Forum Announcement, Click Here to Read More From EA_Cade.
Lag/freeze in-game despite being above recommended requirements?
ddominic
Posts: 352 Member
Hey! I have The Sims 3 and five expansion packs of the game, I use minimal CC and my used mods are the likes of Overwatch and Master Controller. My laptop seems to be above the minimum (and even recommended) requirements for the game, yet I'm still having issues with lag in-game and common freezing, despite being on low graphic settings. The game becomes completely unusable if interfered with a mod like NRAAS Story Progression.
Laptop: Acer Aspire A315-51
Operating System: Windows 10 Home (however I've tried using the compability modes of Win7 and 8)
Processor: Intel® Core™ i3-7100U CPU 2.40 GHz Quad-Core
Memory: 4 GB DDR4
Storage: 128 GB SSD + 500 GB HDD
Resolution: Full HD
Graphics: Intel® HD Graphics 620
Does anyone have any clue on reasons why my game is like this? Any tips or feedback would be helpful!
Laptop: Acer Aspire A315-51
Operating System: Windows 10 Home (however I've tried using the compability modes of Win7 and 8)
Processor: Intel® Core™ i3-7100U CPU 2.40 GHz Quad-Core
Memory: 4 GB DDR4
Storage: 128 GB SSD + 500 GB HDD
Resolution: Full HD
Graphics: Intel® HD Graphics 620
Does anyone have any clue on reasons why my game is like this? Any tips or feedback would be helpful!
0
Comments
What Ep's are you playing? If you have Pets, Seasons, IP and ITF , these are the most powerful Eps in the game and require a good gaming computer to run them. the more you add to this game, the more demanding the game becomes.
You can try uninstalling the more powerful eps, Play on low, play in windowed mode, and or lower your game resolution in game options. All will take stress off your computer
Make sure the game is installed on D drive not C drive. Your C drive is too small to game on
Is that entirely true though? I've met people with low-to-mid range laptops with smooth running games. Not to mention the fact that most of the general non-gamer public that plays The Sims games uses laptops.
Late Night, Generations, Pets, Seasons and University Life.
The game is installed in the C drive, but all the files are only 16.9 GB, so considering the drive is 118 GB and there's 50 GB of free space left, I don't see why there would be a huge issue? But I might try reinstalling it to D drive if it would improve the gameplay.
Many people play this game on a gaming computer and know better than to try and play this game on a low end laptop. You will get far less game issues having a computer that meets requirements. The sims 3 is a pretty powerful game and would not be classed as a "Casual" game. The sims 2 takes allot less to run and your laptop might be fine running that whole game
You need to leave 50 gb hard drive space with this game. For now your fine but you may need to change the install . If right now you have 50 gb free this would not be your lag issues. It would be the EPs you have installed and running the game on low end hardware. From what I hear story progression needs a good gaming computer to run that. That is why I pages igazor who is a mod expert.
Alright, thanks for your feedback! I'll try to stay away from playing with this much content for now, and if that doesn't solve the problem then I'll go ahead and uninstall.
Not sure where the above recommended requirements assessment was coming from on that system, but I guess it depends on who was doing the recommendations. Phoebe didn't mean that you cannot play on a laptop, she meant that laptops require stronger components to get the same results that desktops can get. Though it sounds like you have moved on from that part of the discussion.
Processor: You are right on the edge of expected playability there with respect the heavier hitting EPs. We would recommend a 2.4 GHz i5 or higher, and again laptops need more power. Some of the newest i3s are more than sufficient, but those are the ones are running over 3 GHz. Again, this one is right on the edge so different players' experiences with TS3 will vary. By the way, your processor isn't really quad core, I believe it has 2 cores (not 4). The game itself is only designed to use 2 cores anyway, but Windows and other processes running alongside of it can cause strangled processor syndrome far too easily as the game is being played on dual.
RAM: Again, a bit iffy. 4 GB total is just not enough when the game itself can call for and use up to almost 4 GB. Win 10 needs 2 GB or more for itself and the processes it's running during gameplay. And if you ever have any other apps like a web browser open during gameplay, that can kill performance across the board. Some/most programs will call for virtual memory to be used when RAM is too tight so that they can keep running, but TS3 does not handle virtual memory (paging) well and that can make the game unstable.
We recommend at least 6 GB, but at least 8 GB tends to work out better. This is the one component that most laptop owners can improve upon by adding more.
Graphics: The Intel integrated graphics have come a long way over the years. The base game and a couple of the earliest released EPs should be quite playable on your HD 620 although maybe not on the highest of Game Options graphics settings and not at very high resolutions. The heavy hitting EPs, Pets, Seasons (possibly IP and ITF) may be too much for it, especially as the game will call upon processor power and RAM that you do not have to pick up the slack where there is no dedicated Nvidia or AMD graphics card of sufficient strength -- that would be an Nvidia GTX 1050 mobile or higher, or the equivalent on the AMD side, for the current new product lines.
NRaas StoryProgression:The impact of SP will vary widely from one user and one game to another. Some will barely feel its impact, others will find their games grind down to a halt or a laggy mess too easily, yet others will find themselves somewhere in between with things more tolerable. Again, as we are already on the edge here on the hardware front and the processor already has too much being thrown at it, SP will just add to the load. What would make it much worse would be running SP at Normal progression speeds (City Hall, NRaas > SP > General Options > Adjust Speed), perhaps try running it on Slow or Snail. The resident population of the worlds in play will also be a huge factor, the more sims SP has to push around and manage, the heavier the impact will be. Worlds themselves and how they are designed will also play a role in performance, some are just smoother to play than others. And some like Isla Paradiso (which you would not have) and Bridgeport (which you do) need some serious fixing up before they can become playable for any length of time. SP doesn't help as it keeps pushing the not actively being played sims around to places they cannot reach due to incessant routing failures in such worlds.
Sorry, but I really think Pets and Seasons would be no-goes on that system. How SP will then behave if tried again and at slow progression speeds would vary as described.
NRaas has moved!
Our new site is at http://nraas.net
This is the laptop I'm looking at.
Acer nitro 5
Intel i5-8300H processor
Ram 8gb/storage 1TB HDD
Graphics: NVIDIA geforce GTX 1050
Does this laptop have the requirements to run the mods as well as the game.
Thank you in advance for any device.
As for NRaas StoryProgression, once we start talking about a suitable system such as this one, the impact will come down to not system component barriers any longer, but the populations and sizes of the worlds you are playing and how well made they are.
NRaas has moved!
Our new site is at http://nraas.net
Thank you for the advice. Still have a couple of months before i buy so will see if i can stretch to the 1050Ti graphics card.
To see your in-game frame rates, bring up the cheats console (crtl-shift-c) and enter "fps on" without quotes; a number will appear in the upper right corner of the screen. Your fps should never go above the refresh rate of your monitor. ("fps off" makes the number go away.) If you're seeing high rates, you can try enabling vertical sync via the built-in Nvidia Control Panel. If that doesn't work—it won't work at all in windowed mode—the next tool to try is Nvidia Inspector (free download). Here are screenshots of the setups for both tools, under the spoilers:
https://forums.thesims.com/en_US/discussion/comment/16540301/#Comment_16540301
Some of the steps you've taken are unnecessary, in particular whatever you did to "change the RAM from 2 to 4." TS3 can already use almost 4 GB RAM without any fix, and the technique described refers to the upper limit of the game's script heap, not memory. (It also miscounts the number of zeros, so that the number changes from 20 GB to 40.) Anyway, you can and should undo this step.
I'm not sure what you did with the 3D settings, but if you're using Nvidia GeForce, that could also explain at least part of why the game isn't running correctly. Try disabling or uninstalling the app to see if it helps.
If your game still runs slowly after all this, please run a dxdiag, paste the results on a free filesharing site like pastebin.com, and leave a link here. You'll need to break up the link; use spaces or something.
https://help.ea.com/en-us/help/pc/how-to-gather-dxdiag-information/
Please also list the packs you have installed, and the world(s) in which you're playing—some are better made than others.