Same Problem. It's not my Computer, and it looks amazing at full specs or crap with nill specs but the choppiness never changes. Load-times are quick and my drivers are all updated.
What you guys are describing, is exactly what I'm experiencing - and like the guy above said, we can post our DXdiags until the cows come home, the problem lies with the software, not our hardware.
I have a Core i7 920 with a GTX 275, and 3 GBs of ram - on VISTA 64, I'm running with all sliders maxed out at 1680*1050. Lowering the resolution does nothing. Lowering the settings does nothing. The game stutters and hiccups like crazy every time I rotate the camera around, or even if my character starts running down the sidewalk.
At times, it's almost unplayable.
The thing is, it appears as though my frame-rate is actually quite good. It's not a frame-rate issue, it's something else.
My computer, an Alienware X58, is 3 months old, and has handled everything I've thrown at it: GTA 4, Fallout 3, Mass Effect, Assassin's Creed... Crysis... yes, Cryisis... all run like butter on this computer. If I can run Crysis smoothly at 40 fps then I should be running The Sims 3 smoothly as well.
I have no idea how to proceed with this.
The blasted game looks like its some kind of masterpiece too. Incredibly frustrating. I sure hope that EA discovers a solution to this. And by the way, this issue is being raised at non-EA-forums as well. There's a thread at Gamespot about this same issue.
My S3 installed and seems to play okay. Have checked for several problems reported in other threads and mine works ok. if the game is choppy and its not a fps issue then something hosing the cpu. TS3 has to be a system hog. You can have plenty of memory and still run out of resources. When a game like this comes out I usually pull my hair out for a few days and spent at least $100 at the computer store. Bioshock runs good. Sounds like everyone has good specs but... Tomorrow I'm going to install TS3 on a marginal system and see what happens.
My system:
ASUS M2N-SLI
AMD Athlon 64 X2 5000+ black edition
XFX 8600GT 256MB
Windows Vista Business 32 bit
4 GB dual channel OCZ ram
I do not work for EA nor do I have any association with EA. I am a gamer helping other gamers.
Maybe this is a bouncing framerate problem. With vsync on the Framerate can either be 60 or 30 fps at any point in time. So for a brief moment the game can't run at 60 fps it drops to 30fps because of vsync and the stutter and frame-skipping occurs.
Perhaps EA if you are following this thread, a Triple buffer option could be added or better yet some sort of adjustable framerate limiter.
Yeah, I'm wondering if this is related to Vista somehow.
Personally, in the past 3 months, since I bought my computer, I've gone game-mad, and have played everything under the sun - this is the first time I've had an issue of any sort with a game.
Even GTA 4, which caused problems for a lot of people, runs beautifully on my system, maxed out, at 1680*1050. I played again for about an hour tonight - the entire time, the game just hiccuped and stuttered along. When my sim was walking down the sidewalk her animation would momentarily catch (just for a split second) and then she'd keep on walking, but it would do this constantly. This can't be normal.
If this helps, I've noticed some pretty severe pop-in as well. I can see textures continuing to load for at least five to six seconds after I've arrived at a location - on the walls of houses, for example.
Core i7 920, GTX 275, 3 gigabytes ram, VISTA 64 - at 1680*1050.
Lowering the settings, or re-adjusting the resolution doesn't work - but I shouldn't have to lower my resolution to get this game to work anyhow, considering my specs.
EDIT: Also, I think I should add that I've been gaming on PCs since 1985, and know my way around a computer - this new computer of mine, from Alienware, is only 3 months old, and is used for gaming only: it's a clean install, nor do I ever go online with this computer, so it can't possibly have any viruses on it.
And like I said, every other game I own is running beautifully. So it's not my PC. It's the software. There's something wrong here.
I sure hope it can be fixed, because this game looks just incredibly awesome.
My S3 installed and seems to play okay. Have checked for several problems reported in other threads and mine works ok. if the game is choppy and its not a fps issue then something hosing the cpu. TS3 has to be a system hog. You can have plenty of memory and still run out of resources. When a game like this comes out I usually pull my hair out for a few days and spent at least $100 at the computer store. Bioshock runs good. Sounds like everyone has good specs but... Tomorrow I'm going to install TS3 on a marginal system and see what happens.
My system:
ASUS M2N-SLI
AMD Athlon 64 X2 5000+ black edition
XFX 8600GT 256MB
Windows Vista Business 32 bit
4 GB dual channel OCZ ram
I really don't think its our CPUs... this has been reported on Core Duos, Core Quads... some of the best around. Unless our CPUs are too good to run this game? (Something I've never heard of really before). My CPU usage hardly goes over 50%, if that - temperatures stay around 45 degrees which is more than fine.
Maybe some people can spot the choppyness more than others - I'm almost certain I could see it slightly in the video where the tech is walking through the game, although it's much worse on my system.
If I set the camera into a near top-down view - in other words, from this viewpoint I'm seeing hardly any of the world at all... in fact I'm only seeing my sim's head, and the floor or the ground in her immediate vicinity - and I commence to turn the camera around 360 degrees, then it STILL stutters and hiccups.
How can that be?
It should be silky smooth?
I also notched the resolution all the way down to a ridiculous 640*480, and set all the sliders to the minimum, and it STILL stutters! On a Core i7, with a GTX 275 this just shouldn't be happening.
I also notched the resolution all the way down to a ridiculous 640*480, and set all the sliders to the minimum, and it STILL stutters! On a Core i7, with a GTX 275 this just shouldn't be happening.
Exactly. It should NOT be happening. The game is clearly poorly coded.
I have a Q6600 overclocked to 2.8, a GTX 260 and 3 gb of ram that eats up almost any other game at the resolution I play at.
I also notched the resolution all the way down to a ridiculous 640*480, and set all the sliders to the minimum, and it STILL stutters! On a Core i7, with a GTX 275 this just shouldn't be happening.
Exactly. It should NOT be happening. The game is clearly poorly coded.
I have a Q6600 overclocked to 2.8, a GTX 260 and 3 gb of ram that eats up almost any other game at the resolution I play at.
But the Sims 3? Stutter fest.
It's a stutter-fest.
I stopped playing five minutes ago - the stuttering is completely ruining the game. I don't know what my frames are - my frame rate is pretty high, but this stuttering is just ridiculous.
I won't be able to play this game if this issues isn't resolved - it'll drive me around the bend.
defrag pc. mine was choppy as hell. then i defrag my pc and it was smooth as hell
Tried. Doesn't work.
I've also tried....
- different drivers
- disabling sound
- forcing triple buffering with a DX tweaker
- running in windowed mode
- changing affinity for different cores of my quad core
- unplugging my wireless mouse to see if that causing an issue
- etc etc etc
Game has been fun, I have a nice little family, but this stuttering issue is driving me up a WALL.
i also have proplems with stutter and lagging.comp specs are....evga nforce 780i sli mother board.q9450oc cpu.duel sli 9800gt gpu's. 4gigs of corsair domanator ram.and the whole comp is water cooled. btw its a hp blackbird 002
My card is single and doesn't utilize SLI, so its not what is causing my problem.
I had a weird thought, I know some old games act weird on dual core processors, and you have to change the processor affinity. I would be SHOCKED if Sims 3 didn't have support for dual cores, but is it possible?
Possible. I remember when Left 4 Dead first appeared, it had issues with multi-core processors (AMD specifically, IIRC)...caused major lag problems to the point the game was almost unplayable. I believe it was fixed in a patch.
Finally some people who are having the same issue as me. I have Windows XP-Home Service Pack 2.I would post my DXdiag but at this point I don't see the purpose of it,unless you have actual help for me.Here i'll give you some small details and I'm running the actual version I bought.
processor
Intel Pentium 4 ( hyper threading ) 2.8 GHz
800 FSB 1mb cache
memory
PNY Optima 4GB DDR2 RAM (PC2 5200)
hard drive
Western Digital Caviar 160 GB SATA II
16mb cache 4.2ms 7200rpm
graphics card
ATI Radeon HD4670 512mb DDR3 / 128bit
PCI Express 2.0 x16
2x DVI Out
drives
Liteon DVD-RW / CD-RW SATA
PC USA All-in-One Card Reader USB 2.0
monitor
ACER 17" Flat Screen LCD 5ms
Hope that gives you something.Also my husband enabled my IDE Bus drives or something like that and my ATI drivers were updated yesterday afternoon too the newest one.
Very choppy and laggy,when I just leave it there it's fine.Ugh there's got too be some way too fix this.
Am so dissapointed! Have the exact same promblem everyone seems to be having. I'm using Windows XP, everything is up to date, but the game is just unplayable. I really hope EA can fix this, cause have been looking forward to this game for over a year now!
i had choppiness gameplay also. ive replayed in this thread (first page) saying that. But now im replying again that ive fixed my choppiness gameplay by simply defragging my pc manually. from now on im going to defrag my pc manually every week rather than putting it in schedule in auto. Also i used a program called defraggler. heres the link http://www.defraggler.com/
Im having the same problem. Maxed out, the game runs at 150fps, but it still gets the choppiness (micro-stutter?). My PC is definately more than capable, and plays games like crysis warhead maxed out, and all drivers are up to date on windows 7 64-bit.
The choppiness seems to happen most noticeably when scrolling around, and the hard drive is quite noisy at the same time, which leads me to believe its a problem with data streaming from the hard drive. Im defragmenting my computer now, but i only defragmented it a few days ago anyway, so i havent got my hopes up, but we will see.
The other graphical issue ive noticed is that this game has quite bad screen tearing, and ive enabled v-sync both in the game (setting to 60Hz), and in the Catalyst control center, with no avail. The frame rate wont cap at 60fps whatever i do.
Other than that the game is awesome, and im still very much enjoying playing it, its just a bit dissapointing when the graphics arent as nice as they should be, especially on high-spec PCs.
Specs for anyone whos interested:
AMD Phenom II 940 Black edition 3.0GHz Quad Core
8GB Kingston HyperX RAM
ATI HD 4850 graphics card
Western Digital Raptor 10krpm HDD
Windows 7 RC x64 - Build 7100
Hello,
Just received the Sims 3 today (Colletors edition to be exact) I have had a great time playing it, messing with the features etc. However, like many of you, My game is pretty choppy too. It's only usually the sim which is choppy. i.e. When it is walking around doing an action or driving around in a car. When I used buy mode, create a sim etc. The game runs flawlessly. It's a shame yes, but I can deal with it for now. Just hoping there will be a fix or something along those lines soon.
Relax, that happens. The game will be choppy when you have a rapid change in location and zoom. I get 120 FPS with everything on high and it still happens. The only recomendation I can make is to have vertical sync on and to turn anistropic filtering to 16x to avoid low details when zooming out.
No, it doesn't "just happen."
Only a select few are having this problem. And, I have played large scale games that require a lot more CPU power than Sims 3, and it isn't choppy.
Im having the same problem. Maxed out, the game runs at 150fps, but it still gets the choppiness (micro-stutter?). My PC is definately more than capable, and plays games like crysis warhead maxed out, and all drivers are up to date on windows 7 64-bit.
The choppiness seems to happen most noticeably when scrolling around, and the hard drive is quite noisy at the same time, which leads me to believe its a problem with data streaming from the hard drive. Im defragmenting my computer now, but i only defragmented it a few days ago anyway, so i havent got my hopes up, but we will see.
The other graphical issue ive noticed is that this game has quite bad screen tearing, and ive enabled v-sync both in the game (setting to 60Hz), and in the Catalyst control center, with no avail. The frame rate wont cap at 60fps whatever i do.
Other than that the game is awesome, and im still very much enjoying playing it, its just a bit dissapointing when the graphics arent as nice as they should be, especially on high-spec PCs.
Specs for anyone whos interested:
AMD Phenom II 940 Black edition 3.0GHz Quad Core
8GB Kingston HyperX RAM
ATI HD 4850 graphics card
Western Digital Raptor 10krpm HDD
Windows 7 RC x64 - Build 7100
i would recommend you using the defragger tool i linked. its the best tool out
Comments
I have a Core i7 920 with a GTX 275, and 3 GBs of ram - on VISTA 64, I'm running with all sliders maxed out at 1680*1050. Lowering the resolution does nothing. Lowering the settings does nothing. The game stutters and hiccups like crazy every time I rotate the camera around, or even if my character starts running down the sidewalk.
At times, it's almost unplayable.
The thing is, it appears as though my frame-rate is actually quite good. It's not a frame-rate issue, it's something else.
My computer, an Alienware X58, is 3 months old, and has handled everything I've thrown at it: GTA 4, Fallout 3, Mass Effect, Assassin's Creed... Crysis... yes, Cryisis... all run like butter on this computer. If I can run Crysis smoothly at 40 fps then I should be running The Sims 3 smoothly as well.
I have no idea how to proceed with this.
The blasted game looks like its some kind of masterpiece too. Incredibly frustrating. I sure hope that EA discovers a solution to this. And by the way, this issue is being raised at non-EA-forums as well. There's a thread at Gamespot about this same issue.
Is anyone suffering this stuttering issue using Windows XP?
My system:
ASUS M2N-SLI
AMD Athlon 64 X2 5000+ black edition
XFX 8600GT 256MB
Windows Vista Business 32 bit
4 GB dual channel OCZ ram
Perhaps EA if you are following this thread, a Triple buffer option could be added or better yet some sort of adjustable framerate limiter.
Intel Core 2 Duo 1.83GHZ (each?)
3 gb Ram
nVidia Geforce 8400M GS 1520 MB
Vista Home Premium 32bit SP2
The sims really spikes my cpu heat and usage to like 80%.
Personally, in the past 3 months, since I bought my computer, I've gone game-mad, and have played everything under the sun - this is the first time I've had an issue of any sort with a game.
Even GTA 4, which caused problems for a lot of people, runs beautifully on my system, maxed out, at 1680*1050. I played again for about an hour tonight - the entire time, the game just hiccuped and stuttered along. When my sim was walking down the sidewalk her animation would momentarily catch (just for a split second) and then she'd keep on walking, but it would do this constantly. This can't be normal.
If this helps, I've noticed some pretty severe pop-in as well. I can see textures continuing to load for at least five to six seconds after I've arrived at a location - on the walls of houses, for example.
Core i7 920, GTX 275, 3 gigabytes ram, VISTA 64 - at 1680*1050.
Lowering the settings, or re-adjusting the resolution doesn't work - but I shouldn't have to lower my resolution to get this game to work anyhow, considering my specs.
EDIT: Also, I think I should add that I've been gaming on PCs since 1985, and know my way around a computer - this new computer of mine, from Alienware, is only 3 months old, and is used for gaming only: it's a clean install, nor do I ever go online with this computer, so it can't possibly have any viruses on it.
And like I said, every other game I own is running beautifully. So it's not my PC. It's the software. There's something wrong here.
I sure hope it can be fixed, because this game looks just incredibly awesome.
I really don't think its our CPUs... this has been reported on Core Duos, Core Quads... some of the best around. Unless our CPUs are too good to run this game? (Something I've never heard of really before). My CPU usage hardly goes over 50%, if that - temperatures stay around 45 degrees which is more than fine.
Maybe some people can spot the choppyness more than others - I'm almost certain I could see it slightly in the video where the tech is walking through the game, although it's much worse on my system.
If I set the camera into a near top-down view - in other words, from this viewpoint I'm seeing hardly any of the world at all... in fact I'm only seeing my sim's head, and the floor or the ground in her immediate vicinity - and I commence to turn the camera around 360 degrees, then it STILL stutters and hiccups.
How can that be?
It should be silky smooth?
I also notched the resolution all the way down to a ridiculous 640*480, and set all the sliders to the minimum, and it STILL stutters! On a Core i7, with a GTX 275 this just shouldn't be happening.
Exactly. It should NOT be happening. The game is clearly poorly coded.
I have a Q6600 overclocked to 2.8, a GTX 260 and 3 gb of ram that eats up almost any other game at the resolution I play at.
But the Sims 3? Stutter fest.
It's a stutter-fest.
I stopped playing five minutes ago - the stuttering is completely ruining the game. I don't know what my frames are - my frame rate is pretty high, but this stuttering is just ridiculous.
I won't be able to play this game if this issues isn't resolved - it'll drive me around the bend.
Tried. Doesn't work.
I've also tried....
- different drivers
- disabling sound
- forcing triple buffering with a DX tweaker
- running in windowed mode
- changing affinity for different cores of my quad core
- unplugging my wireless mouse to see if that causing an issue
- etc etc etc
Game has been fun, I have a nice little family, but this stuttering issue is driving me up a WALL.
Possible. I remember when Left 4 Dead first appeared, it had issues with multi-core processors (AMD specifically, IIRC)...caused major lag problems to the point the game was almost unplayable. I believe it was fixed in a patch.
processor
Intel Pentium 4 ( hyper threading ) 2.8 GHz
800 FSB 1mb cache
memory
PNY Optima 4GB DDR2 RAM (PC2 5200)
hard drive
Western Digital Caviar 160 GB SATA II
16mb cache 4.2ms 7200rpm
graphics card
ATI Radeon HD4670 512mb DDR3 / 128bit
PCI Express 2.0 x16
2x DVI Out
drives
Liteon DVD-RW / CD-RW SATA
PC USA All-in-One Card Reader USB 2.0
monitor
ACER 17" Flat Screen LCD 5ms
Hope that gives you something.Also my husband enabled my IDE Bus drives or something like that and my ATI drivers were updated yesterday afternoon too the newest one.
Very choppy and laggy,when I just leave it there it's fine.Ugh there's got too be some way too fix this.
I've made it torelable by forcing Triple Buffering via the D3DOverider tool in Rivatuner. Still stutters, but they seem less severe.
The choppiness seems to happen most noticeably when scrolling around, and the hard drive is quite noisy at the same time, which leads me to believe its a problem with data streaming from the hard drive. Im defragmenting my computer now, but i only defragmented it a few days ago anyway, so i havent got my hopes up, but we will see.
The other graphical issue ive noticed is that this game has quite bad screen tearing, and ive enabled v-sync both in the game (setting to 60Hz), and in the Catalyst control center, with no avail. The frame rate wont cap at 60fps whatever i do.
Other than that the game is awesome, and im still very much enjoying playing it, its just a bit dissapointing when the graphics arent as nice as they should be, especially on high-spec PCs.
Specs for anyone whos interested:
AMD Phenom II 940 Black edition 3.0GHz Quad Core
8GB Kingston HyperX RAM
ATI HD 4850 graphics card
Western Digital Raptor 10krpm HDD
Windows 7 RC x64 - Build 7100
Just received the Sims 3 today (Colletors edition to be exact) I have had a great time playing it, messing with the features etc. However, like many of you, My game is pretty choppy too. It's only usually the sim which is choppy. i.e. When it is walking around doing an action or driving around in a car. When I used buy mode, create a sim etc. The game runs flawlessly. It's a shame yes, but I can deal with it for now. Just hoping there will be a fix or something along those lines soon.
No, it doesn't "just happen."
Only a select few are having this problem. And, I have played large scale games that require a lot more CPU power than Sims 3, and it isn't choppy.
We need a patch!