Getting the Sims 3 to Run on a New Laptop?

klestrella

Hi all,

A little over a year ago, I bought a new gaming laptop. I was really eager to get the Sims games up and running on it, but I've run into an issue while trying to get TS3 to work. Of course, one of the first places I looked for answers was here. I ended up reading quite a few discussions and it appears that there may be a couple different ways to solve it. So, I decided to create a discussion of my own since I'm not sure which fix(es) would be best for my situation.

The main issue I'm having is getting the game to recognize the graphics card. I've read many discussions that outline a step-by-step process on how to alter the SGR files, but I must be doing something wrong since the game won't recognize the card after I've edited them. Also, I've seen some comments that claim you don't even need to modify those files to play the game. Can you really just change the graphics settings in-game safely while it still can't find your card? Or is it better to edit the files? I've also seen some comments on older discussions that mention the need to edit the FPS rate to safely run the game. Should both the SGR files and FPS be edited to run the game, or would one over the other suffice?

I just want to make absolutely certain that I can get the game up and running safely on this computer. I know TS3 can be taxing on even the best of systems, so I thought I should get some tips and opinions on the matter.

Thank you so much in advance to anyone willing to help! I really appreciate it!

igazor

Limiting fps: For cards that are powerful enough to throw high and wildly fluctuating frame rates that are greater than one's monitor/screen can interpret, this is not optional. TS3 being an older game has no functional built-in fps limiter (even TS4 has one). Uncapped and too high fps rates can lead to graphics glitches, screen tears, poor performance, lag, crashes, and can over time ultimately burn out the graphics card.

To test your actual fps rates in-game, ctrl+shift+C to bring up the cheats console and type fps on (enter). As you play and move the game camera around, the displayed fps rate should never rise above the refresh rate of your monitor. Most are 60 Hz, so that's 60 fps, but some can run a bit higher. To make the display go away, cheats console again and type fps off (enter). The tools to use to address this depend on the brand/kind of card being used. For Nvidia cards, that would be the Nvidia Control Panel and when necessary Nvidia Inspector. Can go into greater detail as needed if you tell us what you have for a graphics card.

Formal graphics card recognition: This is unrelated to the above, less important, and the one that requires sgr file editing. A not formally recognized graphics card does not hurt the hardware and the card still gets used as it should as long as it is detected. What formal recognition does is assign the card a proper default profile. Yes, it is fine to change the Graphics Options settings away from the defaults regardless, although setting them higher than your card can really handle if relevant will not lead to terrific gameplay. An unrecognized card can also lead the game to under-rank it and thus needlessly throttle certain in-game things like sending sims to populate community lots in an attempt to preserve performance. This, besides playing in worlds where there are far too many things to do vying for a small population's attention, is one of the huge reasons players over the years have complained about Empty Lot syndrome where when our sims go out into the world or the player pokes around town with the game camera, it feels like no one else is at any of the venues.

I can help you with the card recognition thing if you send me the first 40 lines or so of the contents of the file called DeviceConfig.log (will show up as just DeviceConfig if you have file extension names hidden) copied and pasted into a PM. Not the long lists of game options, the parts that come above those. We do it this way so as not to confuse players who have all different graphics cards. But it's much more important to check on the fps rates and address those first.

klestrella

@igazor, thank you for your detailed explanation! I'll have to reinstall TS3 to get the information you need and to check the FPS, but I'll get to that as soon as possible. I'll send you a PM when I have the info you need. I know for sure that the graphics card is an Nvidia Geforce GTX 1050 Ti, if that helps.

Another quick question: if I limit the FPS rate and play the game on settings the card can handle, I shouldn't be worried about the card being damaged, correct? I know a lot of players are able to play on newer systems and cards, so I'm sure the answer's yes. I've just been concerned about this in the past and want to make sure I have all the info and tools to make it work.

igazor

A GTX 1050Ti is certainly powerful enough to require fps limiting. And when so limited, it should be able to run the game on mostly the highest of graphics settings in Game Options. We do suggest that Water and Mirrors be set to a medium setting and High Detail lots set to 2 on most any card though, as higher settings can impact performance more than they really enhance gameplay. Then one might want to later experiment from there. There should be no worries of the game causing any kind of damage on that card once the fps thing is addressed and confirmed to be capped. The worst thing that can happen is that the game uses "too many" resources to service the very high end graphics settings and not enough is left to make the game run smoothly, but that doesn't at all lend itself to hardware damage and merely suggests it might be a good idea to turn some of the options down a little.

To see the refresh rate of your monitor, right-click on the desktop and choose Display Settings, then Advanced Display Settings. There's only about six pieces of information on the "Advanced" panel, but one of them is Refresh Rate measured in Hz. Again most monitors/screens are 60 Hz but some gaming laptops or special use monitors can run a bit higher (75, 144, etc.). That number becomes the goal for capping the fps.

Once the game and all of the EP/SPs you have or want are installed and confirmed to actually be running properly, use the Nvidia Control Panel to create a profile for TS3.exe (for Patch 1.69/Origin) or TS3w.exe (with the "w' for Patch 1.67/disc, Steam, everyone else). For that profile, set vertical sync to On or Adaptive (whichever one works better when testing the fps in-game) and Triple Buffering to On. If you have dual graphics as many laptops do, make sure the TS3 profile in the Nvidia Control Panel is set to use the High Performance Card.

Vertical sync only works, for those for whom it does work by itself, in full screen mode. If it's not enough to lock things in at or under the refresh rate or if windowed mode is needed, then we add Nividia Inspector (download and install required) and use it to explicitly cap the frame rate for TS3 to 60, or whatever the real refresh rate is, or to some value as close to that as Inspector will let us enter (59, maybe 61 etc. would be fine).

See this post, under the spoilers, for illustrations on setting up the Control Panel and Inspector.
https://forums.thesims.com/en_US/discussion/comment/16365571/#Comment_16365571

klestrella

Okay, so I've reinstalled the game and all EPs/SPs I own. I went in-game and checked the FPS rate, and it's definitely waaaayyyyy over 60 Hz, which is the rate my monitor runs. I exited the game and opened the Nvidia Control Panel to create the profile, but I can't find 'TS3.exe' in the drop-down menu. The only one listed is 'Sims 3 (sims3launcher.exe)'. I even made sure that the game's running the most current patch through Origin, so I can't imagine why 'TS3.exe' isn't listed through the control panel. Do you know what I should do next?

igazor

The interfaces for these tools aren't always very user friendly. There should be an "Add" button to the right of Select a Program. Use that to browse to where your game's executable is. Usually the path goes something like C:\Program Files (x86)\Origin Games (or could be EA Games)\The Sims 3\Game\Bin and you should see both TS3.exe and TS3w.exe there, among other things. TS3.exe is the one you want to select for Patch 1.69/Origin.

SuzyCue72

klestrella wrote: »

Okay, so I've reinstalled the game and all EPs/SPs I own. I went in-game and checked the FPS rate, and it's definitely waaaayyyyy over 60 Hz, which is the rate my monitor runs. I exited the game and opened the Nvidia Control Panel to create the profile, but I can't find 'TS3.exe' in the drop-down menu. The only one listed is 'Sims 3 (sims3launcher.exe)'. I even made sure that the game's running the most current patch through Origin, so I can't imagine why 'TS3.exe' isn't listed through the control panel. Do you know what I should do next?

"I can't find 'TS3.exe' in the drop-down menu." That's perfectly normal.

"Do you know what I should do next?" If your computer has dual graphics, and if the CPU is Intel, I think you should first check to see if you can find the Intel Control Panel, and if possible, turn on v-sync there.

How to look for the Intel Control Panel.

This is how my frame rates look with v-sync On in the Nvidia Control Panel, but not in the Intel Control Panel, recorded with Fraps, minimum 40, maximum 509 and average 100, and the cooling fans sound loud as a hairdryer.


With v-sync On in the Intel Control Panel, the frame rates don't go above 60-62, and the cooling fans only make a low noise.

SuzyCue72

"igazor wrote: »

An unrecognized card can also lead the game to under-rank it and thus needlessly throttle certain in-game things like sending sims to populate community lots in an attempt to preserve performance. This, besides playing in worlds where there are far too many things to do vying for a small population's attention, is one of the huge reasons players over the years have complained about Empty Lot syndrome where when our sims go out into the world or the player pokes around town with the game camera, it feels like no one else is at any of the venues.

From what I've seen/heard it's the speed and strength of the CPU, not the GPU, that determines how many sims the game thinks is okay to send to community lots. My own experiences seem to confirm this, the computer that I mostly play on nowadays has a fairly strong CPU and a totally unrecognized GPU, the DeviceConfig.log says [Found: 0, Matched: 0], but the common lots are usually full of sims, townies, NPC:s and tourists, sometimes as many as 20 or more.

Here is a small community lot in Riverview (the foodtruck copied from Bridgeport) with more than a dozen visiting sims on it:

igazor

SuzyCue72 wrote: »

"igazor wrote: »

An unrecognized card can also lead the game to under-rank it and thus needlessly throttle certain in-game things like sending sims to populate community lots in an attempt to preserve performance. This, besides playing in worlds where there are far too many things to do vying for a small population's attention, is one of the huge reasons players over the years have complained about Empty Lot syndrome where when our sims go out into the world or the player pokes around town with the game camera, it feels like no one else is at any of the venues.

From what I've seen/heard it's the speed and strength of the CPU, not the GPU, that determines how many sims the game thinks is okay to send to community lots. My own experiences seem to confirm this, the computer that I mostly play on nowadays has a fairly strong CPU and a totally unrecognized GPU, the DeviceConfig.log says [Found: 0, Matched: 0], but the common lots are usually full of sims, townies, NPC:s and tourists, sometimes as many as 20 or more.

The key values are in a line of the DeviceConfig.log near the beginning where the game rates the CPU, GPU, RAM, etc. on scales from 1 through 4 or 5. Some players have tricked out the game through the sgr files to rank their components higher then they otherwise would have, which is fine if they really are strong enough to withstand the stress. The Found/Matched thing doesn't apply directly to the calculation, only to the default profile that gets applied.

And, it should be noted, not all players even with unnecessarily under-ranked components will see the same results in all worlds.

klestrella

Oof, I should have checked to see what the 'Add' button does before commenting, huh? I figured I was doing something wrong.

Anyway, I was able to add the profile for TS3. I set triple buffering to on, vertical sync to on, and specified that the high-performance Nvidia processor should be used while running the program. Unfortunately, the FPS rate is still crazy; it's running in the 160s even without panning the camera around or performing tasks in-game. Will I need to download Nvidia Inspector?

igazor

klestrella wrote: »

Will I need to download Nvidia Inspector?

That would be the next typically suggested step, yes. Inspector is much easier to use, none of that looking around for the correct executable to profile, as TS3 and all of its related components should show up in the pull-down menu all by itself. And it should pick up the forced on setting for vertical sync from the Nvidia Control Panel. So what remains is the setting under section 2 for Frame Rate Limiter where you can explicitly set the frame rate cap. The only "tricky" part is remembering that you have to click on the little toolbox icon to the right of the Driver listing to get to the panel where you can read and change settings.

Where to download: https://www.guru3d.com/files-details/nvidia-profile-inspector-download.html
(the actual download links are 2/3 of the way down the page, ignore anything that may show up in the upper right corner if you have no ad-blocker as those might be bogus ad links)

klestrella

Update: Inspector worked like a charm! The FPS rate is now staying within the 57-59 range. Thanks so much for walking me through it, @igazor!

Now that the frame rate situation is taken care of, do you think it's necessary to try getting the graphics card recognized? I know you said previously that it's okay to adjust the default settings manually as long as they're not outside of the card's capabilities. I'm just wondering if it's considered more beneficial to go the extra mile and edit the SGR files? I know you've helped so many other players with this same situation in the past, so I'll take whatever advice you think best.

igazor

@klestrella - With The Important Stuff™ now out of the way, yes I can help with the formal recognition if you PM me the first 40 lines or so of your game's DeviceConfig.log as mentioned prior.

SuzyCue72

igazor wrote: »

The key values are in a line of the DeviceConfig.log near the beginning where the game rates the CPU, GPU, RAM, etc. on scales from 1 through 4 or 5. Some players have tricked out the game through the sgr files to rank their components higher then they otherwise would have, which is fine if they really are strong enough to withstand the stress. The Found/Matched thing doesn't apply directly to the calculation, only to the default profile that gets applied.

And, it should be noted, not all players even with unnecessarily under-ranked components will see the same results in all worlds.

Yes, I know about the "Rating info" part of the DeviceConfig.log. What I mean is that the number of sims showing up at the common lots doesn't have anything to do with whether your graphics card is recognised or not.

And I know about the tweak/editing too, that you can do to make the game think your computer has a stronger CPU than it actually has. That tweak has been out there for anyone to see for many years now, but I've never tried it myself since my community lots usually are well populated, sometimes even too well, so that the visitors bump into each other and my sims, and block their way etc. It's better when the numbers are somewhere in the middle, not too few and not too many.

So if anyone find that their community lots are too empty, I would not recommend using a potentially harmful tweak, but rather that they play on a stronger computer if possible, and/or move in or create more sims in the town/world in question.

igazor

SuzyCue72 wrote: »

igazor wrote: »

The key values are in a line of the DeviceConfig.log near the beginning where the game rates the CPU, GPU, RAM, etc. on scales from 1 through 4 or 5. Some players have tricked out the game through the sgr files to rank their components higher then they otherwise would have, which is fine if they really are strong enough to withstand the stress. The Found/Matched thing doesn't apply directly to the calculation, only to the default profile that gets applied.

And, it should be noted, not all players even with unnecessarily under-ranked components will see the same results in all worlds.

Yes, I know about the "Rating info" part of the DeviceConfig.log. What I mean is that the number of sims showing up at the common lots doesn't have anything to do with whether your graphics card is recognised or not.

And I know about the tweak/editing too, that you can do to make the game think your computer has a stronger CPU than it actually has. That tweak has been out there for anyone to see for many years now, but I've never tried it myself since my community lots usually are well populated, sometimes even too well, so that the visitors bump into each other and my sims, and block their way etc. It's better when the numbers are somewhere in the middle, not too few and not too many.

So if anyone find that their community lots are too empty, I would not recommend using a potentially harmful tweak, but rather that they play on a stronger computer if possible, and/or move in or create more sims in the town/world in question.

I also would never recommend adjusting the files to over-rank what are actually weaker components. That is not what I meant to say. The adjustments are still in order if the game is incorrectly under-ranking a strong system and not recognizing its potential. A formally unrecognized card is one ingredient among others that can lead to incorrect under-ranking.

The real problem is that many players will not understand why their system is being under-ranked, if it is, or what constitutes a weak vs. mid-range vs. strong CPU or GPU by TS3 standards. It would be better if they could ask first and provide some system specs for us to guide them before taking this step, although I know many players won't listen and insist their brand new mid to lower range computer is stronger than it actually is. But there is no harm in making this adjustment when the game stubbornly refuses to recognize what should clearly (to us) be a strong enough processor of either kind.

Anyway, the OP's frame rates are fixed and their card is now formally recognized as we took care of that by PMs so according to the most recent DeviceConfig provided, the game is now ranking their components appropriately.

klestrella

I'm happy to say that TS3 is now running wonderfully on my PC. I originally thought editing the SGR files and tweaking settings through Inspector would be daunting, but it turned out to be quite an easy process.

@SuzyCue72, I appreciate your concern and input. The issues I encountered have been resolved and as I said above, my game is now running well.