So... about the lag

[MonkeyMummyMoney]

Has anyone actually figured out a true-fire way to remove the lag on newer Hardware? As billions of threads have said over the years, the game runs fine, but the second you try to move it ♥♥♥♥♥ it's self. Last time I asked I got told to use Nraas and clear cache and edit .ini files.

Before anyone says to do those, I'm not asking for a solution because we all know those don't actually work. They reduce some of the issues, but it's still going to be a laggy Piece of ♥♥♥♥.

What I'm wondering is has anyone actually figured out a concrete way of getting the game to chooch? If not, then suppose it's time I shelf the sims 3 for good, because this lag isn't going to fly for me. if I don't move, it works fine, the second i move the camera it turns into a slide-show.

[HiFive]

Have you seen this guide?

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1131162350

I don't have any mods installed and only did a small number of the things mentioned in this guide, but my Windows 10 computer runs the game fine, as long as I save frequently, don't allow my Sims to get too much stuff in their inventory, don't overcollect scrap from scrap piles or in my workbenches, don't allow too many pieces of fruit (e.g. over 100 apples [or whatever] really makes things laggy), and clear out the lesser qualities of fruit and fish as soon as possible.

I unstick the Sims that get stuck on bridges, or whatever, as soon as I see them. I DID uninstall the Pets DLC, but it took forever to get it completely removed. I kept the Seasons DLC, but turned the rain off.

[The Guy In the $6300 Suit]

I second that guide. Also, I think your mileage may vary depending on the world you use?

Playing the game with every major expansion, most stuff packs, a ton of store content and cc (on Origin too, which supposedly runs worse than the Steam version), and I've only had three issues crop up over the past 100 hours or so.

One was with the camera being intermittently unresponsive in Build mode (this is a reoccurring thing that I don't have a fix for this other than going into Live mode then back into Build when it happens). The second was after installing a bunch of store content and CC and the game freezing after CAS. The fix for that was waiting for the game to generate the thumbnails for all the new clothing/hair before finishing the family. I found if you opened any part of CAS while thumbnails were generating and tried to finish your family before those thumbnails generated, the processing screen would load endlessly while trying to generate their thumbnail. And the third was Isla Paradiso running like a slideshow. Tried the updated world that supposedly fixed the pathfinding, but it still ran like crap.

[HiFive]

This is a good guide for Island Paradise.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1681308025
And yes, I've learned to always wait for all thumbnails to load on everything where they need to load.

[MonkeyMummyMoney]

So I'm going to go out on a limb here and say 'No".
Seems no matter what you do the game will stutter and run poorly on most newer hardware, it's just to what extent do you deem it tolerable. O'well.

[Phasmatis]

I always shut down the launcher with the task manager after the game has loaded. It seems to help performance.

[it's a gabe]

Yeah, the short answer is no. Part of the problem is the game's coding, the other being the fact that it's a demanding 32-bit program. You can minimize the performance issues, but they never fully go away, especially if you're playing with expansions and CC.

Originally posted by Phasmatis:

I always shut down the launcher with the task manager after the game has loaded. It seems to help performance.

Oh, I didn't know you could close the launcher after the game has opened! I know we can bypass the launcher, but didn't know we could close it after.

I second this, btw. Back when I used to bypass the launcher, that improved performance. Didn't make the game silky-smooth, but it did help.

There are guides on how to bypass the launcher if you wanna go that route, but I wouldn't recommend it as, after a while, all of your options will reset and you'll have to configure the game all over again.

[MonkeyMummyMoney]

My biggest issue was the lag when you move the camera around. But, It's not that big a deal. I'd love to play the game again with no lag, but that's 100% not possible without setting up a weaker system from 2009 and I don't have the time nor space to do that just to play one game nor do I feel like changing out the parts on my main rig. I could get use to it probably, but realistically there's no point. Thanks to mods the sims 4 is actually starting to give the sims 3 a run for it's money. (Although i really don't like how much they nickel and dime us)

Now if only the mod authors themselves could just get on board with using Nexus or Moddb.. It can be a real pain keeping up with everything when all the authors have their own sites, some of the sites visually looking extremely dated with little effort put into them.

[bikethor]

I see they make a legacy video card in pcie slot.

I doubt it would run your web browsers though .. it'd be a game only configuraton

- radeon hd 5450 .. comes in pcie slot now, and only costs $40 ?
- this was never a fast video card though

The idea is, try get a fast legacy video put into your --> PCIE<-- moBo slot, then get your OS to recognise it.

Their not much money and might be good for other older games having "compatibility?" issues.

My sims 3 runs on athlonx4-860k 3.7gh radeon-rx460
- I use overwatch mod and a couple others, and I make many graphic settings tweaks commonly mentioned in here. My sims 3 runs mostly very well, but will stutter at times.

I run core came, 4 expansions, 2 stuff packs, no custom content unless I created it.

Tip of the Day ? OK .. turn down nearby visable yards=1

Crown and Coke for the win

[MonkeyMummyMoney]

Originally posted by bikethor:

I see they make a legacy video card in pcie slot.

I doubt it would run your web browsers though .. it'd be a game only configuraton

- radeon hd 5450 .. comes in pcie slot now, and only costs $40 ?
- this was never a fast video card though

The idea is, try get a fast legacy video put into your --> PCIE<-- moBo slot, then get your OS to recognise it.

Their not much money and might be good for other older games having "compatibility?" issues.

My sims 3 runs on athlonx4-860k 3.7gh radeon-rx460
- I use overwatch mod and a couple others, and I make many graphic settings tweaks commonly mentioned in here. My sims 3 runs mostly very well, but will stutter at times.

I run core came, 4 expansions, 2 stuff packs, no custom content unless I created it.

Tip of the Day ? OK .. turn down nearby visable yards=1

Crown and Coke for the win

Truth be told I'm really not that interested in going through a whole song and dance just to get a 10 year old game to run on newer hardware when I have 20 year old games that work just fine. the problem is Maxis Sketti code. It should of never been allowed to get through Quality Control. Something like this would be forgivable if the Sims 3 had the same Dev hell that Sims 2 had in which they basically had to remake the game in a few months due to a fire.

If I do replay the game again at a later date, It'll either be through some mod that actually optimizes the game (Highly unlikely. The modding community for the sims 3 isn't all that strong, never really was, and the modders who could sort it out are all doing stuff for the sims 4) or I just learn to deal with the game stuttering every time I move the camera around. It's possible there may be a series of options to reduce or outright remove the stuttering in my Nivida Control Panel, but that's a lot of trial and error that I just don't have the interest in dealing with right now.

The sims 4, with all it's DLC and Mods, is technically in a comparable state to the sims 3. Sad it took 7 years to get there but still. Don't get it twisted though, I'm not going to turn around and buy all the Sims 4 DLC right away. I'll wait for deep sales. 40 dollars for an expansion pack that came out nearly a decade ago is completely unreasonable doubly so when some of it's features were base-game once upon a time (Like Aliens).

[cruinne]

I gotta say: adding an old video card to a perfectly fine rig seems extreme.

I'd just (a) get the game to recognize the new card (Crinrict gives good advice on that), (b) lock the framerate to the monitor refresh rate, and (c) run NRaas Overwatch.

At least, that's how it goes on my computer and things are fine.

[MonkeyMummyMoney]

Originally posted by cruinne:

I gotta say: adding an old video card to a perfectly fine rig seems extreme.

I'd just (a) get the game to recognize the new card, (b) lock the framerate to the monitor refresh rate, and (c) run NRaas Overwatch.

At least, that's how it goes on my computer and things are fine.

The absolute most I'd be willing to do as far as Graphics Cards go is MAYBE swap it to integrated. But even then, I'm not sure I'd want to go through the hassle of swapping it over. To be fair, I'm not even sure that the process of even swapping over to your integrated Graphics is all that simple. I've never done it, but at the same time I've never had to do it. I already have another card in case anything happens to my main one.

[cruinne]

For the NVIDIA card on my laptop, swapping to integrated graphics involves right-clicking the video settings icon in the tray on the task bar and switching the tick from "high performance GPU" to "integrated".

With the NVIDIA control center, I can even make this a setting so that it's automatic for that game.

I'm sure AMD does something similar.

[MonkeyMummyMoney]

Even still this is a 10 year old game, I'm not the least bit interested in doing anything to get this running outside of setting up mods, which I've done and none of them solved anything. But, to be fair I wasn't really expecting them to. Sorting out Sketti code is a tall order, optimizing it for modern hardware on top of sorting it out is, to be fair, unreasonable if you aren't getting paid to do it.

Personally: the sims 2 is the objectively better game and I can get it running without nearly as many issues. And, as I've said before, The Sims 4 now (With mods) is in a decent spot to give the Sims 3 a run for it's money. Sad it took seven years to get it here and at the end of the day Maxis was just as much to blame as EA.

I'd like to get the sims 3 running with no problems, but on newer hardware that isn't gimped as is the case for Laptops, it's just not possible. There will be some lag, it's just to what degree do you deem it acceptable. I cut my teeth on comp FPS's so any lag is completely unreasonable to me. I'll either adapt and deal with it or just move on from it all together.

Knowing my luck even if I did swap to integrated it would still lag. After all this game was never known for being the most polished. Even the screen-shots the store page uses are... Iffy. Jagged edges for days.

I am somewhat Apathetic though. I had to go through Christmas of 2019 and buy the base game and all the DLC again for Steam because Sims 3 DRM doesn't work with Windows 10 and EA was too greedy to patch it out or find a fix. I have the base game and all it's DLC in physical copies, just can't use them. I was beyond livid when I found out that I had to buy the entire game on a different platform again, but it's EA we're talking about. Of course they wouldn't do well by the consumer.

[Andy]

the few ways i know to remove the lag affect the gameplay so they are not a valid option for me, they are like downgrade/changing the game with is something we don't want, for example removing lots with issues etc..... only way i managed to reduce lag to almost nothing is downloading the fixed the game uses a dynamic pathfinding system inside the lots, but outside the lots its like already "Pre made" and the default worlds have some bugs/issues that cause sims to get stuck alot, the fan made fixes stop 100% all the routing related lags, still don't remove the cas lag and other stuff.

[bikethor]

Legacy graphics cards provides a ceiling for graphics modes . (even if your OS is being a !@#$!!!)

The LAG is your modern graphics card trying to LEGACYzomgWhatToDo ..