im running the sims3 with Intel(r) G33/G31 i had problems when i first got the game but i formatted my pc and didnt up date the sims launcher and now it plays perfectly
Okay I've read throguh the whole thing and noticed something....
Did anyone update there video card drivers?
I'm on a 3 year old E-machine W3118. 1.8 GHz processor, 1 gig of ram, WinXP Home SP3. I did upgrade the video card in it to a ATI Raedeon X300 256 md card right of the bat.
We installed the Sims at 1:00am on the 2nd:) I work for Gamestop and we did a midnight launch. The wife played it and crashed twice in about 3 hours. I let it go for a couple of days because of work....then...during my first house build, which I was almost fininshed with...grrrrrr... I crashed. Went back in and everything was lost... so I googled Sims 3 crashes, 30 pages of complaints that the game was crashing til I came upon one person who had actually done something about the crashes and had advice on what to try to fix them.....
I also ran my anti-virus program, anti-spyware program, and Windows Washer just to make sure I was clean.
I played for 10 hours straight on Sunday with not a bauble or ****-up.
But the wife has proclaimed we need a new computer so I being the loving husband I am diligantly went out and ordered her one:) http://www.alienware.com/products/aurora-desktop.aspx?SysCode=PC-AURORA-R5-TORCH&SubCode=SKU-DEFAULT
I did add an additional 500 gig hard drive and a 20" monitor but the specs on this should run Sims 3 with no problems for a few years at least...or until I can pay this baby off:)
Your computers could be getting a little too hot and your computer quickly closes(crashes) the game so it does not overheat and do some permanent damage.
If your PC has an integrated video card (IGP), it will run the game very poorly. I will try to list some common integrated video cards that may or may not run the game/run the game poorly at low settings.
Model: Dell Inspiron 9300
Processor: Intel Pentium M Processor 1.86GHz
Memory: 1GB
Video Card: NVidia GeForce Go 6800
I can "play" the Sims 3, as in as long as I don't go anywhere highly populated the game won't crash, and when doing so it is slightly choppy though playable. From what I can tell, there's little to nothing I can do for the processor and video card, but I CAN upgrade my RAM up to 2GB. However, I am planning to start saving up for a new computer soon now that I have a new job.
The question is, would that upgrade from 1GB to 2GB cure most of the ailments (I'm not looking to make it a flat 60fps at all times, just good enough to be playable no matter where I go ingame), or is this old hunk of crap just so out of date now that it wouldn't really matter and therefore I should just put any money I'd spend on RAM towards my new computer?
I want to play this glorious game on my own computer dang it, without worrying about it collapsing in on itself!
@Comradebot: don't spend your money on more RAM. My specs are:
Intel Pentium M Processor 2.0GHz
Memory: 2 GB
Video card: ATI X700 256MB
My game crashes all time, even when I create a sim and when I run it on the
lowest grafic specs. Maybe it's my video card, I don't know? If I were you, I would save my money for a new computer.
Fortunately I can play the sims 3 on my father's computer!
I have just bought a brand new GeForce 9500 GT graphics card.
I was very happy, and I thought that the game would work perfectly, but "Whoa", it said that my graphic card doesn' t support The Sims 3.
Why does this happen? GeForce 9500 GT is supported right??? :x
Edit: I just discovered that since I have Vista, the card is not going to work. Is there going to be any alteration, so that it will work on WinVista ???
I have just bought a brand new GeForce 9500 GT graphics card.
I was very happy, and I thought that the game would work perfectly, but "Whoa", it said that my graphic card doesn' t support The Sims 3.
Why does this happen? GeForce 9500 GT is supported right??? :x
Edit: I just discovered that since I have Vista, the card is not going to work. Is there going to be any alteration, so that it will work on WinVista ???
No the card works under Vista, you're doing something wrong... god it's so easy...
Step 1 - Uninstall drivers for your old video card.
(Skip step 2 if you do not have an integrated video card)
Step 2 - If it's an integrated video card, disable it in your BIOS
Step 3 - With the PC off, install your new video card. Turn on the PC and go to Nvidia.com, download drivers for 9500GT, make sure to select the correct operating system.
I have done all the tests and the EA links show my PC more than able to play SIMS3. However when I went to play mode my computer went into hard freeze....had to reboot. It would do this every time I went into play mode. My computer had warnings about my video card needing driver updates. So I started looking for 3rd party driver updates for my ancient ATI Radeon 800SE card (which is now considered a legacy piece and no longer supported). Found one at Dell and I can now sometimes play in Sunset Valley but not in Riverview. At least I only get soft crashes now. I have always been able to build or add furnishings...just not use 'Play' mode. I meet or exceed all other requirements.
So...I am buying a new video card and would like to know if the Radeon HD 4850 1 GB 256 bit GDDR3 PCI Express 2.0 X 16 HDCP will work for this game? I know that Radeon 4850 is listed as supported, but so is my ancient Radeon X800. The crashes I experienced frequently brought up the warning that my card was inadequate.
Thank you for any information anyone can give.
Jane
I have done all the tests and the EA links show my PC more than able to play SIMS3. However when I went to play mode my computer went into hard freeze....had to reboot. It would do this every time I went into play mode. My computer had warnings about my video card needing driver updates. So I started looking for 3rd party driver updates for my ancient ATI Radeon 800SE card (which is now considered a legacy piece and no longer supported). Found one at Dell and I can now sometimes play in Sunset Valley but not in Riverview. At least I only get soft crashes now. I have always been able to build or add furnishings...just not use 'Play' mode. I meet or exceed all other requirements.
So...I am buying a new video card and would like to know if the Radeon HD 4850 1 GB 256 bit GDDR3 PCI Express 2.0 X 16 HDCP will work for this game? I know that Radeon 4850 is listed as supported, but so is my ancient Radeon X800. The crashes I experienced frequently brought up the warning that my card was inadequate.
Thank you for any information anyone can give.
Jane
Before you buy the new video card, make sure your PC has PCI-e slots. Radeon X800s come in both AGP and PCI-e.
HD4850 should play this game on maximum settings with no slow downs.
I'm playing on the highest settings for everything, 1280x1024 screen, Graphics are great and still runs well without much lag, no crashes and no glitches.
Only the speed issue with the fast forward buttons.
It is funny because I have way more than the minimal requirements and even my video card (gtx 285) is supported, but I still get an Error at starting up.
Service initialization failed...
Ah well I hope my question to EA wil be answered...
^^^^^^^^^
it said i failed this (i have vista & built in graphics, but still)
Hah yeah, I had that happen to me. I think it's tempremental as the other day it was giving me green ticks then today it was saying no to 3.5gb ram and the same for my Geforce 8600 card, but then ticking off the subcategories for the same card.
My game took about 20 minutes to load and when I went into create-a-sim, it just crashed on me. I assumed I would meet the min specs but I checked today and I have 256MB RAM! Epic fail! :shock:
So my Dad ordered 2GB RAM today. Hopefully that should solve the problem... :-)
Don't trust "Can Your RUN It?"! Just for giggles I tested my laptop for World of Warcraft (the expansions) and it said I failed! I play that game all the time with no problems what-so-ever. I will probably try to install TS3 on my laptop now.
Dell XPS M1530 (Product)Red
Intel Core 2 Duo P7350 [2.0Ghz, 1066mhz FSB, 3MB Cache]
3GB DDR2-667mhz + 2GB ReadyBoost
320GB [3 Partitions, 53GB, 234GB, 9GB]
Windows 7 Ultimate 32-Bit v7100 [Testing it on Windows 7, but installing the data to Windows Vista Partition
Windows Vista Home Premium
Sound Blaster X-fi Notebook
Sigmatel HD Audio
[256MB Deticated, 1522Mb total VRAM] Nvidia GeForce 8600M GT
Edit: It works AMAZING! Super Fast everything is on Ultra-high
1280x800 (16:10)
I have to call bull on the min specs for the game. This was my computer.
XP operating system
AMD Atholon 64 X2 3800+ (two gig hertz processer)
1 gig of dual channel ddr2 800 ram
radeon X 1600 pro 512 mbytes of ram
50 gig free after installing
I fully updated my drivers and made sure I had directX updated. I tried to play the game on the lowest settings in 800 X 600 screen in windowed mode and I would still have frequent crashes if I tried to do a couple of things. If I did not have the time paused while I went to another lot then the game would crash to desktop. If I moved when I had time at 3X I had a chance for crash to desktop. If I tried to rotate my camera angle with anything past 1X speed it might crash to desktop. If I tried to play in fullscreen I would repeatedly crash to desktop at random times.
I, however, have a brother who was kind of enough to lend me some ram to see if that would help the problem. I plug in 2 gig more (3 gig total now)of the same type of ram and sure enough I am running the game without crashes on almost the max settings.
I have never had any issues with other games if I played at the min requirements as long as I didnt boost the graphics up. I had to clearly make an effort to try and run the game when I was "at/above min requirements" without it crashing. I think they may have listed the ram requirements to low.
Running any type of program is not fully dependent on simply the amount of ram or type of graphics card you have because there are other variables you have to consider when running program, especially PC games.
One good example is the speed/type of ram you have. RAM means Random Access Memory. This part of the computer is a temporary or "volatile" medium (meaning when power stops running through it (when the computer is turned off) the data within is erased from the RAM) storage medium for the motherboard to access so it can choose how to assign the data therein where to go.
So, what type of ram are you running e.g DDR, DDR2, DDR3? DRAM/SDRAM? DDR stands for Dual Data Rate (SDRAM = Synchronous Dynamic Random Access Memory). The higher speed or rate of the ram you have (DDR2 vs DDR3/4/5) means the higher amount of data, or "bandwidth," that can be transferred and processed through your computer system.
Also, processing data from the source of information to the motherboard is highly dependent of your hard drive and the speed it runs or spins. In other words, without a fast enough hard drive, and not to mention its age, fragmented file ratio, and data transfer type (SATA/II or IDE) [In other words, different methods to connect to the motherboard; SATA II has the highest rate of data transfer, though this only determines the amount of data able to be processed, not the speed. That is depending on the spindle speed or RP] you may or may not be limited on how much and how fast data can be transferred or "read" by your motherboard.
Now, what most seem to not pay attention to, know, or forget is that the workload of the motherboard depends on the speed of the amount of data that can be transferred from the hard drive, which is a "non-volatile" medium (IE - Data is not lost when power is no longer available) to the actual motherboard.
In other words: If you have an older, slower (spindle speed), cluttered or otherwise fuller hard drive than most, it takes more time for said hard drive to spin the spindle (RPM rate; 5200, 7200 or 10,000RPM)(rotating discs that hold the data within and are read by a header or "needle" somewhat like a vinyl record) to read the data to send to the motherboard to be stored in the RAM to be processed by the CPU or "Central Processing Unit" (IE - Processor) to be given to the GPU to render what is happening in the game.
It sounds long, but this is all done in fractions of a second, though as I said, how the data is delivered and sorted out depends on all of those factors and whether or not it will be a smoother process which otherwise all of this is dependent of how well/fast/smooth your game will run or appear, let alone run at all (some games, always/mostly newer games, tend to be on the needy side of system resources because of their size and algorithms or methods used to program these games which would determine whether or not you may or may run the game).
What I didn't mention is your CPU, GPU in detail and motherboard.. because older hardware, though it may be a certain speed, can only process so much data at a time, which also complicates things and acting like a "bottleneck" to how much data is processed.
The GPU or "Graphics Processing Unit", otherwise known as graphics card/processor, is the main medium that reads the data from the motherboard [which was originally collected and transferred from the RAM which accessed the data on your hard drive] to process or render it in real time, then process it out to the screen or monitor.
10 gallons of water passing through a 1 meter hole may be faster as apposed to 50 gallons of water passing through a 1 inch hole though the same 50 gallons running through 50 1 inch holes may be even quicker than the 1 meter hole and lesser water. Running newer games on and old machine can be considered being of more water passing through the 1 inch hole. It all depends on your setup.
One final thing to note: None of this applies without the right processor and operating system to run it all.
I can say, confidently, that the processor is your most important piece of hardware that you should be focusing on, next to RAM, then your GPU, then your hard drive. Of course, the motherboard is as significant as the processor; without the right motherboard, and for any modern game, using one if not the most recent operating system, the speed and overall capabilities of all other hardware could potentially be bottlenecked, or *simply negate entirely.
*(assuming someone is trying to fit a P4 into a AM2 socket... /palmface)
Get newer hardware and you have a bigger hole for all that water to pass through to make your computing efforts seamless, predictable and, ultimately, fun (FIND SALES!!).
I hope someone can take this into consideration and possibly learn a little bit the brief lesson.
TS3 don't run on my five years old computer, so I'm thinking of buying a new one.
Will this PC run The Sims 3:
ACER ASPIRE
Mobile Intel® Dual Core T4200 processor (2.0GHz/1MB/FSB800)
Mobile Intel® GM45 Express Chipset
4GB (2GB+2GB) DDR3 1066MHz
320GB S-ATA HDD, 15.6" HD 16:9 WXGA TFT 1366x768 (Acer LED CineCrystal technology), 16.7 mil, 512MB NVIDIA® GeForce® G105M 3D graphics (up to 2303MB TurboCache™ )
The laptop now has linux, but I'll install Windows XP Home Edition.
I copy pasted this from a site in my language, so I apologize if I forgot to translate something.
Comments
Did anyone update there video card drivers?
I'm on a 3 year old E-machine W3118. 1.8 GHz processor, 1 gig of ram, WinXP Home SP3. I did upgrade the video card in it to a ATI Raedeon X300 256 md card right of the bat.
We installed the Sims at 1:00am on the 2nd:) I work for Gamestop and we did a midnight launch. The wife played it and crashed twice in about 3 hours. I let it go for a couple of days because of work....then...during my first house build, which I was almost fininshed with...grrrrrr... I crashed. Went back in and everything was lost... so I googled Sims 3 crashes, 30 pages of complaints that the game was crashing til I came upon one person who had actually done something about the crashes and had advice on what to try to fix them.....
So here it is.....
1st check to see if you have the latest drive....
ATI http://support.amd.com/us/gpudownload/Pages/index.aspx
NVidia http://www.nvidia.com/Download/index.aspx?lang=en-us
2nd check to see if you have the latest build of whatever version of DX you are running....
DX 9c http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=2DA43D38-DB71-4C1B-BC6A-9B6652CD92A3&displaylang=en
DX10 http://www.gamesforwindows.com/en-US/AboutGFW/Pages/DirectX10-a.aspx
I also ran my anti-virus program, anti-spyware program, and Windows Washer just to make sure I was clean.
I played for 10 hours straight on Sunday with not a bauble or ****-up.
But the wife has proclaimed we need a new computer so I being the loving husband I am diligantly went out and ordered her one:)
http://www.alienware.com/products/aurora-desktop.aspx?SysCode=PC-AURORA-R5-TORCH&SubCode=SKU-DEFAULT
I did add an additional 500 gig hard drive and a 20" monitor but the specs on this should run Sims 3 with no problems for a few years at least...or until I can pay this baby off:)
Hopefully this helps someone like it helped me.
Gary (Alana's hubbie)
Intel:
GMA 950
GMA 3000
GMA 3100
GMA X3100
GMA X3500
GMA X4500
Nvidia:
Geforce 6100
Geforce 6150 LE/SE
Geforce 7025
Geforce 7050
ATI:
Radeon Xpress 200
Radeon Xpress 1100
Radeon Xpress 1150
Radeon Xpress 1250
Radeon 3000
Radeon 3100
Radeon HD3200
Model: Dell Inspiron 9300
Processor: Intel Pentium M Processor 1.86GHz
Memory: 1GB
Video Card: NVidia GeForce Go 6800
I can "play" the Sims 3, as in as long as I don't go anywhere highly populated the game won't crash, and when doing so it is slightly choppy though playable. From what I can tell, there's little to nothing I can do for the processor and video card, but I CAN upgrade my RAM up to 2GB. However, I am planning to start saving up for a new computer soon now that I have a new job.
The question is, would that upgrade from 1GB to 2GB cure most of the ailments (I'm not looking to make it a flat 60fps at all times, just good enough to be playable no matter where I go ingame), or is this old hunk of crap just so out of date now that it wouldn't really matter and therefore I should just put any money I'd spend on RAM towards my new computer?
I want to play this glorious game on my own computer dang it, without worrying about it collapsing in on itself!
Intel Pentium M Processor 2.0GHz
Memory: 2 GB
Video card: ATI X700 256MB
My game crashes all time, even when I create a sim and when I run it on the
lowest grafic specs. Maybe it's my video card, I don't know? If I were you, I would save my money for a new computer.
Fortunately I can play the sims 3 on my father's computer!
I was very happy, and I thought that the game would work perfectly, but "Whoa", it said that my graphic card doesn' t support The Sims 3.
Why does this happen? GeForce 9500 GT is supported right??? :x
Edit: I just discovered that since I have Vista, the card is not going to work. Is there going to be any alteration, so that it will work on WinVista ???
No the card works under Vista, you're doing something wrong... god it's so easy...
Step 1 - Uninstall drivers for your old video card.
(Skip step 2 if you do not have an integrated video card)
Step 2 - If it's an integrated video card, disable it in your BIOS
Step 3 - With the PC off, install your new video card. Turn on the PC and go to Nvidia.com, download drivers for 9500GT, make sure to select the correct operating system.
Step 4 - Install drivers and restart.
So...I am buying a new video card and would like to know if the Radeon HD 4850 1 GB 256 bit GDDR3 PCI Express 2.0 X 16 HDCP will work for this game? I know that Radeon 4850 is listed as supported, but so is my ancient Radeon X800. The crashes I experienced frequently brought up the warning that my card was inadequate.
Thank you for any information anyone can give.
Jane
Before you buy the new video card, make sure your PC has PCI-e slots. Radeon X800s come in both AGP and PCI-e.
HD4850 should play this game on maximum settings with no slow downs.
P4 2.6Ghz
4x AGP slot only
Radeon 3650 graphics
1.5Gb memory
I'm playing on the highest settings for everything, 1280x1024 screen, Graphics are great and still runs well without much lag, no crashes and no glitches.
Only the speed issue with the fast forward buttons.
Service initialization failed...
Ah well I hope my question to EA wil be answered...
Hah yeah, I had that happen to me. I think it's tempremental as the other day it was giving me green ticks then today it was saying no to 3.5gb ram and the same for my Geforce 8600 card, but then ticking off the subcategories for the same card.
So my Dad ordered 2GB RAM today. Hopefully that should solve the problem... :-)
Dell XPS M1530 (Product)Red
Intel Core 2 Duo P7350 [2.0Ghz, 1066mhz FSB, 3MB Cache]
3GB DDR2-667mhz + 2GB ReadyBoost
320GB [3 Partitions, 53GB, 234GB, 9GB]
Windows 7 Ultimate 32-Bit v7100 [Testing it on Windows 7, but installing the data to Windows Vista Partition
Windows Vista Home Premium
Sound Blaster X-fi Notebook
Sigmatel HD Audio
[256MB Deticated, 1522Mb total VRAM] Nvidia GeForce 8600M GT
Edit: It works AMAZING! Super Fast everything is on Ultra-high
1280x800 (16:10)
XP operating system
AMD Atholon 64 X2 3800+ (two gig hertz processer)
1 gig of dual channel ddr2 800 ram
radeon X 1600 pro 512 mbytes of ram
50 gig free after installing
I fully updated my drivers and made sure I had directX updated. I tried to play the game on the lowest settings in 800 X 600 screen in windowed mode and I would still have frequent crashes if I tried to do a couple of things. If I did not have the time paused while I went to another lot then the game would crash to desktop. If I moved when I had time at 3X I had a chance for crash to desktop. If I tried to rotate my camera angle with anything past 1X speed it might crash to desktop. If I tried to play in fullscreen I would repeatedly crash to desktop at random times.
I, however, have a brother who was kind of enough to lend me some ram to see if that would help the problem. I plug in 2 gig more (3 gig total now)of the same type of ram and sure enough I am running the game without crashes on almost the max settings.
I have never had any issues with other games if I played at the min requirements as long as I didnt boost the graphics up. I had to clearly make an effort to try and run the game when I was "at/above min requirements" without it crashing. I think they may have listed the ram requirements to low.
One good example is the speed/type of ram you have. RAM means Random Access Memory. This part of the computer is a temporary or "volatile" medium (meaning when power stops running through it (when the computer is turned off) the data within is erased from the RAM) storage medium for the motherboard to access so it can choose how to assign the data therein where to go.
So, what type of ram are you running e.g DDR, DDR2, DDR3? DRAM/SDRAM? DDR stands for Dual Data Rate (SDRAM = Synchronous Dynamic Random Access Memory). The higher speed or rate of the ram you have (DDR2 vs DDR3/4/5) means the higher amount of data, or "bandwidth," that can be transferred and processed through your computer system.
Also, processing data from the source of information to the motherboard is highly dependent of your hard drive and the speed it runs or spins. In other words, without a fast enough hard drive, and not to mention its age, fragmented file ratio, and data transfer type (SATA/II or IDE) [In other words, different methods to connect to the motherboard; SATA II has the highest rate of data transfer, though this only determines the amount of data able to be processed, not the speed. That is depending on the spindle speed or RP] you may or may not be limited on how much and how fast data can be transferred or "read" by your motherboard.
Now, what most seem to not pay attention to, know, or forget is that the workload of the motherboard depends on the speed of the amount of data that can be transferred from the hard drive, which is a "non-volatile" medium (IE - Data is not lost when power is no longer available) to the actual motherboard.
In other words: If you have an older, slower (spindle speed), cluttered or otherwise fuller hard drive than most, it takes more time for said hard drive to spin the spindle (RPM rate; 5200, 7200 or 10,000RPM)(rotating discs that hold the data within and are read by a header or "needle" somewhat like a vinyl record) to read the data to send to the motherboard to be stored in the RAM to be processed by the CPU or "Central Processing Unit" (IE - Processor) to be given to the GPU to render what is happening in the game.
It sounds long, but this is all done in fractions of a second, though as I said, how the data is delivered and sorted out depends on all of those factors and whether or not it will be a smoother process which otherwise all of this is dependent of how well/fast/smooth your game will run or appear, let alone run at all (some games, always/mostly newer games, tend to be on the needy side of system resources because of their size and algorithms or methods used to program these games which would determine whether or not you may or may run the game).
What I didn't mention is your CPU, GPU in detail and motherboard.. because older hardware, though it may be a certain speed, can only process so much data at a time, which also complicates things and acting like a "bottleneck" to how much data is processed.
The GPU or "Graphics Processing Unit", otherwise known as graphics card/processor, is the main medium that reads the data from the motherboard [which was originally collected and transferred from the RAM which accessed the data on your hard drive] to process or render it in real time, then process it out to the screen or monitor.
10 gallons of water passing through a 1 meter hole may be faster as apposed to 50 gallons of water passing through a 1 inch hole though the same 50 gallons running through 50 1 inch holes may be even quicker than the 1 meter hole and lesser water. Running newer games on and old machine can be considered being of more water passing through the 1 inch hole. It all depends on your setup.
One final thing to note: None of this applies without the right processor and operating system to run it all.
I can say, confidently, that the processor is your most important piece of hardware that you should be focusing on, next to RAM, then your GPU, then your hard drive. Of course, the motherboard is as significant as the processor; without the right motherboard, and for any modern game, using one if not the most recent operating system, the speed and overall capabilities of all other hardware could potentially be bottlenecked, or *simply negate entirely.
*(assuming someone is trying to fit a P4 into a AM2 socket... /palmface)
Get newer hardware and you have a bigger hole for all that water to pass through to make your computing efforts seamless, predictable and, ultimately, fun (FIND SALES!!).
I hope someone can take this into consideration and possibly learn a little bit the brief lesson.
Sim on until the sun don't shine~!
Is this okay for the Sims 3?
Will this PC run The Sims 3:
ACER ASPIRE
Mobile Intel® Dual Core T4200 processor (2.0GHz/1MB/FSB800)
Mobile Intel® GM45 Express Chipset
4GB (2GB+2GB) DDR3 1066MHz
320GB S-ATA HDD, 15.6" HD 16:9 WXGA TFT 1366x768 (Acer LED CineCrystal technology), 16.7 mil, 512MB NVIDIA® GeForce® G105M 3D graphics (up to 2303MB TurboCache™ )
The laptop now has linux, but I'll install Windows XP Home Edition.
I copy pasted this from a site in my language, so I apologize if I forgot to translate something.
Thank you!