lol Sims 3

[Aldakoopa]

I've always loved the Sims games and I hadn't installed it on my new computer yet until this weekend. The Sims 3 always worked great on high settings on my old computer even with a 2.7GHz Sempron and 9500 GT. I know it's not a very demanding game, and my computer is capable of running games like Skyrim, Dirt 3, and GTA IV at Ultra/Very High settings with 60+ FPS. I had finally gotten my GPU overclock stable... or so I thought. It was working fine on all three of those games and the GPU usage would stay somewhere around 70%, hadn't seen any artifacts or crashes for a while.

So I start playing Sims 3 and my GPU and CPU load is similar to other games, and FRAPS is showing usually around 130 FPS when I'm sitting still in the game. I try to move around and when it has to load a new lot, the FPS suddenly drops, sometimes as low as single-digits and gets hung up for a few seconds at times. I know that it will take some time to load the new lots, but this computer isn't doing it any faster than my old one! Then I started noticing artifacts and my driver crashed. Then it happened again, so I lower my memory overclock, and so far I haven't seen any more crashes or artifacts... (here's hoping I don't see any) and the FPS drop isn't nearly as dramatic and the hang when loading a new lot is much shorter. So my VRAM OC was unstable, but it took an older, supposedly less demanding game to show any evidence of it. lolwut?

 

[jazon1]

yea that is weird you would thing a newer game would have showed the bad oc more then a game that has been out for years lol.

 

[Mpegger]

Sims 3 the new o/c stress test?

 

[Janus67]

Sounds like when you are loading a new lot it likely has to load from the HDD, if you had an SSD I would imagine it wouldn't slow down as much.

 

[Aldakoopa]

Sims 3 the new o/c stress test?

Four or more hours of Furmark Burn-in? Perfectly stable. Hours on end of gaming on the games I listed above and then some for the past few months? Not a problem. 30 minutes of Sims 3? lol NOPE. Can't stand those luminorious gems and deathfish.

Sounds like when you are loading a new lot it likely has to load from the HDD, if you had an SSD I would imagine it wouldn't slow down as much.

That's what I was figuring. It makes sense because otherwise there wouldn't be any lag at all, it's not like it's completely maxing out any other hardware. An SSD can't really fit in my budget right now, but it will be a future upgrade.

 

[Aldakoopa]

I have noticed that the Sims 3 Create a World runs much smoother now too since I've lowered my memory overclock. And I mean MUCH smoother. I really didn't know that an overclock could be stable on so many games, but when it comes to a little older game that you don't expect to have a problem with, suddenly there's a world of difference...

 

[Aldakoopa]

Ok guys, I think I've figured out some of the problem. Sims 3 isn't very GPU intense, it's a little more CPU intense, however, especially with everything set to high and object hiding disabled. The GPU is running crazy at over 120 FPS, I saw it spike up past 200 FPS once. I believe this is bottlenecking my processor to the point where I see huge lag when it has to load a new lot. It no longer drops to single-digits, but it will drop down to the 20's and teens sometimes... looking up about the problem, a lot of Sims 3 players suggest using a framerate limiter. I tried one suggested in a thread on a Sims 3 forum but it didn't work for some reason, I was still seeing high framerates. I want to limit them to 60 FPS, maybe even 30, and see if that helps.

 

[petteyg359]

Ok guys, I think I've figured out some of the problem. Sims 3 isn't very GPU intense, it's a little more CPU intense, however, especially with everything set to high and object hiding disabled. The GPU is running crazy at over 120 FPS, I saw it spike up past 200 FPS once. I believe this is bottlenecking my processor to the point where I see huge lag when it has to load a new lot. It no longer drops to single-digits, but it will drop down to the 20's and teens sometimes... looking up about the problem, a lot of Sims 3 players suggest using a framerate limiter. I tried one suggested in a thread on a Sims 3 forum but it didn't work for some reason, I was still seeing high framerates. I want to limit them to 60 FPS, maybe even 30, and see if that helps.

In the GPU control panel, add an application profile and set vsync "always on".

 

[Aldakoopa]

I tried that, it's still running away happily at well over 100 FPS and lagging. Nothing seems to be making a difference... I downclocked my card back to stock settings and it's still getting just as many FPS, so maybe that's another sign of CPU bottlenecking. I think I'd have to severely underclock my GPU to get low enough FPS to not bottleneck my CPU. I have another FPS limiter now I'm going to try, but I have to restart Windows and disable the driver signature crap.

 

[Aldakoopa]

Ok, that frame limiter doesn't let the game play at all. It just immediately crashes. What to do...

 

[Aldakoopa]

Looking at my CPU and GPU usage while playing, when under the worst graphic load this game has to offer, the GPU is only at 50% usage, but the CPU is at 80-90% or more. I actually turned the graphics up higher than they were (AA was off, reflection and some detail settings were "high" but could still go higher) and that dropped my FPS to around 90 instead of 120, though in some areas it would still climb to 160 FPS, but now the lag is just for a split second (I could just have to get used to it as this much might be my hard drive being slow) and it is much less noticeable. I don't know why nothing is working to limit the FPS, but it looks like the only way to really do it is to downclock my GPU and increase the burden it has to carry without adding to the CPU usage the best I can.

EDIT: Since this is a game that's popular with mostly light gamers, I think what they did was make the game to perform on most OEM computers, which generally have a decent CPU but a weak integrated GPU.

 

[deathman20]

Not with Sims 3 in general but OC on the VRAM found that X3's benchmark worked great for testing my VRAM on the card for sure at least. Still think the best test was 3DMark for the core if not mistaken to test stability.

 

[Pinky]

Does the game have a graphics setting for vsync you may need to enable (as well as the one in the gpu's control panel)?

 

[Aldakoopa]

Does the game have a graphics setting for vsync you may need to enable (as well as the one in the gpu's control panel)?

It does, but I've also tried that and like I said, nothing has made a difference in FPS except for just straight up downclocking my GPU.

 

[Aldakoopa]

Keeping an eye directly on my CPU and GPU usage on another monitor while playing is showing about 50% usage on two cores of my CPU are about 70% on the other two, and the GPU is anywhere between 30-80%, but there is still some lag, not nearly as bad as it was, of course, but still there. I can only blame it on the HDD at this point. I'll see when I get an SSD I suppose.