My loading screen is under 10 seconds.
I don't know much about PCs, but mine is one of the best, I was told, at least... I have invested a lot of money:
But I play completely without mods / cc. If that makes any difference.
I also constantly clean up the Sim and household inventories, as well as the screenshots folder. Delete all the cache files, clean up the save files and repair the game.
I don't know what can be done to speed up loading times. The answer would interest me, too.
Sul Sul!
On my blog (German) you'll find two completed vampire stories 🦇 and an ongoing ghost story 👻.
I'm also posting about my I'm surrounded by idi🤪ts! - challenge, in which I've now reached gen 9.
Thanks for stopping by! 👋
Your rig is superior to mine, with a better GPU and a faster SSD (mine is SATA). 20 seconds seems like too long, but there are other in-game factors to consider.
I believe household size, lot size, and quantity of CC are the key factors related to load time. Knowing that we’re not all testing under the same conditions it’s difficult to say if all of these reported load times can even be compared.
For the sake of comparison, try loading into the Landgraab house in Oasis Springs. I just tested it and with everyone home it loaded in 9.72 seconds.
Those results don’t seem too far off. Maybe there are out-of-game factors contributing slightly, like other applications running or background processes. When was the last time you did a clean Windows reinstall? For me it was a couple months ago.
ASUS - ROG G703GS 17.3" Gaming Laptop - Intel Core i7 - 16GB Memory - NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070 - 1TB Hybrid Hard Drive - Silver..... I believe this is the laptop I have. I got it a year ago.
I have a lot of stuff in my library, I play rotationally, have over 150 sims favorited, many of my sims have a large inventory. My loading screen when I tested was about 6 seconds. I don’t use CC or mods, but I do have every pack, and some of my houses are really packed. The graphics are great. I know my laptop is a bit overkill, but I wanted something that would last awhile.
(5GB of mods & CC, all packs, never clean out my Tray or Saves folder much so those are pretty hefty.)
and honestly timing it again more accurate hitting start on the stopwatch, it's closer to 3 seconds. This save file plays on long lifespan... Second generation just aged up to child with founder a week or so away from becoming an adult just to give you an idea how old this save is. I'm a little surprised with my results since I have more mods than CC and my hardware is 2 years old. If I had to guess, my computer is borderline mid-range by 2019 standards.
But id like to point something out that hasn't been said. Laptops are weaker than desktop. That's just because they don't exactly use the same hardware (laptops are in a compact form). You have a very nice high-end laptop and you shouldn't be disappointed with it. I know you're comparing to others but really... 20 seconds is still fast! Don't you think? If someone has no mods in place without a bloated save and it's still taking them over a minute then that's kinda long for Sims 4 standards considering these are closed worlds. In that example it would come down to a difference in hardware. Still, this is coming from someone who plays Sims 3. That game has open worlds so it's normal to take minutes. I personally don't mind waiting 3 seconds, 20 seconds, or 40 seconds for my Sims 4 save to load.
edit to add: I forgot to mention I do have the game installed on a M.2 SATA SSD. Samsung 860 Evo to be exact so not the latest tech. How much this benefits S4 I personally have not compared but others have and a friend of mine said it does, in fact, benefit vs standard hard disk drive.
Thank you @SimplyJen oh I hadn’t considered that desktops might be faster. I need a laptop for portability. I’m very content with the load time itself (my past laptop always took 10-20 MINUTES per loading screen and I was shocked by how quick the loading screens are on my new laptop by comparison). I am not the sort of person who spends a lot of money on technology (or anything, really except for sims packs) and it was a big commitment for me to spend that money. I suppose what was worrying me was the thought that perhaps I hadn’t been careful enough and I would have been better off spending the same money on a different computer. Since it was so much money, I hoped I had gotten one of the best computers that I could for that amount of money. If that makes sense?
Totally understand. We spend so much on our computers and expect the very best from them. That's normal!
Thank you @SimplyJen oh I hadn’t considered that desktops might be faster. I need a laptop for portability. I’m very content with the load time itself (my past laptop always took 10-20 MINUTES per loading screen and I was shocked by how quick the loading screens are on my new laptop by comparison). I am not the sort of person who spends a lot of money on technology (or anything, really except for sims packs) and it was a big commitment for me to spend that money. I suppose what was worrying me was the thought that perhaps I hadn’t been careful enough and I would have been better off spending the same money on a different computer. Since it was so much money, I hoped I had gotten one of the best computers that I could for that amount of money. If that makes sense?
Yes the fact that it's on laptop does play a role.
One of the most important parts of your setup for TS4 is actually your CPU. But laptop CPUs are always a tiny bit weaker than their dekstop counterparts. I have this setup for example:
And I can definitely feel the difference between an i7k and an i7h. Likewise, the i7k outperforms your i7h 8th gen, even if only by 16%. But that difference can definitely be noticeable in how fast it manages to process everything. My i7h 7th gen does really well on laptop, but everything takes just a tat longer. Opening saves, opening the menu, opening B&B etc. It's all just a tat slower and less smooth. So maybe that has something to do with it?
I'm not sure though because I feel there are others with laptops weaker than yours (which is honestly a really nice setup) who seem to be having faster load times? Unless I misread something.
However ... do you ever feel it's slow while playing? Because you can't know exactly how truthful the votes are (not saying anyone's lying but hey, that just a fact with polls), and if you hadn't seen it, would you have felt that your laptop is taking too long to load stuff? Cause if you never felt that way, I wouldn't care too much about it, personally. It's only if you feel it's sluggish, that I'd try to figure out why.
My loading screens are around 10 seconds or less. I bought my PC three years ago so she's getting on a bit now, but she still runs like a dream. She's a HP Envy Phoenix, i7-6700K, 16 GB RAM, NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 Ti, 2 TB & 128 GB SSD. I also play without CC/mods which probably helps and store all my data on a portable external hard drive.
@SimTrippy thank you for explaining yes, it does seem like a lot of people whose specs are less powerful on paper are nevertheless getting faster loading times which is part of what’s puzzling me. I’m a bit like... Ok so why didn’t I just spend less on a different computer which would have ran faster? It’s too late now though obviously.
I’ve never felt that my laptop is slow while playing but I’ve been comparing it to my last laptop on which loading screens could last up to 20mins, there was lots of lag and the game crashed all over the place. Since I don’t have any first hand experience in gaming computers it’s hard or me to tell whether it’s running as a computer of that price should.
Hmm I don't know either It can be hard to tell, but if you've been happy so far, I really wouldn't worry about it. It's not like you're usually playing next to 5 other people with faster load times (and I'm sure there's plenty of people who have slower ones!). I can understand wanting the best value for your money though. I can really mull over stuff like this too Also, really dumb question, but TS4 is on your SSD right? I'm sure it is but well, just to be safe
@MaggieMarley your SSD is probably going to be your C-drive and the HDD the D-drive (given that your SSD is most likely the main drive). So TS4 should be in C:\Program Files (x86)\Origin Games (probably).
You can also go into Origin and check the default folder it saves games in by going to: Applications Settings -> Tab Installs & Saves -> On your computer -> Game library location. That's where, if you don't manually select another drive, Origin will always download your games to. Load times are significantly faster on an SSD, so it's worth checking.
Also, I'm wondering, but does your laptop have both an integrated & a dedicated graphics card? So is there another card showing beside the GTX? I think you should find this in the DXDiag under "Screen 1" or whatever it's called in English. Cause I think I had this with my laptop where I had to make sure Origin was actually using the GTX 1060 and not the integrated card to run TS4, which can also make a big difference.
MaggieMarley
Posts: 5,299 Member
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I don't know much about PCs, but mine is one of the best, I was told, at least...
But I play completely without mods / cc. If that makes any difference.
I also constantly clean up the Sim and household inventories, as well as the screenshots folder. Delete all the cache files, clean up the save files and repair the game.
I don't know what can be done to speed up loading times. The answer would interest me, too.
On my blog (German) you'll find two completed vampire stories 🦇 and an ongoing ghost story 👻.
I'm also posting about my I'm surrounded by idi🤪ts! - challenge, in which I've now reached gen 9.
Thanks for stopping by! 👋
GTX 1080
16 GB RAM
500 GB SSD
Vlad The Dad: A 100 Baby Challenge, Vlad as ‘matriarch’ *COMPLETE*
Breed Out The Weird *COMPLETE*
8gb ddr3 ram
Msi gtx 960
Seagate 500gb hdd
Not a beast machine, but mine loaded in 5-10 seconds, only goes above that if i just recently deleted localthumbcache
Your rig is superior to mine, with a better GPU and a faster SSD (mine is SATA). 20 seconds seems like too long, but there are other in-game factors to consider.
I believe household size, lot size, and quantity of CC are the key factors related to load time. Knowing that we’re not all testing under the same conditions it’s difficult to say if all of these reported load times can even be compared.
For the sake of comparison, try loading into the Landgraab house in Oasis Springs. I just tested it and with everyone home it loaded in 9.72 seconds.
Vlad The Dad: A 100 Baby Challenge, Vlad as ‘matriarch’ *COMPLETE*
Breed Out The Weird *COMPLETE*
Ryzen 7 1800x
Nvidia GTX 1080TI (Asus Strix)
16GB DDR4 memory
3TB Western Digital Black & 512GB Intel SSD
It's complete overkill, but I use my PC for more demanding stuff too, not just for TS4. I don't use any CC and the only mod I use is MCCC.
Those results don’t seem too far off. Maybe there are out-of-game factors contributing slightly, like other applications running or background processes. When was the last time you did a clean Windows reinstall? For me it was a couple months ago.
Vlad The Dad: A 100 Baby Challenge, Vlad as ‘matriarch’ *COMPLETE*
Breed Out The Weird *COMPLETE*
I have a lot of stuff in my library, I play rotationally, have over 150 sims favorited, many of my sims have a large inventory. My loading screen when I tested was about 6 seconds. I don’t use CC or mods, but I do have every pack, and some of my houses are really packed. The graphics are great. I know my laptop is a bit overkill, but I wanted something that would last awhile.
Vlad The Dad: A 100 Baby Challenge, Vlad as ‘matriarch’ *COMPLETE*
Breed Out The Weird *COMPLETE*
I tested this on my end too.
In my main save file that I’ve played over 4 years with over 600 Sims in it (I never made any changes to the Landgraab house): 11.5 seconds
A brand new save: 5.9 seconds
A brand new save, deleting all other pre-made Sims and keeping the Landgraabs as the only family: 4.8 seconds
So as expected, the save file itself has the biggest impact on loading times.
But id like to point something out that hasn't been said. Laptops are weaker than desktop. That's just because they don't exactly use the same hardware (laptops are in a compact form). You have a very nice high-end laptop and you shouldn't be disappointed with it. I know you're comparing to others but really... 20 seconds is still fast!
edit to add: I forgot to mention I do have the game installed on a M.2 SATA SSD. Samsung 860 Evo to be exact so not the latest tech. How much this benefits S4 I personally have not compared but others have and a friend of mine said it does, in fact, benefit vs standard hard disk drive.
S3 simblr: http://simplysimming.tumblr.com/
S4 simblr: http://simlogic.tumblr.com/
Vlad The Dad: A 100 Baby Challenge, Vlad as ‘matriarch’ *COMPLETE*
Breed Out The Weird *COMPLETE*
S3 simblr: http://simplysimming.tumblr.com/
S4 simblr: http://simlogic.tumblr.com/
Vlad The Dad: A 100 Baby Challenge, Vlad as ‘matriarch’ *COMPLETE*
Breed Out The Weird *COMPLETE*
I play TS4 on a high end custom built PC. Almost all components are overclocked too for the best performance possible.
Totally understand. We spend so much on our computers and expect the very best from them. That's normal!
S3 simblr: http://simplysimming.tumblr.com/
S4 simblr: http://simlogic.tumblr.com/
Yes the fact that it's on laptop does play a role.
One of the most important parts of your setup for TS4 is actually your CPU. But laptop CPUs are always a tiny bit weaker than their dekstop counterparts. I have this setup for example:
=> On desktop PC, I run: i-7700k + 16GB RAM + GTX 1060 + 256 GB SSD / 1 TB HDD
=> On laptop, I run: i7-7700h + 16GB RAM + GTX 1060 + 256 GB SSD / 1 TB HDD
And I can definitely feel the difference between an i7k and an i7h. Likewise, the i7k outperforms your i7h 8th gen, even if only by 16%. But that difference can definitely be noticeable in how fast it manages to process everything. My i7h 7th gen does really well on laptop, but everything takes just a tat longer. Opening saves, opening the menu, opening B&B etc. It's all just a tat slower and less smooth. So maybe that has something to do with it?
I'm not sure though because I feel there are others with laptops weaker than yours (which is honestly a really nice setup) who seem to be having faster load times? Unless I misread something.
However ... do you ever feel it's slow while playing? Because you can't know exactly how truthful the votes are (not saying anyone's lying but hey, that just a fact with polls), and if you hadn't seen it, would you have felt that your laptop is taking too long to load stuff? Cause if you never felt that way, I wouldn't care too much about it, personally. It's only if you feel it's sluggish, that I'd try to figure out why.
Vlad The Dad: A 100 Baby Challenge, Vlad as ‘matriarch’ *COMPLETE*
Breed Out The Weird *COMPLETE*
Hmm I don't know either
Vlad The Dad: A 100 Baby Challenge, Vlad as ‘matriarch’ *COMPLETE*
Breed Out The Weird *COMPLETE*
You can also go into Origin and check the default folder it saves games in by going to: Applications Settings -> Tab Installs & Saves -> On your computer -> Game library location. That's where, if you don't manually select another drive, Origin will always download your games to. Load times are significantly faster on an SSD, so it's worth checking.
Also, I'm wondering, but does your laptop have both an integrated & a dedicated graphics card? So is there another card showing beside the GTX? I think you should find this in the DXDiag under "Screen 1" or whatever it's called in English. Cause I think I had this with my laptop where I had to make sure Origin was actually using the GTX 1060 and not the integrated card to run TS4, which can also make a big difference.