Hi.

I do not find this bad enough to start a thread under "Help" so I post here instead.

My, homebuild, computer from last year should be good enough to play the sims 3 and it worked well for quite some time. At first I just had Basgame but soon I added Pets, Ambitions and Seasons. Things did still run good but after adding Nightlife I started to see a decrease in game performance. I thought it was just because I did play in Bridgeport so I did jump back to sunset valley but it did still run unsmooth (and adding Supernaturals to the mix was the icing to the bad cake). First I suspected the mouse I do use (Chinese import, not pricy at all but works quite good). If I did use a bluetooth mouse it worked better but not much. Can it be that Seasons need so much to run? I do hardly have any CC, just two mods from Nraas. I can take some time and dig out my specs and post them but it will take a day or so because I have some things to take care of first. I don't think updating the game will help but I can try it if you say so.

I've read that Seasons and Pets are the EPs that demand the most system resources. I'd try uninstalling one or the other or both and testing to see if that affects performance. Then you'll have some explanation and you can decide what you want to do from there.

Also to consider, especially since you mentioned playing Bridgeport: Most EA worlds, but especially Bridgeport and Isla Paradiso, have incredibly sucky routing. The longer you play, the slower those worlds will go. Here on MTS there's a user named ellacharmed. They fixed many of the EA worlds so that they work better. You might try them if you play EA worlds. I can tell you for a fact that Isla Paradiso went from basically unplayable because of lag to perfectly playable by installing ellacharmed's fixed world as well as a using a couple of NRAAS mods, notably Overwatch. And my Simming machine is by no means high-end and is "optimized" for playing TS2, not 3. I don't play Bridgeport because I'm not really interested in a city environment, but I'll bet a fixed Bridgeport would do wonders, too.

I think we do need some specs in order to be able to say how expected or unexpected the performance drop might be. The first 40 lines or so of the DeviceConfig.log file in the TS3 user game folder in Documents copied and pasted in here might provide enough information -- not the long lists of game options, the parts that come before all that.

Pets and Seasons are the heaviest hitting of the EPs.

As for updating the game, there hasn't been a substantive update to TS3 for over five years now. We always recommend Patch 1.67; if on a Steam or Origin install, there really isn't much choice as they handle the game's patching already. Perhaps this page helps, though?
http://www.nraas.net/community/TIPS...AME-PERFORMANCE


Edit: Well, whaddaya know. Niinja'd by iCad. Are we even now?

For now!

I've read that every so often you should save as a new file. So let's say your game is called BigWorld2. After a few game days, save it as BigWorld3 or (whatever). It's supposed to help. After a few more days, a new save called BigWorld4. And so on?

HCAC: sounds like a very good idea.

I did promiss some specs and I did find the "Device Config Log. I did not take all of it for this post but I have a copy of the file if more info is needed (My gaming computer is offline and my internet computer is an old Pentium 4 running Linux so I had to make a copy of the file and transfer it). I did not know if you wanted a spoiler or not but I used one. I did copy the text until it started to "talk" about the audio specs.

Hmm. Your system should be strong enough for all EPs on mostly high settings in Game Options. I wouldn't say that you have the strongest processor in the crowd, time was long ago that we frowned on the i3s, but the newer and faster running ones like yours should be fine. Maybe we have to take this in a different direction.

-- Your graphics card is not being formally recognized by the game, although of course it's being used, and you are getting the 32 MB texture memory override. That's not going to affect performance in the way you have described, so let's just make a note of that and return to it later.

-- The DeviceConfig wouldn't show this, but how are you doing on hard drive space on the drive where the game is installed and being run from?

-- Have you taken steps, typically using the Nvidia Control Panel and Nvidia Inspector if needed, to cap the frame rate for TS3? The game has no functional fps limiter and a card as powerful as yours can be generating runaway frame rates. To see the fps rates you are getting in-game, Ctrl+Shift+C to bring up the cheats console, type fps on (enter). As you play and move the game camera around, the displayed fps rate should never exceed the refresh rate of your monitor. Most are 60 Hz, so 60 fps but some can run higher. To make the displayed rate go away, cheats console again and fps off (enter). Runaway fps rates can lead to graphics glitches, screen tears, performance problems, lag, crashes, and can ultimately burn out your graphics card.

-- Anything on the Tips to Improve Performance link I provided earlier calling out to you? You said you have a couple of NRaas mods, the ones designed specifically to improve performance are Overwatch, ErrorTrap, Register, Traffic, to an extent GoHere, and MasterController (for an occasional Reset Everything run from City Hall) and then Traveler (if any form of world travel is to be engaged).

-- Have you tried a test run on a clean game folder? To do this, pull out or rename your existing TS3 folder in Documents thus allowing the game to spawn a new one on its next launch. Back out, set up the mods framework again, include only NRaas mods, and see if a newly started test game in Sunset Valley fares any better. You can always put your old game folder back into play if this doesn't get us anywhere.

I should try some of the things out and see. Maybe I got the time tomorrow, don't know. But I will come back and tell.

Hm, I did do a quick test and turned the fps on. Some numbers apered in the upper right corner. This number did go anywhere from about 50 to 200 in Sunset Valley (heavy snowfall) and it was quite the same in Bridgeport (Rain, sorry). My screen is set to an update rate of 60Hz and changing it to Standard did not make any difference.

I got two mods from NRaas: MasterController and Decensor

Your screen is set...how? Again, TS3 has no functional built-in fps limiter. The Nvidia Control Panel needs to be used to arrange vertical sync for TS3.exe (for Patch 1.69) or TS3w.exe (for 1.67 and below). This will only work in full-screen mode, if that's not enough to lock things in or if windowed mode is required then we add Nvidia Inspector, which is a separate download that does not come with Nvidia cards, to explicitly set the frame rate limit for TS3 to 60 or some value right around there. Unless you have a 200 Hz monitor, those frame rates are the equivalent of digital noise and the game will not be expected to perform properly while they are fluctuating so highly.

There are other tools we can call upon if the fps still stubbornly doesn't stay locked in or if screen tears appear. This fps thing is admittedly a pain, but it should be a one-time thing once it's tended to.

If I understood your post right, the numbers are far to high and the game will never run good whit them. Right? I guess so. No, I just have a standards screen. It's an old one too, but I do not know how old. I did not find the Nvidia Control Center on the computer but maybe I did not dig deep enough. There are, how ever, some other programs for tweaking. I'm not sure but maybe I got the time to check back tomorrow and after that I do not have time to play or troubleshot for a couple of days. So I have to com back later.



Btw, you were asking about my harddisk space but I did not answer. Well, I can not complain. I have 807GiB free of 931GiB sot it's fine. It's no SSD, it's a mechanical drive.

Question about the FPS limiter: I used the Nvidia Profile Inspector to set mine to 40-some FPS. 45, I think? The monitor is 60Hz, but I did some experimenting and found that I couldn't see much of a difference, visually, between 60 and 45FPS, so I went with 45 on the theory that less is better. Now I'm second-guessing. Is it instead better -- for the game, for the hardware, whatever -- to match the FPS to the monitor's refresh rate or whatever it is? Or did I make the right decision for once?

Once we get out of the realm of wildly fluctuating and too high fps rates (like 200 or higher for a 60 Hz monitor), I suspect that vertical sync or the equivalent locking things in at 60 would in some ways be a little better. But if you can't really tell the difference in appearance or performance between 45 and 60, am not sure it really matters that much.

Perhaps other graphics card performance experts can/should weigh in on this one, though.