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This game's framerate is just horrible (w/ pictures)
I'd like to start by clarifying that I'm not asking for help or any technical assistance concerning my game. I don't have any mods, my drivers are all up to date, my PC is less than a year old and I did a fresh install 2 months ago. I was able to reproduce this behavior on different PCs, one of my friend also noticed this problem and it seems to be a fairly known issue on here but I haven't found any detailed thread about it so I'm making one.
As you probably all know, the game's framerate drop drastically when moving the camera while zoomed out.
That's a slight annoyance, but not as much as when it happens in normal zoomed-in mode.
I have a GTX 950, 8GB DDR3 Ram, X4 860K cpu, which all meet the recommended requirements.
Take a look at the fps counter at the bottom-left of all these photos:
Here you can see my normal Framerate (50-60+ FPS):
Now if I move the camera to the other table, it drops to 30-36 and stays in that range:
Zooming in a bit more and it drops to 18-24 FPS (at this point, the low framerate becomes very obvious even without the FPS counter on):
These photos were taken in Magnolia Promenade with a restaurant downloaded from the gallery, all the other lots are the prebuilt ones from GTW.
Some neighborhoods run better than the others.
I'm running the game on ultra. Lowering the game settings doesn't do much unless it's all the way to low.
I find this quite unacceptable for game that's supposed to cater to weaker PC, I can run much more graphics-intensive games on ultra with a stable Framerate, it should definitely not go from 60+ to 18 FPS in TS4.
Strangely, my grandmother is able to run the game smoothly on her terribly weak laptop on low-medium (laptop mode on) with a mostly stable 30 FPS, yet one of my friend with quite a nice a gaming laptop can't even run the game on medium without his framerate going all over the place like mine.
Anyone else noticed it? If so, what are your specs?
@SimGuruNick
@SimGuruArvin
As you probably all know, the game's framerate drop drastically when moving the camera while zoomed out.
That's a slight annoyance, but not as much as when it happens in normal zoomed-in mode.
I have a GTX 950, 8GB DDR3 Ram, X4 860K cpu, which all meet the recommended requirements.
Take a look at the fps counter at the bottom-left of all these photos:
Here you can see my normal Framerate (50-60+ FPS):
Now if I move the camera to the other table, it drops to 30-36 and stays in that range:
Zooming in a bit more and it drops to 18-24 FPS (at this point, the low framerate becomes very obvious even without the FPS counter on):
These photos were taken in Magnolia Promenade with a restaurant downloaded from the gallery, all the other lots are the prebuilt ones from GTW.
Some neighborhoods run better than the others.
I'm running the game on ultra. Lowering the game settings doesn't do much unless it's all the way to low.
I find this quite unacceptable for game that's supposed to cater to weaker PC, I can run much more graphics-intensive games on ultra with a stable Framerate, it should definitely not go from 60+ to 18 FPS in TS4.
Strangely, my grandmother is able to run the game smoothly on her terribly weak laptop on low-medium (laptop mode on) with a mostly stable 30 FPS, yet one of my friend with quite a nice a gaming laptop can't even run the game on medium without his framerate going all over the place like mine.
Anyone else noticed it? If so, what are your specs?
@SimGuruNick
@SimGuruArvin
Post edited by LykkeLeaf on
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“Instead of putting players in the role of Luke Skywalker, or Frodo Baggins, I'd rather put them in the role of George Lucas.”Will Wright.
You got a very good point there. I've reinstalled TS3 last week with almost all EPs and I was actually impressed with how smoothly it ran even in Bridgeport. The camera stutters a bit when moving it around but the framerate is good no matter where I aim the camera.
That's disappointing on TS4 part. I really hope the devs are aware of this and will improve it, it's annoying playing a game that goes from buttery smooth to slideshow in one quick camera movement. ><
I'm not having problems with my fps on zoomed in mode in my game but it could be that the restaurant lot is just laggy. Are there more than 2 chef stations on that lot? I heard that that could cause problems.
Also, the game does run smoothly with laptop mode on or sim details on high instead of very high. Perhaps you can try that, if you like. But I agree they should do something about the fps for us who have nice gaming computers and want to make full use of the high graphic settings. XD
It happens on several other lots. Even on the default spa lot. I had placed the Shimuzu restaurant (from the Dine out trailer) on that same lot where those pictures were taken and the framerate also dropped when the camera was aimed in that direction. It also happens in San Myshuno, I've seen some threads about it too. Lowering Sim details didn't help either. Seems like some neighborhoods are more prone to it. (for example, Willow Creek and Windenburg are relatively smoother than Newcrest or San-Myshuno.)
The FPS counter on the bottom-left of each picture. I think I should've uploaded a video instead to demonstrate it better.
Yes. I see the counter, but I don't see how it affects the game is what I'm saying.
It's the amount of frames being displayed per second. Above 30, the game should be relatively smooth. Once it goes under 30, it will starts to feel like a slideshow. The animations and camera movements will become stuttery. Most of the time, it depends on how powerful your computer is. Some people with weak machines will have to turn the settings down to low to be able to play at a minimum of 30 FPS.
However, it's not normal for a machine capable to handle the game smoothly on ultra at 60FPS to drop to such a low framerate (18 FPS.)
I'm not the kind of person who sees much difference between 30 or 60 FPS but 18-24 is kinda game-breaking in my opinion.
AWWWW I get what you are saying now. I was on the same page as fullspiral and not seeing what you were trying to say. I can only state what my issues with this, what causes it for me, but I have seen others mention things of this nature and things were different for them. If my Sim has a lot of things in his invantory, or I have my library filled with all sorts of things, I can have a few different issues and on of them is what you are taking about. So keeping the invantory and library low helps. Also at times deleting my cache does as well. From what I have seen mentioned it is more of game issue then the specs of the players computer I think.
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So you think it's bound to the world instead of the lot type? You could be right, but for me Windenburg is also kinda laggy on the island neighborhood. To me, Oasis Springs is the smoothest. It could be because of all the VFX happening in the background and there's not much happening in Oasis Springs.
I guess for this, a video would be a better way to show the performance difference. I'm the kinda of person who could actually tell the difference between 30 and 60 so it does bother me. The worst is when you're rotating the camera quickly and it just kinda lags a bit or stutters.
Simulation Lag Mod http://modthesims.info/download.php?t=585420
I almost can not play my game without it now.
“Instead of putting players in the role of Luke Skywalker, or Frodo Baggins, I'd rather put them in the role of George Lucas.”Will Wright.
Also noticed that since I now have 25 Sim households/Apartments that I'm playing in San Myshuno -- that the game runs very raggedly w/lots of stuttering and long lags. The other neighborhoods run a little more smoothly with Oasis Springs being the next slowest in playing 12 households.
I keep all of my sims inventories almost empty, never use "Save As" and do all the other "tricks" that are supposed to make this game run more smoothly. It's been really bad as I have already said since the advent of CL.
INFJ -A/-T
Gonna keep bumping this until the issue is resolved.
My tumblr - A world of clutter and color
Did you not see that massive crash problem and performance issue problems that ensued when PC was released? I have a quite a built pc, and the game would crash minutes after booting it up, as well as massive drops in frame rate whenever trying to place down an item. PC might run decently, but to say better than TS4 is a bit of a long-shot for a lot of people (not all).
My GPU is Nvdia GTX 670, not a very new card. I also have 12 GB of RAM.
@SnowWolf58 can you tell me or direct me to where it mentions the whole "save as" issues because I do that often within my game. I have a main file that has all the lots I built, pre-made that annoy me deleted and the townies I have made. When a game file gets corrupted, it is usually that file and not the ones I saved off of it. Majority of the time I can't get it fixed and have to recreate that file and it TAKES forever!!!!
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You beat me to it. The likely culprit is the fountains. In many games and game engines, the rendering of multiple particle emitters will cause a notable performance drop. Other than limiting the number of emitters or not looking at them, I can't offer you much in the way of a solution. Better hardware can mitigate the issue somewhat, but this game is not built to be a powerhouse of animated graphical effects.
I've deleted the fountain entirely and the issue still persists. I've suspected so many things to be the culprit. The mirrors, the sauna, the fountains. Removing them never had any effect. It just seems so random. I understand that the low framerate when zoomed out in aerial view is caused by the DX9 draw call limit, but it shouldnt happen in normal view.
Agreed, the bugs in this game are becoming srsly annoying to me as well. Almost no use firing it up on my laptop anymore, despite having tried every fix in the book by now + no mods at all. Though all this started with CL and was exacerbated big time by one of the most recent patches. Never had any issues before. My PC usually runs it fine, but even there, some bugs are just maddening.
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