That's complete garbage, that my hard-drive is too slow for this game.
Complete and utter garbage. A colleague of mine at work is experiencing the same problem, and he has two velociraptors in a raid 0 formation.
It's not a hard-drive issue. Stay out of this thread if you're going to post crap like that. And to that guy above, get lost as well - I ALWAYS edit .ini files. This is as common as the hills. And yes there is no solution to the Fallout 3 stuttering issues - you HAVE TO edit your .ini files.
Honestly, just 🐸🐸🐸🐸 if you have nothing concrete to offer. The last thing I want to read about right now, is some egomaniac who thinks that he knows everything about computers, and that the rest of us don't.
Is anyone suffering this stuttering issue using Windows XP?
I realize I'm like... a bazillion pages late on replying to this.. but!
I don't think it's only vista. I run Windows XP Home Edition and my game runs extremely choppy. It loads fast, but as soon as I get into the game it lags and is very choppy. I'm above all specs, turn off unnessecary background applications through task manager and have all my settings on low. And it's the same. (Even when I had them up higher, it was the same).
For me it could be my video card. I can't update the driver because it's old, but I Wasn't told it wasn't supported.
you could try setting the cpu affinity for the game down so it doesnt try to use the 4 cpus and see if it stops the choppiness. It could also be vista issues.
Im running sims 3 flawlessly on fairly high settings using an old athlon xp 2700+ processor, 2GB ddr2 400 RAM, a sapphire(agp) ati radeon x1950gt 256MB ram. Running windows xp service pack 3.
I dont have the settings completely maxed on video but the game is running incredibly smooth with only a brief lag when it loads up details on a new area that i scroll to.
That's complete garbage, that my hard-drive is too slow for this game.
Complete and utter garbage. A colleague of mine at work is experiencing the same problem, and he has two velociraptors in a raid 0 formation.
It's not a hard-drive issue. Stay out of this thread if you're going to post crap like that. And to that guy above, get lost as well - I ALWAYS edit .ini files. This is as common as the hills. And yes there is no solution to the Fallout 3 stuttering issues - you HAVE TO edit your .ini files.
Honestly, just 🐸🐸🐸🐸 if you have nothing concrete to offer. The last thing I want to read about right now, is some egomaniac who thinks that he knows everything about computers, and that the rest of us don't.
those facts didnt come from my head you tool. hence why i said, ive done some research (browsed through google and found that).
you could try setting the cpu affinity for the game down so it doesnt try to use the 4 cpus and see if it stops the choppiness. It could also be vista issues.
Im running sims 3 flawlessly on fairly high settings using an old athlon xp 2700+ processor, 2GB ddr2 400 RAM, a sapphire(agp) ati radeon x1950gt 256MB ram. Running windows xp service pack 3.
I dont have the settings completely maxed on video but the game is running incredibly smooth with only a brief lag when it loads up details on a new area that i scroll to.
I'm beginning to think that this lag/stutter thing is happening on everyone's system, but that for some people it just doesn't bother them.
That last sentence of your is what worries me: "... with only a brief lag when it loads up details on a new area that i scroll to."
You see, that's what I'm talking about. That actually does bother me. (If it's the same thing we're talking about, that is).
What happens when your sim starts running... not walking, but running down the sidewalk in town - does it stutter, or is it completely smooth... and I mean COMPLETELY SMOOTH... with no jerkiness whatsoever?
Or how about this: when you're in town, with the camera positioned right down on the ground, so that you can see WAY OFF into the distance, what happens when you swivel the camera around 360 degrees - does it stutter, and does it continue to stutter, no matter how many times you swivel the camera around?
you could try setting the cpu affinity for the game down so it doesnt try to use the 4 cpus and see if it stops the choppiness. It could also be vista issues.
Im running sims 3 flawlessly on fairly high settings using an old athlon xp 2700+ processor, 2GB ddr2 400 RAM, a sapphire(agp) ati radeon x1950gt 256MB ram. Running windows xp service pack 3.
I dont have the settings completely maxed on video but the game is running incredibly smooth with only a brief lag when it loads up details on a new area that i scroll to.
I'm beginning to think that this lag/stutter thing is happening on everyone's system, but that for some people it just doesn't bother them.
That last sentence of your is what worries me: "... with only a brief lag when it loads up details on a new area that i scroll to."
You see, that's what I'm talking about. That actually does bother me. (If it's the same thing we're talking about, that is).
What happens when your sim starts running... not walking, but running down the sidewalk in town - does it stutter, or is it completely smooth... and I mean COMPLETELY SMOOTH... with no jerkiness whatsoever?
Or how about this: when you're in town, with the camera positioned right down on the ground, so that you can see WAY OFF into the distance, what happens when you swivel the camera around 360 degrees - does it stutter, and does it continue to stutter, no matter how many times you swivel the camera around?
Thanks.
Indeed, I can especially notice when sims are running in the park, or the cars driving along... while not as bad as camera lag/stutter... they do seem to jerk every now and then as they're running along.
And camera lag happens every time you visit a place, rather than just the first time while everything is cached.
It does come down to perception on this, some people are quite happy with it (as I said, one friend was playing a game at about 20fps on his laptop, to me it looked like a slideshow and was dreadful... but he was happy!!) whereas others, who are used to having games run fluidly with no lag can really notice it!
EA needs to implement some kind of fix for this, because at the moment, it's really spoiling mine, and I'm sure others games!
It's at its worst when the animations are fast - if a sim is running, say, or when the sim is taking a cab ride.
But even when my sim was fishing (of all things!) I noticed that the movement of the water would stutter. Here's the weird thing though: it seemed to be happening at the end of a loop, almost like a light flickering at a regular interval? I was just starring at the screen and I could quite easily make out the pattern. I wish I knew if this is just how the engine is, or if it's a glitch than can be fixed?
It's obvious that E.A. is going to remain silent on this issue - but oh well, that's what I expected. I've been gaming since 1985, and since the dawn of the internet, no gaming company, after releasing a game, has ever communicated with its customers. It does get tiring after a while - but oh well, it was pretty much expected.
Have you ever seen the animation of the television character Max Headroom? I'd say that the jerkiness is a bit like that. The animations just get caught for a split second, and seem to hang. That said, when I'm zoomed in on my sim, when my sim is at home, there seems to be no lag at all.
Or maybe I'M getting used to it? It's becoming less of an issue - I guess it's because I really am getting used to it, and really want to play the game quite badly.
I'm building houses all over the place, and housing my own sims in them - it's great, because most of the sims roaming about are of my own creation.
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?
I've been having the same problem and just changed the processor affinity and it runs much smoother for me now. It seemed before that my sims were walking on high speed although I had it set on normal.
Its not a hard-drive issue. I have 2 very fast harddrives connected via one cable, so they work much like dual processors. I break most benchmark tests, and the hard drive is one of my systems STRONG points.
Also, like I said, I have built MASSIVE parks in roller coaster tycoon 3 with thousands upon thousands of people walking around. They are all doing their own thing and have their own thought bubbles. The parks are 10x bigger than the sims town. Roller Coaster Tycoon 3 puts a much heftier stress on the CPU/HD than the Sims 3 ever could, and I can run that game like butter.
So, we can rule out it being a hard drive issue.
Really, we can rule out it being any sort of Hardware issue.
I have CPU 0, 1, 2, 3 and currently all are ticked. (I'm on Quad core).
Shall I just set to 0 and 1, or just 0?
Edit: Just tried numerous options, choppyness when scrolling still the same.
I only have a dual core and I set it to 1 and it improved so many other things in my game. The text boxes that pop up for career promotions, etc. were disappearing before I could even read them. It fixed that. Also when mousing over the various icons to see what they mean, I had to play around and get my pointer in just the right spot or they would also disappear. Setting the affinity seems to have fixed that too.
Those were my only problems and they seem to fine now. My game works great. Good luck to all of you in figuring out the problem.
I have an issue being choppy when you scroll around with my GeForce 8400M GS thats on Vista...but my brother has the same issue on his desktop 512Mb 8400 GS aswell
def not some peeps pcs here,it is poor programming as one said,tho i must say i have no issues via graphics,or laggy game play on my rig,the one issue i had with freezing got fixed.
I'm having the same problem, and I have a dual core processor. It runs much smoother when you set the affinity to run on a single core, but it's not good. It seems the game cannot handle multi-core processing properly, something I would expect of an old game but definitely not of a new release.
I'm hoping EA will release a patch soon to address this.
I think the reason people with lower end PCs arent complaining about this is because their FPS is already quite low, the lag blends in. On a high end PC, the FPS is high, and any split second lag noticeably breaks up the smoothness.
it seems to me that it is an error in programming. I have a 3.1GHz AMD dual core processor, and i was getting some of the hard-core "shuttering" lag mentioned above.
as a few other posters mentioned, setting the affinity to only one CPU completely eliminated the lag for me.
My only guess is that the game wasn't programmed to properly utilize multiple CPUs, and as such when it is divided among multiple processors performance is negatively impacted.
I unchecked CPU 0, having it only run on CPU 1, and there has been absolutely no lag since.
This fix would explain why lower end computer users are not experiencing the problem, as most older computers do not have dual and quad core processors.
If anyone doesn't know, you can change your Affinity in Windows Task Manager. Under processes, select TS3.exe and click "select affinity."
Not sure if this is necessarily what is happening here, but as I said it worked for me.
Cheers,
Ken
Edit: All of my in-game graphics settings are maxed, btw. System Specs:
AMD Athlon 6000 3.1Ghz Dual Core
4gb DDR2 800 Ram (2x2048)
GT9500 Series GPU
320GB SATA2 HDD (I'm nearly positive that this is not caused by your harddrive, btw)
Is anyone suffering this stuttering issue using Windows XP?
My game runs all right, sort of, at the lowest settings, but it looks worse than the original Sims. If I increase the settings, it lags intolerably and crashes.
I am beyond disappointed with this game. It would be nice if EA would find a solution to this, but I am not at all sure I'll be around when it happens. I have TS2 with all the expansion and stuff packs, and I know my computer can run that.
Comments
Complete and utter garbage. A colleague of mine at work is experiencing the same problem, and he has two velociraptors in a raid 0 formation.
It's not a hard-drive issue. Stay out of this thread if you're going to post crap like that. And to that guy above, get lost as well - I ALWAYS edit .ini files. This is as common as the hills. And yes there is no solution to the Fallout 3 stuttering issues - you HAVE TO edit your .ini files.
Honestly, just 🐸🐸🐸🐸 if you have nothing concrete to offer. The last thing I want to read about right now, is some egomaniac who thinks that he knows everything about computers, and that the rest of us don't.
I realize I'm like... a bazillion pages late on replying to this.. but!
I don't think it's only vista. I run Windows XP Home Edition and my game runs extremely choppy. It loads fast, but as soon as I get into the game it lags and is very choppy. I'm above all specs, turn off unnessecary background applications through task manager and have all my settings on low. And it's the same. (Even when I had them up higher, it was the same).
For me it could be my video card. I can't update the driver because it's old, but I Wasn't told it wasn't supported.
Im running sims 3 flawlessly on fairly high settings using an old athlon xp 2700+ processor, 2GB ddr2 400 RAM, a sapphire(agp) ati radeon x1950gt 256MB ram. Running windows xp service pack 3.
I dont have the settings completely maxed on video but the game is running incredibly smooth with only a brief lag when it loads up details on a new area that i scroll to.
yeah i agree, EA could have done a better job in programming
those facts didnt come from my head you tool. hence why i said, ive done some research (browsed through google and found that).
I'm beginning to think that this lag/stutter thing is happening on everyone's system, but that for some people it just doesn't bother them.
That last sentence of your is what worries me: "... with only a brief lag when it loads up details on a new area that i scroll to."
You see, that's what I'm talking about. That actually does bother me. (If it's the same thing we're talking about, that is).
What happens when your sim starts running... not walking, but running down the sidewalk in town - does it stutter, or is it completely smooth... and I mean COMPLETELY SMOOTH... with no jerkiness whatsoever?
Or how about this: when you're in town, with the camera positioned right down on the ground, so that you can see WAY OFF into the distance, what happens when you swivel the camera around 360 degrees - does it stutter, and does it continue to stutter, no matter how many times you swivel the camera around?
Thanks.
Indeed, I can especially notice when sims are running in the park, or the cars driving along... while not as bad as camera lag/stutter... they do seem to jerk every now and then as they're running along.
And camera lag happens every time you visit a place, rather than just the first time while everything is cached.
It does come down to perception on this, some people are quite happy with it (as I said, one friend was playing a game at about 20fps on his laptop, to me it looked like a slideshow and was dreadful... but he was happy!!) whereas others, who are used to having games run fluidly with no lag can really notice it!
EA needs to implement some kind of fix for this, because at the moment, it's really spoiling mine, and I'm sure others games!
But even when my sim was fishing (of all things!) I noticed that the movement of the water would stutter. Here's the weird thing though: it seemed to be happening at the end of a loop, almost like a light flickering at a regular interval? I was just starring at the screen and I could quite easily make out the pattern. I wish I knew if this is just how the engine is, or if it's a glitch than can be fixed?
It's obvious that E.A. is going to remain silent on this issue - but oh well, that's what I expected. I've been gaming since 1985, and since the dawn of the internet, no gaming company, after releasing a game, has ever communicated with its customers. It does get tiring after a while - but oh well, it was pretty much expected.
Have you ever seen the animation of the television character Max Headroom? I'd say that the jerkiness is a bit like that. The animations just get caught for a split second, and seem to hang. That said, when I'm zoomed in on my sim, when my sim is at home, there seems to be no lag at all.
Or maybe I'M getting used to it? It's becoming less of an issue - I guess it's because I really am getting used to it, and really want to play the game quite badly.
I'm building houses all over the place, and housing my own sims in them - it's great, because most of the sims roaming about are of my own creation.
I've been having the same problem and just changed the processor affinity and it runs much smoother for me now. It seemed before that my sims were walking on high speed although I had it set on normal.
I have CPU 0, 1, 2, 3 and currently all are ticked. (I'm on Quad core).
Shall I just set to 0 and 1, or just 0?
Edit: Just tried numerous options, choppyness when scrolling still the same.
Also, like I said, I have built MASSIVE parks in roller coaster tycoon 3 with thousands upon thousands of people walking around. They are all doing their own thing and have their own thought bubbles. The parks are 10x bigger than the sims town. Roller Coaster Tycoon 3 puts a much heftier stress on the CPU/HD than the Sims 3 ever could, and I can run that game like butter.
So, we can rule out it being a hard drive issue.
Really, we can rule out it being any sort of Hardware issue.
I only have a dual core and I set it to 1 and it improved so many other things in my game. The text boxes that pop up for career promotions, etc. were disappearing before I could even read them. It fixed that. Also when mousing over the various icons to see what they mean, I had to play around and get my pointer in just the right spot or they would also disappear. Setting the affinity seems to have fixed that too.
Those were my only problems and they seem to fine now. My game works great. Good luck to all of you in figuring out the problem.
hmmm
dual core 2.6
Geforce 8800
same problem here =/
http://forum.thesims3.com/jforum/posts/list/15746.page
I'm hoping EA will release a patch soon to address this.
Core2Duo 6320
2GB DDRII-667
NVidia GTX260+
320GB HDD
everything way above recommended specs, and even when playing on "default" settings, graphics are laggy (choppy).
this is definitely a programimng issue with the game. i am dissapointed. hopefully a patch will be released soon
AMD 64 4600+ X2
ASUS 4870X2
2 GB RAM
Windows XP SP 3
Seems to be unrelated to specs and everyone seem to have this more or less just some people does not get annoyed by it
as a few other posters mentioned, setting the affinity to only one CPU completely eliminated the lag for me.
My only guess is that the game wasn't programmed to properly utilize multiple CPUs, and as such when it is divided among multiple processors performance is negatively impacted.
I unchecked CPU 0, having it only run on CPU 1, and there has been absolutely no lag since.
This fix would explain why lower end computer users are not experiencing the problem, as most older computers do not have dual and quad core processors.
If anyone doesn't know, you can change your Affinity in Windows Task Manager. Under processes, select TS3.exe and click "select affinity."
Not sure if this is necessarily what is happening here, but as I said it worked for me.
Cheers,
Ken
Edit: All of my in-game graphics settings are maxed, btw. System Specs:
AMD Athlon 6000 3.1Ghz Dual Core
4gb DDR2 800 Ram (2x2048)
GT9500 Series GPU
320GB SATA2 HDD (I'm nearly positive that this is not caused by your harddrive, btw)
My game runs all right, sort of, at the lowest settings, but it looks worse than the original Sims. If I increase the settings, it lags intolerably and crashes.
I am beyond disappointed with this game. It would be nice if EA would find a solution to this, but I am not at all sure I'll be around when it happens. I have TS2 with all the expansion and stuff packs, and I know my computer can run that.