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What is my Laptop missing?
Shanmarie
Posts: 1,236 Member
I have an Dell Inspiron 1545 that was custom built to play the Sims specifically.
232GB Hardrive (Was 700Gb but due to hard-drive failure was forced to replace)
4GB RAM
Intel Core Duo 2.54GHz
ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4300 Series Graphics Card.
It used to be super fast and run the Sims amazingly,now it lags and doesn't run half as smoothly as before.
I've had this Laptop for 2 years and it cost around £800 to build,I really don't want to have to replace my laptop,what would you recommend to get my system running as it used to?
232GB Hardrive (Was 700Gb but due to hard-drive failure was forced to replace)
4GB RAM
Intel Core Duo 2.54GHz
ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4300 Series Graphics Card.
It used to be super fast and run the Sims amazingly,now it lags and doesn't run half as smoothly as before.
I've had this Laptop for 2 years and it cost around £800 to build,I really don't want to have to replace my laptop,what would you recommend to get my system running as it used to?
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Comments
How full is your harddrive? Hard drive space starts to affect things if you're close to full. Going from 700 GB down to 232 GB might have some effect.
If you are close to full, I'd suggest either going through and removing anything you do use anymore OR getting an external hard drive to put things like music and what not onto. And don't forget to purge your recycle bin.
Then run a defrag on it to help get it reorganized, especially if you delete a lot of stuff
@Koolyaid all of them are combined already,I don't have many package files anyway.
There are known issues with running the sims with an ati graphics card I think. However, since your game used to run fine, it might just be the usual stuff you get after playing a neighbourhood for a while - stuck sims, a build up of memories, spawned cars. If you're not averse to mods, twallan's Overwatch does a great deal to clean up your town (including deleting those cars), and you can use his Master Controller to reset everything (if sticks sims are your problem) and to turn off memories. Also his Register, if you have pets, to reduce the numbers of wild animals.
Could be cc too, as always - bad or in excessive amounts. Try running your game without if you have any installed.
You might have more luck in the technical forum.
I never really noticed it right away,it's kind of progressed over time,and I am accustomed to Twallans mods and have used the pretty much from the point of when they were available,I have Overwatch,SP and Master Controller ALL running aswell as a mod that prevents memories from being created and saved completely.I don't have excessive amount of CC the only CC I use is hairs,which are either from Peggy or Newsea.
Hmmm
The system requirements say 1 or 2 GB, depending on your operating system. Where'd the 6 GB come from?
I said to play all eps. System req. that is only 1 Gb is probably just for the base game. But, I could admit, but from personal experience, you need at least 6 gb.
Strange. My game usually only uses 1.5 - 2 GB of RAM. I have all EPs and SPs.
4GB RAM is what sticks out to me. I had lag issues with 6GB playing with all EPs and SPs. 6 would be better but I like 8 if you have everything, especially taking into account future EPs.
Thanks,but I may have to get a new laptop or even a desktop then,my laptop's capacity of RAM will only allow 4GB at maximum,atleast that's what has show when I was looking to upgrade the RAM earlier.
I think it is maybe because you use alot of expansion packs and stuff packs which take alot of space. I only have Late Night and Fast Lane and my laptop is starting to get slow (I have 4gb ram and over 500gb hard drive). Maybe if you delete some stuff, game saves etc. it might run faster. Or...
It might be the processor.
I only have 1 saved game
Thanks!
The only thing I can reccommend is to look in your manuel for your maximum RAM capacity and to add more ram according to it.
I don't even know where the manual is! My mum is so useless and keeping important things haha.
I have quite a bit of CC too, and I also run the story progression mod. Your computer should be pretty set.
I DO have a different graphics card, though. But if it played the Sims just fine up until recently, I don't think that's the issue.
RAM was NEVER an issue for me (although I can see where 2GB would be cutting it in some cases, I am just saying it's very possible if done right).
The weak point in that list of specifications is the GPU in my opinion. I have a similar desktop I'm on now (Core 2 Duo 2.93GHz, 4GB RAM, 250GB hard drive, and Windows 7 64-bit), and in fact it's all the same as that laptop except for the CPU being a bit faster, but there's another difference in that I have an onboard Intel IGP right now instead which is likely worse than even that Radeon 4300M. The game is incredibly ugly and slow at a mix of low/medium settings, and it's the IGP I have, not the RAM, that is causing it. I know this because that system with 2GB RAM I played on before absolutely maxed the game and it too was similar to these systems except it had half the RAM, but it had a moderate GPU. It'll again be confirmed when I put a modest, budget GeForce GT 430 in and am able to play the game relative well. If RAM was the limitation, that wouldn't happen.
I know you said it used to run fine/better, which I'm not questioning, but it's not the RAM. The exaggeration of how much RAM this game needs parroted by people, while it may for good intent of helping others, is just spreading false information, and that helps nobody. The game doesn't need 4GB+. I seldom see mine much higher than the ~1GB range (it might have gone higher but I never saw it higher, and some may indeed see it higher, but I'd like to see it taking over 4GB). If you have at least 4GB, chances are that's not a cause for performance concern, and even less than that amount is very possible.
You can try checking what you have running in the background, defragmenting your hard disk, checking what sort of content you have so far as the game goes (such as caches and custom content). Chances are, maybe the thing has just accumulated dust and is overheating and throttling or whatever. It's hard to say, but it's not that you don't have enough RAM. Not only that, but the game itself has just gotten slower with all the changes, patches, and expansions. The base game on day one used to load and save a game on my old Core 2 Duo in seconds, and on my better Core i5 now, it takes much, much longer to load. That's just partly the nature of the game getting heavier over time (this doesn't mean it needs 8GB RAM). You can try starting a new game and seeing if it hitches and such too because maybe it's just the save game. There's a lot of variables, but RAM is hardly one of them. Memory and RAM (which stands for Random Access Memory) are the same thing. You may be thinking of memory/RAM and hard drive space being different, which is indeed correct.
As another option, as I believe the video card is your weakest hardware link, have you tried playing with (lowering) some visual settings? Just to see what happens?
If all that still fails, then it's time to start looking at hardware. For one, it could be full of dust, which hurts the airflow it needs to run cool and efficiently. If not that, then maybe the game in it's current state is just too much?
Most games like the sims need good hard drives. 7200 rpms or greater. If you have something lower than that, it means that your writing speed to the hard drive is slower and the reading from the hard drive is slower.
That itself will cause lag.
@piddlesim could you tell me how to check the hard-drive speed please?
edit to add: I did type out 2 different methods. But I don't know what your operating system is. So I decided to remove those methods until we know what kind of operating system you have.
The methods vary by the op system.