, comes later as what that fixes is much more minor than the game washing out or not loading properly. It doesn't matter for now if your GPU is recognized by the game, it just needs to be detected properly.

My games are installed on D and my documents folder is redirected to D as well. I cleared my C drive and I now have 38GB of space. I just went in the Nvidia control panel and did what you said, and it still did not work. I do have two monitors with different refresh rates. The map is still white.

I can't follow those instructions because my deviceconfig.log is empty. This is all I see when I open it.

You should try updating your graphic card driver from NVidia Geforce Experience if you have it installed. If not just go to the official website to either download it or manually see if your driver is up-to-date or not. https://www.geforce.com/drivers

When you buy and install a new GPU or buy a new computer, one of the first things you do is make sure it is updated if not already. Sometimes newer GPU's may have issues playing older games but is sometimes corrected with a driver update as long as that game in question is still considered supported by NVidia. And the last time I checked, it is so you should be able to play TS3 just fine unless they have not yet gotten around to that particular issue if it is an issue on their end. Also, as I have found out from personal experience, just because TS3 gives a warning that the GPU is not recognized doesn't do anything except just warn you that the GPU list from The Sim's Studio, TS3 developers and Maxis's subdivision at the time, is not added to be recognized. And that is because TS3 is no longer being developed. I'll guess that GPU's from 2012 will be the last ones that TS3 will automatically recognize. Anything beyond that will not but it should not matter. Just as long as the computer is using the dedicated video card not the integrated one.

When it comes to desktops, sometimes people do not connect the cable from the monitor to the computer in the correct place. Meaning instead of connecting the HDMI or Display Port or DVI or VGA cable to the dedicated video card, they connect it the motherboard which would then automatically use the integrated graphics card from CPU if it has one.

Anyway, it looks like the latest driver update for NVidia GTX 1660 was on January 6, 2020.