Performance; what to expect?

[Eekhoorn]

Over the years I have played The Sims 1,2 and 3 and kinda got used to its mediocre perfomance. It seems playing The Sims has always been a trade off between complexity and performance. But now that I am playing TS3 on a more than capable rig, I'm a little ticked off by the micro stutters I get from time to time. I would have guessed an I5-7600K, GTX 1080 and 16GB DDR4 would be more than enough to crush the game. But nope...

For comparison, the game needs:
2.0 GHz P4 processor or equivalent; (Vista) 2.4 GHz P4 processor or equivalent), 128 MB Video Card with support for Pixel Shader 2.0 and (XP) 1 GB; (Vista) 1.5 GB RAM.

Don't get me wrong, it isn't running bad (in fact, it runs really well) and it easily outperformes any of my older setups but it still isn't 100% smooth. This kinda makes me think this game is just badly optimized rather than being extremely demanding. In my mind, The Sims need an overkill computer to run decent but now that I have this overkill I kinda feel letdown.

What does this game need to run butter smooth? Is it even possible to play this game without dropping a frame every now and then?

[cruinne]

You need to do at least two things - install the Overwatch mod from NRaas, and turn on vertical sync in your NVIDIA control panel.

The first because the game absolutely sucks at "cleaning up" and so bogs itself down with stuck Sims, abandoned cars and toddlers, and all kinds of other stuff all over the neighborhood as the game progresses. Overwatch does a nightly clean up of all that. nraas.wikispaces.com/Overwatch

The second because the game has no internal vertical sync or framerate control. On a modern GPU, that means a ridiculously (and uselessly) high frame rate that can cause stability issues, video flickering and tearing. and overheating of the video card.

[Eekhoorn]

I am running overwatch and errortrap. I also have turned on Vsync via the control panel, but the game still drops a frame every now and than.

My videocard doesn't break a sweat, it never runs hotter than 44 celcius while playing the game, max load is about 25%. The max processor load is 30% at best and never runs hotter than 45 celsius. But still I'm getting small frame drops, especially when zooming out to see the whole map or when driving a car around town. It's just annoying and like I said, I expected the game to run flawless with this setup.

[Cahos Rahne Veloza]

The game is riddled with crap and bugs EA themselves introduced to it courtesy of the patches and stuff they have added to it during the game's development run. And the only other thing we can really do at this point, besides using several tweaks and mods is to learn to live with it.

[Eekhoorn]

Yeah, that's the conclusion I must draw for myself now. I just liked to tell myself The Sims would run flawless if one has the right hardware for it. Now that I do, I see that it's simply not the case.

As I said: the game has never ran any better for me than it does now. Even when I compare it with YT, I still can see a massive improvement on my side. It's just that I feel a little underwhelmed by the actual perfomance on a high end PC.

Still very fun to play and I'm not complaining. But now I realize this is the max performance I (or anyone) can ever get out of this game. That's why I feel a tad sad.

I guess I have to compensate this feeling by buying some more DLC to make me feel a little bit better ;)

[cruinne]

More EPs! Oh the humanity!

There are other minor tweaks - like getting rid of memories, or turning off the in-game store mode and the online notifications - but really, yeah, it still won't run flawlessly because it really just cannot.

[Eekhoorn]

TBH, I don't think there's a whole lot I can do about it. I already had installed some community mods (overwatch and errortrap) and turned off all the online stuff before I started playing.

The game runs really well for me, but there are some times (zooming out and driving through town) when I get a slight frame drop. Considering my current computer is an absolute overkill for The Sims 3, I guess I just have to accept this.

I used to play this on an I3 with a HD7950 (still a lot more than the game needs) and even then the game was a little choppy. Because of that I kept telling myself over the past years the game probably required a LOT more than the basic requirements to run absolutely flawless. It's just that now that I do have the equipment to absolutely blow this game out of the water, I can't make that excuse anymore.

[cruinne]

FWIW, I see the occasional jag or stutter. I run it on on an i7 with 16 GB RAM and a NVIDIA 1050 Ti video card. It's just Sims 3 :-/

[Eekhoorn]

Originally posted by cruinne:

FWIW, I see the occasional jag or stutter. I run it on on an i7 with 16 GB RAM and a NVIDIA 1050 Ti video card. It's just Sims 3 :-/

That's what I was trying to find out. I was hoping to hear otherwise, but it is what it is. Maybe in the far future my nitrogen cooled quantum computer will do the job... but by then we'll be probably be playing The Sims 10 anyways ;)

[Cahos Rahne Veloza]

Originally posted by cruinne:

FWIW, I see the occasional jag or stutter. I run it on on an i7 with 16 GB RAM and a NVIDIA 1050 Ti video card. It's just Sims 3 :-/

Man I was saving up for the very same GPU, then all this crypto mining crap blew up and now I can't get one for myself Y_Y

I do have 16GB of RAM as well but my CPU's only a sixth Gen i5.

[cruinne]

Hahah, I treated myself after getting an award last year at school. Who says being a total dork doesn't pay ;-)

[Luna]

This game tech is very old and afaik what would actually give you better performance is a couple of super fast cpu cores not a few decent once. Besides it cant use more then 4gb ram wich rly sucks. I wish it was rewriten to make use of 64 bit stuff as well as making use of more threads but i dont think any one is going to bother :(
Um.... There is a ram disc utility wich allows you to store some parts of your hdd in your ram so it would swap less. It should be an efficient way to improve Sims 3 performance.

TLDR: try a couple of super fast cores and a ramdisk.

[Redrusty66]

mine runs smooth as butter on a medicore years old system. BUT it is because I use the NRAAS suite of mods (overwatch, error trap, ect) + I regularly clean my caches and empty the DCCache package folder (Minus the merge file of course, as that's the only one you leave). Between these 2 actions my game, even after generations in my town, runs nice and smooth for the most part. SO I think in the end, it's more a matter of taking care of EA's junk that builds up in the folders with regular maintainence as opposed to needing a super nice rig. My son has an even older rig (like 6-7 years and only 4 gigs of ram) and it runs very well on his too, it's all a matter of keeping the game files nice, tidy and clean.

[Frozen Rocks]

Heya, decided to add my knowledge too. After the Island Paradise patch broke the game about two year ago, I threw the game out. However, I recently picked it up again via Origin since I have almost all DLC there. There are a few fixes for low end pcs. I've got a relatively good graphics card (Nvidia GTX 1060 6GB), but my processor is 5 years old and sucks. Nevertheless, I've managed to get the game going.

1. Mods are your essentials. As mentioned before, the NRAAS mods are great and help a lot. If you start a new game you won't have to worry about losing files either.

Here are the ones I use:
- Overwatch (deletes stuck items): set to hourly clean up of cars, delete everything at night (even gnomes and the dead!)
- Register (limit NPC spawning, such as random ass cats which get stuck)
- ErrorTrap (overall performance and bug fix)
- MasterController (instakill and destruction becausewhy not)

2. If you've got the game on Steam, keep buying DLC in the sales as it is cheap. If you've got it via Origin, don't bother paying more money. EA hasn't been working on a fix and does, in my opinion, not deserve a cent for the Sims 3. You're much better off with Steam or, i.e. G2A. Origin has also not had a decent sale on expansion packs in a while.

3. If you need more help concerning fixes, hit me up. There's a lot you can do with the game and where the developer fails, the customer is the hero. I honestly lost my ♥♥♥♥ when I wanted to play with all DLC installed and the Sims 3 launcher advised me not to because of performance issues. That's feedback for you, EA, not me.

[Redrusty66]

Originally posted by CheekyBlossom:

Heya, decided to add my knowledge too. After the Island Paradise patch broke the game about two year ago, I threw the game out. However, I recently picked it up again via Origin since I have almost all DLC there. There are a few fixes for low end pcs. I've got a relatively good graphics card (Nvidia GTX 1060 6GB), but my processor is 5 years old and sucks. Nevertheless, I've managed to get the game going.

1. Mods are your essentials. As mentioned before, the NRAAS mods are great and help a lot. If you start a new game you won't have to worry about losing files either.

Here are the ones I use:
- Overwatch (deletes stuck items): set to hourly clean up of cars, delete everything at night (even gnomes and the dead!)
- Register (limit NPC spawning, such as random ass cats which get stuck)
- ErrorTrap (overall performance and bug fix)
- MasterController (instakill and destruction becausewhy not)

2. If you've got the game on Steam, keep buying DLC in the sales as it is cheap. If you've got it via Origin, don't bother paying more money. EA hasn't been working on a fix and does, in my opinion, not deserve a cent for the Sims 3. You're much better off with Steam or, i.e. G2A. Origin has also not had a decent sale on expansion packs in a while.

3. If you need more help concerning fixes, hit me up. There's a lot you can do with the game and where the developer fails, the customer is the hero. I honestly lost my ♥♥♥♥ when I wanted to play with all DLC installed and the Sims 3 launcher advised me not to because of performance issues. That's feedback for you, EA, not me.

agree with all, Number 3 has been my worry, I would like them all but I know better. Currently I (And kicking myself for it) only have 3 EPS, Generations, Unviversity and Late Night as they were considered about the best across the board. Now I"m stuck waiting for a steam sale which NOW because I want it they'll not do for a year..lmao. But I've been very very cautious about which ones I want due to the wide knowledge that attempting to play with many of them is a nightmare. I've narrowed it down to allowing myself only 3 more...that being Supernatural, Seasons and Ambitions as those 3 seem to be well recieved and have little complaint about bugs or problems. Hoping that my game will still run great with only 6 eps installed if I choose only the 6 that are universially known as causing little to no problems. For instance the perforance hit for Pets seems to be pretty high and the bugs and broken nature of Island Paradise and sometimes World Adventures and Into The Future seems to be quite common on the internet. So I agree, I don't think , even with help, this game will run very well if you attempt to use all the EPs and Stuff as the qulaity of each pack seems to vary greatly, Some work smooth and others are broken nightmares. Research each pack's reputation prior to attempting to use it is my advice.

[Frozen Rocks]

Originally posted by Redrusty66:

agree with all, Number 3 has been my worry, I would like them all but I know better. Currently I (And kicking myself for it) only have 3 EPS, Generations, Unviversity and Late Night as they were considered about the best across the board. Now I"m stuck waiting for a steam sale which NOW because I want it they'll not do for a year..lmao. But I've been very very cautious about which ones I want due to the wide knowledge that attempting to play with many of them is a nightmare.

I'm playing with Ambitions, Pets, Island Paradise LE, University Life, Seasons LE, Generations, Late Night, World Adventures. I think EA has just been trying to blame the performance issues on us as customers to avoid the complaints. 8 expansion packs work just as fine if you limit your spawns and clean the cache etc. Resetsim * is also very helpful if someody does get stuck. The failure of The Sims 3 is the reason why I won't ever buy an EA game again but it's just one of the many things that's wrong with EA.