Why does sims 3 run so bad on modern hardware?

friendlysimmer · August 2018

It seems that im not the only one with this question , but why is it that the sims 3 runs better on older configurations. For example, my old laptop from 2011 with an intel hd 2000 graphics card was able to give me a playable 30 fps stutter free experience with the sims 3 and i think i had a few eps installed as well as some custom content. But on my current laptop the game is unplayable with no eps and no cc although my laptop is no beast it has 12gb of ram and an intel hd 620 graphics card .I initially thought that there was something wrong with my laptop, but now i know its the game.On my current pc i have an intel core i5 2400 quad core cpu , a gtx 1050 2gb graphics card , and 8gb of ram , and the game runs even worse than my laptop , i tried everything from using windows 7 , installing nraas mods , running the game from an ssd , turning all the settings down to low , and putting my gpu in the "graphicscards.sgr" file still on average i get 19 fps guess thats it for this game then.

igazor · August 2018

If anyone is able to help the OP, in order to get the full picture the story starts somewhere around here.
https://forums.thesims.com/en_US/discussion/comment/16675343/#Comment_16675343

@friendlysimmer - If the question was intended to be directed towards EA and not your fellow players, I'm afraid this forum is not a means to make that happen. There haven't been any TS3 developers for years and no one on staff that we are aware of (except the moderators) reads these sections of the forums.

friendlysimmer · August 2018

igazor wrote: »

If anyone is able to help the OP, in order to get the full picture the story starts somewhere around here.
https://forums.thesims.com/en_US/discussion/comment/16675343/#Comment_16675343

@friendlysimmer - If the question was intended to be directed towards EA and not your fellow players, I'm afraid this forum is not a means to make that happen. There haven't been any TS3 developers for years and no one on staff that we are aware of (except the moderators) reads these sections of the forums.

This wasnt really intended to be directed towards anyone in particular just mainly to see if anyone else is having the same issue as me. I was thinking that someone who has faced the same problem might have a solution.

phoebebebe13 · August 2018

@friendlysimmer
Every computer is different. This game is 9 years old

intel 2000 hd card may be able to run a few earlier eps but it could not run the whole game

The intel 620 card is newer than the game and does not meet requirements to play the game .

Both your old laptop and new laptop are not designed to run 3d games like the sims. It's not the game on these laptops, it's your laptops hardware can't handle the game and don't meet requirements to run the game.

If you have an intel i5 2000 series with a GTX 1050 card, sounds like you upgraded a desktop. The intel 2000 series is old . Did you upgrade this desktop or did you buy it used? What is your power supply? Did you add your game to Nvidia control panel and use vsync?

friendlysimmer · August 2018

phoebebebe13 wrote: »

@friendlysimmer
Every computer is different. This game is 9 years old

intel 2000 hd card may be able to run a few earlier eps but it could not run the whole game

The intel 620 card is newer than the game and does not meet requirements to play the game .

Both your old laptop and new laptop are not designed to run 3d games like the sims. It's not the game on these laptops, it's your laptops hardware can't handle the game and don't meet requirements to run the game.

If you have an intel i5 2000 series with a GTX 1050 card, sounds like you upgraded a desktop. The intel 2000 series is old . Did you upgrade this desktop or did you buy it used? What is your power supply? Did you add your game to Nvidia control panel and use vsync?

I did all of that and more , a i5 2400 matches up to around a i3 6100 still no high end but somewhat decent , i added the game to the control panel and it limited it to 60fps but my problem is i get an average of 17-20fps in game it seems like the newer hardware the worse sims 3 performs , intel even says their newer integrated gpus are capable of some casual gaming (whatever that means) but anyways not my point. Sorry if i seem tense im just really disappointed because when i built my new pc i was really expecting to be able to play sims 3 because its honestly my favorite sims game but now im finding out that thats infeasible.

Sigzy05 · August 2018

I guess I should feel lucky that my laptop actually is able to run TS3 at a decent frame rate somehow. Even with all the EP's. While my desktop is miles better, my 920m laptop makes me proud ahaha Somehow I feel like TS3 runs better on my laptop than TS4. (although for some odd reason adventure land appears on my laptop but not on my desktop)

friendlysimmer · August 2018

Sigzy05 wrote: »

I guess I should feel lucky that my laptop actually is able to run TS3 at a decent frame rate somehow. Even with all the EP's. While my desktop is miles better, my 920m laptop makes me proud ahaha Somehow I feel like TS3 runs better on my laptop than TS4.

Its been the opposite for me on my laptop and my desktop i get a smooth frame rate with ts4 but not with ts3

soko37 · August 2018

My sims 3 runs great on my newer system. I actually had to scale back some effects, like graphics on water, because my graphics were so good it made the water look way too clear almost like glass and looked normal again when I turned graphics on that down just a tad. Other than that it loads lightning fast and looks awesome. Way different playing experience than when I played it on my laptop in its heyday. I seriously would go run errands while it loaded. It used to take about 20 to 30 mins for the game to start lol.

I also run mine on a tower I built myself. I also have an i5 that's liquid cooled, I have a gtx 970, 16 RAM, 750 p2 power supply, and only SSD drives.

Could you have possibly made an error in construction of your desktop? Sounds like you're getting a bottleneck.

friendlysimmer · August 2018

soko37 wrote: »

My sims 3 runs great on my newer system. I actually had to scale back some effects, like graphics on water, because my graphics were so good it made the water look way to clear almost like glass and looked normal again when I turned graphics on that down just a tad. Other than that it loads lightning fast and looks awesome. Way different playing experience than when I played it on my laptop in its heyday. I seriously would go run errands while it loaded. It used to take about 20 to 30 mins for the game to start lol.

Did you have to use any other "tweaks" to get the game running well such as mods or editing the graphics rules sgr file ?

friendlysimmer · August 2018

soko37 wrote: »

My sims 3 runs great on my newer system. I actually had to scale back some effects, like graphics on water, because my graphics were so good it made the water look way too clear almost like glass and looked normal again when I turned graphics on that down just a tad. Other than that it loads lightning fast and looks awesome. Way different playing experience than when I played it on my laptop in its heyday. I seriously would go run errands while it loaded. It used to take about 20 to 30 mins for the game to start lol.

I also run mine on a tower I built myself. I also have an i5 that's liquid cooled, I have a gtx 970, 16 RAM, 750 p2 power supply, and only SSD drives.

Could you have possibly made an error in construction of your desktop? Sounds like you're getting a bottleneck.

I dont think thats the problem. Im using a 400w evga psu thats brand new so it couldnt be that , the thing that gets me is that all my other games run fine , games way more demanding than sims 3 so i couldnt see how this would be a bottleneck and as far as i know my cpu and gpu shouldnt be the problem especially not for sims 3 that can be played on a single core cpu if you really tried

I have a quad core i5 with the stock cooler it came with maybe its a problem with the cooling , i know its not my gpu because its a overclock edition (i dont have it overclocked because i dont know how) and has 2 fans so it could be my cpu cooler.

phoebebebe13 · August 2018

friendlysimmer wrote: »

phoebebebe13 wrote: »

@friendlysimmer
Every computer is different. This game is 9 years old

intel 2000 hd card may be able to run a few earlier eps but it could not run the whole game

The intel 620 card is newer than the game and does not meet requirements to play the game .

Both your old laptop and new laptop are not designed to run 3d games like the sims. It's not the game on these laptops, it's your laptops hardware can't handle the game and don't meet requirements to run the game.

If you have an intel i5 2000 series with a GTX 1050 card, sounds like you upgraded a desktop. The intel 2000 series is old . Did you upgrade this desktop or did you buy it used? What is your power supply? Did you add your game to Nvidia control panel and use vsync?

I did all of that and more , a i5 2400 matches up to around a i3 6100 still no high end but somewhat decent , i added the game to the control panel and it limited it to 60fps but my problem is i get an average of 17-20fps in game it seems like the newer hardware the worse sims 3 performs , intel even says their newer integrated gpus are capable of some casual gaming (whatever that means) but anyways not my point. Sorry if i seem tense im just really disappointed because when i built my new pc i was really expecting to be able to play sims 3 because its honestly my favorite sims game but now im finding out that thats infeasible.

Did you add the 1050 card or did someone else and you bought it refurbished? Sounds like something maybe up with your build or you are gaming in a higher resolution than your card can handle. You should be running 1080p 60 hz for the 1050 card. If your resolution is higher than that , expect fps drops.

friendlysimmer wrote: »

soko37 wrote: »

My sims 3 runs great on my newer system. I actually had to scale back some effects, like graphics on water, because my graphics were so good it made the water look way too clear almost like glass and looked normal again when I turned graphics on that down just a tad. Other than that it loads lightning fast and looks awesome. Way different playing experience than when I played it on my laptop in its heyday. I seriously would go run errands while it loaded. It used to take about 20 to 30 mins for the game to start lol.

I also run mine on a tower I built myself. I also have an i5 that's liquid cooled, I have a gtx 970, 16 RAM, 750 p2 power supply, and only SSD drives.

Could you have possibly made an error in construction of your desktop? Sounds like you're getting a bottleneck.

I dont think thats the problem. Im using a 400w evga psu thats brand new so it couldnt be that , the thing that gets me is that all my other games run fine , games way more demanding than sims 3 so i couldnt see how this would be a bottleneck and as far as i know my cpu and gpu shouldnt be the problem especially not for sims 3 that can be played on a single core cpu if you really tried I have a quad core i5 with the stock cooler it came with maybe its a problem with the cooling , i know its not my gpu because its a overclock edition (i dont have it overclocked because i dont know how) and has 2 fans so it could be my cpu cooler.

Your PSU can go bad. What specific Evga PSU do you have

@chesterbigbird is a build expert and can help you further

phoebebebe13 · August 2018

igazor wrote: »

If anyone is able to help the OP, in order to get the full picture the story starts somewhere around here.
https://forums.thesims.com/en_US/discussion/comment/16675343/#Comment_16675343

@friendlysimmer - If the question was intended to be directed towards EA and not your fellow players, I'm afraid this forum is not a means to make that happen. There haven't been any TS3 developers for years and no one on staff that we are aware of (except the moderators) reads these sections of the forums.

@igazor thanks for pointing out the DxDiag to me. I missed that part

@friendlysimmer I am also going to agree with @igazor and I bet @chesterbigbird will say the same thing. Looking at the other thread with DxDiag provided, your SSD hard drive is too small over all and you only have 11 gb free space. This is a problem. Windows 10 needs allot of space for updates and running properly. You can not keep your ssd that low. The ssd will slow down if you have no room.

The sims 3 needs 50gb free hard drive space . The game uses virtual memory.

SemaviLady · August 2018

You have a good question, @friendlysimmer

I'm not expert... but I did have experience with an unlocked I5-2500K home-built desktop several years ago.(I've been rolling my own desktops for about twenty years now and I'm still not expert) It wasn't bad but I didn't realize how slow it was til til I had to replace it because of a "gone bad" liquid cooling system, which was not its fault. I replaced it with an unlocked sixth generation i7 and noticed significant performance increase in TS3 and other gaming and went to a massive Noctua double fan heat sink.

Your GPU is fine but at this time, I wouldn't rate the 2nd generation i5-2400 as very modern. It's a Sandy Bridge socket and while it was newer it did cause some excitement but Sandy Bridge did not compete well with the new socket designs that came next after Ivy Bridge. It could be the actual bottleneck here. I understand the unlocked Sandy Bridge processor give quite a bit more power (the one I had before it got smoked) but yours is the locked version.

You could do some searches about the Sandy Bridge socket and maybe find some of your answers. It was meant to be a leap forward, but it was more like crawling steps compared to the sockets that came next. Again, I'm not the go-to person for CPU info. But just wanted to give a little more insight into your CPU.

i5s are now in the 8th generation with many more improvements than 2nd gen i5s offered in its time. The sockets have greatly evolved.

phoebebebe13 · August 2018

@SemaviLady You missed the DxDiag part like I did even though Igazor posted a link. Their hard drive is very small and has no space. That is the first issue I would tackle before anything else . I don't think it's their CPU. they could have a PSU problem but the hard drive on C drive is an issue

friendlysimmer · August 2018

phoebebebe13 wrote: »

igazor wrote: »

If anyone is able to help the OP, in order to get the full picture the story starts somewhere around here.
https://forums.thesims.com/en_US/discussion/comment/16675343/#Comment_16675343

@friendlysimmer - If the question was intended to be directed towards EA and not your fellow players, I'm afraid this forum is not a means to make that happen. There haven't been any TS3 developers for years and no one on staff that we are aware of (except the moderators) reads these sections of the forums.

@igazor thanks for pointing out the DxDiag to me. I missed that part

@friendlysimmer I am also going to agree with @igazor and I bet @chesterbigbird will say the same thing. Looking at the other thread with DxDiag provided, your SSD hard drive is too small over all and you only have 11 gb free space. This is a problem. Windows 10 needs allot of space for updates and running properly. You can not keep your ssd that low. The ssd will slow down if you have no room.

The sims 3 needs 50gb free hard drive space . The game uses virtual memory.

I just now realized i had sims 2 uc installed on my ssd if i uninstall that i should have around 23gb free and with 12gb as virtual memory should have around 11gb of breathing space , anyways sims 3 is installed on my f drive which is a standard 500gb hdd , i have windows installed on my ssd and its already has multiple updates and has gone up in size i would like to mention that windows 10 on an traditional mechanical hdd is well slow , very slow compared to an ssd. And the 11gb free shouldnt be a huge problem that i have to worry about atm since i already have allocated my virtual memory onto it and all my other games run just fine (games that also use alot of pagefile) aswell as the fact that the drive as is , is only 64gb (mainly got it for windows since ssds are so expensive)

On a good note running the game in windowed mode seems to slightly help with the stuttering but the fps stay the same and the stuttering is still very much there.

Im gonna finally take a video and stop procrastinating now.

friendlysimmer · August 2018

SemaviLady wrote: »

You have a good question, @friendlysimmer

I'm not expert... but I did have experience with an unlocked I5-2400K home-built desktop several years ago.(I've been rolling my own desktops for about twenty years now and I'm still not expert) It wasn't bad but I didn't realize how slow it was til til I had to replace it because of a "gone bad" liquid cooling system, which was not its fault. I replaced it with an unlocked sixth generation i7 and noticed significant performance increase in TS3 and other gaming and went to a massive Noctua double fan heat sink.

Your GPU is fine but at this time, I wouldn't rate the 2nd generation i5-2400 as very modern. It's a Sandy Bridge socket and while it was newer it did cause some excitement but Sandy Bridge did not compete well with the new socket designs that came next after Ivy Bridge. It could be the actual bottleneck here. I understand the unlocked Sandy Bridge processor give quite a bit more power (the one I had before it got smoked) but yours is the locked version (not i5-2400K, unlocked).

You could do some searches about the Sandy Bridge socket and maybe find some of your answers. It was meant to be a leap forward, but it was more like crawling steps compared to the sockets that came next. Again, I'm not the go-to person for CPU info. But just wanted to give a little more insight into your CPU.

i5s are now in the 8th generation with many more improvements than 2nd gen i5s offered in its time. The sockets have greatly evolved.

One thing to mention is that if i did replace my cpu id not only have to replace my motherboard but also my ram , and ram is extremely overpriced right now , i cant afford to pay $40 for a 4gb stick

igazor · August 2018

I'm going to step in here one more time. Kindly stop telling us that Windows does not need more free space to run properly especially when it is paging to C. It does. I can provide you with some scary academic and professional personal references if you like, but I am not speaking as a gamer here and relying only on my own PC to draw conclusions. I am speaking as a mathematician and an IT professional (hate having to say this on a gaming forum, I sound like some kind of pompous twit). Neither my credentials and system admin history nor your experiences with other games will change the laws of physics.

You are only asking for trouble running Windows on a drive that small whether it be an SSD or an HDD. Hopefully the extra breathing room from removing/shifting TS2 will help. I think 50 GB of free space is a bit drastic, but defer to those with more Win 10 experience than I have and it is indeed "larger," has more moving parts, and is more cumbersome as an OS than its predecessors were. At least on Win 7/8.1, around 35 GB free is usually enough to work with. Not 11 GB.

At the very least, it is impossible for us to rule out the too tight drive as being a significant potential problem while troubleshooting other things even if at this point it is something else contributing to the game lag/stutter.

phoebebebe13 · August 2018

@friendlysimmer I don't have windows 10 and neither does Igazor why I called in chester who is also a computer build expert. She has windows 10 and can tell you how much free space you really need. I have windows 8 and igazor has 7. Windows 8 takes up space however I don't have forced updates like windows 10 and I have a much larger ssd than you so I don't have issues of running out of space on C drive.

Have you moved your Documents to another hard drive? That would help free up some space

igazor · August 2018

@phoebebebe13 - The OP has the game installed and (I hope) their entire Documents library, including the game files, redirected to their F drive.

phoebebebe13 · August 2018

@igazor moving the documents folder from c drive to another hard drive would help and chester can help them with windows 10 since we don't have windows 10 .

friendlysimmer · August 2018

phoebebebe13 wrote: »

@igazor moving the documents folder from c drive to another hard drive would help and chester can help them with windows 10 since we don't have windows 10 .

I already have my documents on the f drive , i dont have any games installed on my ssd its just for windows , after moving sims 2 to the f drive (my main drive for games and applications and the drive that sims 3 is installed on) i now have 24gb free on the ssd , the drive that sims 3 is on has around 150gb free atm still not a ton (because i have a ton of games installed)

SemaviLady · August 2018

OH! and OIF... thanks everyone, I missed the Hard drive entanglements; the small SSD issue.

In order to to run its best, it's going to need resources to use, or you're just throttling your own system and thwarting the benefits that this CPU, can provide.

Absolutely @friendlysimmer -- you're right that motherboard cannot be used with any of the newer sockets. I still have the i5-2500K, but haven't bought a board to see if it will still run after it so overheated.

Had the same thing happen when I had socket A AMDs... I decided from that point on I'd stick with Intel with my builds since AMD BIOS/firmware back when I used it, had odd behaviors that new AMD firmware didn't fix. Got tired of that. This happens with other mobo using Intel too, but at that time I totally lost it over AMD issues of the time.

Good luck with your system hardware improvements. HDD and SSD upgrades are probably the best way to go right now. If SSD is out of budget range, a newer 1 T HDD for your OS will probably be cheapest.

friendlysimmer · August 2018

I fixed it (For now atleast)! After doing some digging i looked at my graphics.sgr file and this is what it said

seti textureMemory 32
setb textureMemorySizeOK false

I read that this happens with newer gpus because for some reason the game doesnt recognize the vram , so it uses 32mb of slow system ram

I changed it to this

seti textureMemory 1024
# setb textureMemorySizeOK false

This apparently forces it to use the gddr5 memory on the gpu instead of system ram.Thanks for all the help.

phoebebebe13 · August 2018

@friendlysimmer I don't know if 23 gb free is enough. You would have to ask chester. She knows more about this and has windows 10. Again I have windows 8 which does not have auto updates and I have a 250 gb ssd on C drive. I have a second 1tb hard drive. Most gaming computers come with 128 gb or more ssd on c drive with windows 10. I really don't know that having a 64 gb ssd on C drive is enough for windows 10 and gaming. I have a 64 gb ssd tablet but it has windows 7 and windows 7 needs allot less space to run

igazor · August 2018

I'm (a little) embarrassed that no one including me asked to see a DeviceConfig.log because then we would have spotted the 32 MB texture memory override. If the OP had said they got their card formally recognized by editing the sgrs before we even began, that should have been part of the procedure. I've heard of the texture override having an impact of course, but not quite to this extent.

Glad that or some combination of things seems to have finally helped, though.

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Why does sims 3 run so bad on modern hardware?

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