Skin tone improvements: Graphics card rated medium, high, or ultra? What?

adduapina

"*Please note that the October PC update will, at this point, be visible only to those running the game with the “Uncompressed Sim Textures” graphics settings turned ON. This will not be the default setting on all machines, so follow these steps to check your settings and see the graphic updates. To turn ON “Uncompressed Sim Texture” in the game, go to Options > Game Options > Graphics Tab > Graphics Sections > check “Uncompressed Sim Textures.” If your machine has lower graphics settings and you attempt to run with uncompressed graphics, you may experience a crash; to recover, please re-enable graphic compression. Based on the current specs that default “Uncompressed Sim Textures” to ON, we recommend a graphics card rated medium, high, or ultra and at least 2 GB video RAM."

Could someone please explain to, umm, my friend what does this mean and how would one know what their graphics card rate would be? :>

Thanks in advance.

WaytoomanyUIDs

Basically, if Sims 4 set you graphics to Medium, High or Ultra when you first started it, then the graphics should handle it (except some of the lower end medium cards, maybe)

EDIT: If you are running integrated graphics on a laptop, probably not. A laptop with a seperate graphics chip and moderately recent desktop with a seperate graphics card. I wouldn't be surprised if even a GTX 710 or 720 would handle it as long as it had 2Gig VRAM, like most recent ones do

Alwe1507

adduapina wrote: »

"*Please note that the October PC update will, at this point, be visible only to those running the game with the “Uncompressed Sim Textures” graphics settings turned ON. This will not be the default setting on all machines, so follow these steps to check your settings and see the graphic updates. To turn ON “Uncompressed Sim Texture” in the game, go to Options > Game Options > Graphics Tab > Graphics Sections > check “Uncompressed Sim Textures.” If your machine has lower graphics settings and you attempt to run with uncompressed graphics, you may experience a crash; to recover, please re-enable graphic compression. Based on the current specs that default “Uncompressed Sim Textures” to ON, we recommend a graphics card rated medium, high, or ultra and at least 2 GB video RAM."

Could someone please explain to, umm, my friend what does this mean and how would one know what their graphics card rate would be? :>

Thanks in advance.

WaytoomanyUIDs wrote: »

Basically, if Sims 4 set you graphics to Medium, High or Ultra when you first started it, then the graphics should handle it (except some of the lower end medium cards, maybe)

...or, post your graphics card make and model here. Someone could probably tell you ☺

Cinebar

You find out what graphic card or chip is in your machine. Does Windows 10 let you type in DXDIAG and see the name of your card? (display)
Also, you can google benchmarks for your card then you will see if it is rated low, medium or highend or any better than anything else out there. Benchmarks are tests that a tech savvy company or person do to compare cards for many different things. They give cards a rating and tell if a newer card that may have been just released is any better than the version before it. (Usually not by much) so you can make an informed decission of what video cards can do and can't do next time you want to buy a laptop or a pc or a new card.

Pamtastic72

If you have an Nvidia graphics card and know the series number, like I have a GT 1060 3GB, you can google it and find the specs for your card and see how much VRAM it has. You can likely do this for other brands too.

WaytoomanyUIDs

Another way is everyone including Intel has a control centre for their graphics that sits in the tray in the Start Bar. And they all have an information or hardware panel. Probably a lot easier than explaining how to use sysinfo or dxdiag.

EDIT: its actually annoying that Win 10 doesn't include that handy benchmark thing under "This PC" anymore. Very easy way of getting basic info on the CPU and Graphics.

stilljustme2

WaytoomanyUIDs wrote: »

Another way is everyone including Intel has a control centre for their graphics that sits in the tray in the Start Bar. And they all have an information or hardware panel. Probably a lot easier than explaining how to use sysinfo or dxdiag.

EDIT: its actually annoying that Win 10 doesn't include that handy benchmark thing under "This PC" anymore. Very easy way of getting basic info on the CPU and Graphics.

I found a setting for NVIDIA Control Panel under the Hidden Icons in the Tray -- was able to get the model number there (GeForce GTX 850M). This has been a good gaming laptop (ASUS ROG series) but it's starting to get a bit creaky (5 years old and a lot of use) so I'm considering a new one early next year.

I think that the skin tones are going to be more of an issue for players who have machines with the integrated graphics card instead of a separate video card.

Beardedgeek

stilljustme2 wrote: »

WaytoomanyUIDs wrote: »

Another way is everyone including Intel has a control centre for their graphics that sits in the tray in the Start Bar. And they all have an information or hardware panel. Probably a lot easier than explaining how to use sysinfo or dxdiag.

EDIT: its actually annoying that Win 10 doesn't include that handy benchmark thing under "This PC" anymore. Very easy way of getting basic info on the CPU and Graphics.

I found a setting for NVIDIA Control Panel under the Hidden Icons in the Tray -- was able to get the model number there (GeForce GTX 850M). This has been a good gaming laptop (ASUS ROG series) but it's starting to get a bit creaky (5 years old and a lot of use) so I'm considering a new one early next year.

I think that the skin tones are going to be more of an issue for players who have machines with the integrated graphics card instead of a separate video card.

I had exactly the same card in my ROG I replaced last year and I have ran that on Ultra, so yeah, basically only the ones without any kind of dedicated graphic card.

logion

As far as I understand, the skin tone update uses uncompressed sim textures. So if your graphics card can't handle that, you can't see the new skin tones.

You can check that by setting your game to run on medium, high or ultra settings with uncompressed sim textures.

If you want to, you can check how much VRAM your graphics card have in Windows as Cinebar pointed out by clicking on the start meny and typing dxdiag, then go to the next tab and you should see the information for your graphics card.

adduapina

Hey thanks everyone, I think my friend got it now :> ♡

BuildingTheSims

You’ve all got it wrong. You won’t need a better card to see the skin tones. They were talking about seeing the blotchiness fixes. For the October update. See the darker tones had strange blothches .

netney52

I’m in a similar position I’ve looked into it and my graphics card won’t support the new skin tones so I guess this is end of the sims 4 line for me as reading the blog it will break my game. So yeah thanks so very much to everyone that wanted this and to the sims team i’m so very happy for you all.

adamzaid

im not sure if my 920m can handle it although the game does start at meduim settings and i have 2gig or vram the game is for some reason so laggy rn on my pc like it runs rlly low frame rates like in the low 20s most of the time..... it used to run at the low 40s to 50s so i dont rlly know what happened there.

Beardedgeek

netney52 wrote: »

I’m in a similar position I’ve looked into it and my graphics card won’t support the new skin tones so I guess this is end of the sims 4 line for me as reading the blog it will break my game. So yeah thanks so very much to everyone that wanted this and to the sims team i’m so very happy for you all.

...No, that's not what it means. You get the new skin tones. What you don't get is that you won't notice the fixes on the old skin tones.

Kimmer

Good thing I've never even noticed that there's anything wrong. My gaming laptop can hardly handle medium graphics, so I guess I don't see the fixes, but it doesn't matter because I don't need them.

WaytoomanyUIDs

adamzaid wrote: »

im not sure if my 920m can handle it although the game does start at meduim settings and i have 2gig or vram the game is for some reason so laggy rn on my pc like it runs rlly low frame rates like in the low 20s most of the time..... it used to run at the low 40s to 50s so i dont rlly know what happened there.

This is a really good guide on optimising your grphics settings, it may be able to help your frame rate issues https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xNRwNppTkVc

leo3487

6 years and now Maxis figure than to advance must leave old technology out? (old ones I mean 2010)

adduapina

WaytoomanyUIDs wrote: »

adamzaid wrote: »

im not sure if my 920m can handle it although the game does start at meduim settings and i have 2gig or vram the game is for some reason so laggy rn on my pc like it runs rlly low frame rates like in the low 20s most of the time..... it used to run at the low 40s to 50s so i dont rlly know what happened there.

This is a really good guide on optimising your grphics settings, it may be able to help your frame rate issues https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xNRwNppTkVc

Thanks @WaytoomanyUIDs for sharing the video! I have been playing with custom settings for a long while, but this gave a lot more insight than my trial-and-error method of customising graphic settings.

Onverser

In the game settings you have different graphics options, ultra, high, medium or low.

izecson

GTX 960 is the lowest end of the rated card in my opinion that can run sims 4 in 1080p ultra with uncompressed texture, if you have better card than the one i mentioned then it's perfectly compatible.

For Nvidia, it's GTX 770 780 970 980 1060 and above. 1660, and RTX 20xx.

Simmerville

Kimmer wrote: »

Good thing I've never even noticed that there's anything wrong. My gaming laptop can hardly handle medium graphics, so I guess I don't see the fixes, but it doesn't matter because I don't need them.

Same here. Never really understood all the fuss re skintones. Okay, so some doesn't look 100% realistic, but it's a game! I on't mind if I can't find my own exact realistic skintone. In fact, I couldn't care less...

SimsLady2000

adamzaid wrote: »

im not sure if my 920m can handle it although the game does start at meduim settings and i have 2gig or vram the game is for some reason so laggy rn on my pc like it runs rlly low frame rates like in the low 20s most of the time..... it used to run at the low 40s to 50s so i dont rlly know what happened there.

You can still play without the graphics set higher than your pc can handle, you just may not be able to see the skin tone changes very well. I am not sure if you will be able to use the sliders. I wasn't really excited about this change anyway and my pc and gaming laptop are beasts and always play on Ultra.

As far as your frame rate problem goes, while you are playing, back out and do ctrl +Alt + delete and see if your Origin is using your resources. This has been a recent problem for me. I have found that my Origin is using up to 97% of my processing resources which of course brings my whole PC to a halt. I have to turn it off at that point. I have tried to figure out what is causing this problem but since it happens on both my PC and Laptop, I assume it is an Origin issue.