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Usagi89
Test Subject
Original Poster
#1 Old 22nd Oct 2016 at 2:11 AM
Default Sims 3 - Mini Freezing
Hi ! c:

Sorry if this is not the good place to post this, i didn't know where else to ask.
My sims 3 game is experiencing some kind of mini freezing? hard to explain...
Like, my fps says 60 + but my game still seems to freeze for lake half a second every 5 seconds...
My computer is pretty powerful, and most of my cc is merged.
I tried resetting my sims...

thanks !
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Usagi89
Test Subject
Original Poster
#3 Old 22nd Oct 2016 at 4:04 AM
Quote: Originally posted by nitromon
This goes into the help forum. Unfortunately, there are a lot of reasons that would cause this.

Please post your deviceconfig.


Here is my dxdiag, i think thats what it is...
But my fps says 60 or more.. it should be smooth :c
Also my last game i played, it saved for an infinite amount of time, never stopped saving. I had to close the game..
Attached files:
File Type: rar  DxDiag of Usagi89.rar (13.0 KB, 9 downloads) - View custom content
Description: My PC Specs
igazor
Mad Poster
#4 Old 22nd Oct 2016 at 5:23 AM
1 - You appear to have a 60 Hz monitor, if I am reading that dxdiag correctly. The goal would be to cap your fps rate so that it never goes over the refresh rate of your monitor, so 60 fps and under, not 60 fps and over. Unlimited frame rates are noise, not quality, and can cause graphics glitches, screen tearing, poor game performance, crashes, and can ultimately damage your card and system board. Are you using the Nvidia Control Panel or some other method to try to control the fps rate?

2 - Is the game installed on C or D? Reason for asking is that your C drive is very tight on space while D has plenty.

3 - Which world(s) are you playing in?
Usagi89
Test Subject
Original Poster
#6 Old 23rd Oct 2016 at 12:52 AM
Quote: Originally posted by nitromon
The deviceconfig file is a log file located in your Sims 3 users folder. Please post the top content of the file here (all the way down to your GPU). Don't post all the option stuff below that.


Ok, here is my deviceconfig

Quote: Originally posted by igazor
1 - You appear to have a 60 Hz monitor, if I am reading that dxdiag correctly. The goal would be to cap your fps rate so that it never goes over the refresh rate of your monitor, so 60 fps and under, not 60 fps and over. Unlimited frame rates are noise, not quality, and can cause graphics glitches, screen tearing, poor game performance, crashes, and can ultimately damage your card and system board. Are you using the Nvidia Control Panel or some other method to try to control the fps rate? 2 - Is the game installed on C or D? Reason for asking is that your C drive is very tight on space while D has plenty. 3 - Which world(s) are you playing in?


- I think its usually set at 60.. i will try under 60 see how that goes.
- On my D:// Drive.
- I was playing in Riverview. Its pretty large but my computer should usually handle it - i think - .
Attached files:
File Type: rar  DeviceConfig of Usagi89.rar (1.6 KB, 9 downloads) - View custom content
igazor
Mad Poster
#7 Old 23rd Oct 2016 at 1:33 AM
Oh, Riverview is fine so we can rule out design-flawed worlds (like Isla Paradiso, Bridgeport, not very well done custom worlds).

What I meant with the fps wasn't the setting, it was the results you were getting in-game. If the frame rate wanders up to 62 or 63 and drops back down again, that's fine. If it wanders all over the place into the hundreds or thousands, that is not. This is what I meant by being capped at and seeing 60 or under, not 60 or over.

I'll defer to @Nitromon on the DeviceConfig. I only see one thing off-kilter there and it may not be significant enough to worry about.
Usagi89
Test Subject
Original Poster
#8 Old 23rd Oct 2016 at 1:47 AM
Quote: Originally posted by igazor
Oh, Riverview is fine so we can rule out design-flawed worlds (like Isla Paradiso, Bridgeport, not very well done custom worlds).

What I meant with the fps wasn't the setting, it was the results you were getting in-game. If the frame rate wanders up to 62 or 63 and drops back down again, that's fine. If it wanders all over the place into the hundreds or thousands, that is not. This is what I meant by being capped at and seeing 60 or under, not 60 or over.

I'll defer to @Nitromon on the DeviceConfig. I only see one thing off-kilter there and it may not be significant enough to worry about.


But if i don't limit the fps, i do get about 100-600 fps.
So i guess i should limit it ? Anything else i should fix ? c:
igazor
Mad Poster
#9 Old 23rd Oct 2016 at 1:52 AM
I think we're tripping over semantics here. Yes, limit the fps to 60. But you said you were getting "60 or more" fps in-game. It's the "or more" part I was objecting to.

Also, do you get the freezes on a freshly started up game or just the ongoing one? There are all kinds of mods and tools available to help "clean" an ongoing game and prevent things like this from happening, if it turns out to be not hardware related.
http://nraas.wikispaces.com/Tips+Fo...ame+Performance
Usagi89
Test Subject
Original Poster
#10 Old 23rd Oct 2016 at 1:56 AM
Quote: Originally posted by igazor
I think we're tripping over semantics here. Yes, limit the fps to 60. But you said you were getting "60 or more" fps in-game. It's the "or more" part I was objecting to.

Also, do you get the freezes on a freshly started up game or just the ongoing one? There are all kinds of mods and tools available to help "clean" an ongoing game and prevent things like this from happening, if it turns out to be not hardware related.
http://nraas.wikispaces.com/Tips+Fo...ame+Performance


On any game, whether freshly started or not.
Also, last time i played, it saved for an infinite amount of time. It never finished saving so i had to close it.
igazor
Mad Poster
#11 Old 23rd Oct 2016 at 2:04 AM
Well, the problem could be content related. You could try pulling your entire game folder out of Documents to the Desktop for safekeeping and do a clean run on the newly spawned game folder that will appear on the next startup.
Usagi89
Test Subject
Original Poster
#12 Old 23rd Oct 2016 at 2:28 AM
Quote: Originally posted by igazor
Well, the problem could be content related. You could try pulling your entire game folder out of Documents to the Desktop for safekeeping and do a clean run on the newly spawned game folder that will appear on the next startup.


Will do c: !
However since i like cc in my game, are packages or sims3packs quicker? Which ones will have less chances of causing lag?
igazor
Mad Poster
#13 Old 23rd Oct 2016 at 2:51 AM
Oh no, I didn't mean to forgo CC entirely beyond testing. But it only takes one (or two, three) instances of "bad" or misbehaving content to mess up a game. The purpose of the clean folder test is to remove all the variables at once and see if the game then behaves itself better. If it does, then slowly reintroduce the other elements that were in play in the hopes of finding the culprits. And sometimes the "culprit" is the old game folder itself and things just work better on the new one for no explained reason.

But we're still pending Nitromon's comments on your DeviceConfig log when he returns to this thread.

Personally I've never seen a difference between packages vs. sims3packs for otherwise identical content. But I never merge any content myself, I prefer standalone packages whenever feasible for reasons of flexibility, it's all a matter of personal taste really.
Usagi89
Test Subject
Original Poster
#15 Old 23rd Oct 2016 at 5:50 PM
Quote: Originally posted by nitromon
Well, there's no great mystery in the deviceconfig, that's why I like it b/c it is pretty straightforward. The texture memory error is one of the possible causes of mini-stutters, so just wanted to verify whether the GPU was set up correctly. Please follow this guide to fix the texture memory.

Hopefully that fixes it.

If not there are a few other possibilities.

1) Mostly make sure you have attempted a "clean" run (without mods and ccs) to verify the game itself runs without these mini-stutters. Sometimes broken mods or just heavy mods would affect the performance of the game.

2) Sometimes routing lags would cause mini pauses, though often these lags would be a lot longer than 1/2 a second. And this lag is often large enough to show up of the FPS.

3) This 3rd one is theoretical. I'm fairly certain of it, but I never had anyone tested it for me. You can try if the above suggestions didn't help. There IS a possibility if your CPU is too fast. The faster your CPU, the faster it does things, the more active your world is, less idle sims, etc... which the game simply cannot handle, the hard disk can't keep up, etc... Sims 3 is about a perfect balance of CPU, GPU, HDD, etc... b/c the coders didn't seem to bother to cap the performance. In such cases, try disabling your "turbo" for your CPU. This can be changed in the power setting icon, under advanced power plan, maximum power state. Instead of 100%, set it to 99% and it will not kick in the turbo. Change it to one of the power plans, then you can simply switch to the power plan to play sims. But again, this is theoretical, I've never actually confirmed this. Most people fixed their pulse lag b4 this step so it was never confirmed.

4) Finally, this probably won't apply to you since your problem is probably consistent that's why you've posted here. But there are some random times for no apparent reason my game would pulse lag right after I started it. I never seem to be able to find out the reason b/c it is rare and it is fixed simply by closing down the game and restarting it. But my guess is that it might be related to one of my mods.

So try fixing the texture memory first, hopefully that takes care of it.


Alright so i got my settings a little bit lower, and limited my Hz for my screen (ingame) to 59. it helped a bit, its fairly smooth. But its still a little choppy, every once in a while. Its definitely better however.
So i lowered my settings and i also set the texture to 1024 because it had the override thing.
I also merged a couple package files i wasnt going to get rid of anyway c: .
Usagi89
Test Subject
Original Poster
#17 Old 24th Oct 2016 at 9:49 PM
Quote: Originally posted by nitromon
I forgot to mention before, but if you watch the task manager while you play the game, you can monitor the CPU usage of TS3W.EXE to see if it is stable. In my game it is stable around 12-15% usage (when TS3 camera is idling), it would stutter and lag at 18-20%. It only hits 18-20% when something major is going on, like I just switched lots and it is loading the textures or it is clean up hour etc...

Anyhow, I noticed you have a lot of RAM, if you haven't taken advantage of them in utilizing a RAMdisk, I highly recommend it.
TS3 and Ramdisk

Also, if you haven't tried unparking your CPU, it also helps improve the game.
Unparking CPU cores

Thanks, i'll go check it out.
So my game runs a lot better, but a minor issue i now have is that when my sims go shower or sleep, it takes a long time before they actually do. like 1-3 hrs sim hours...
Usagi89
Test Subject
Original Poster
#19 Old 26th Oct 2016 at 12:19 AM
Quote: Originally posted by nitromon
Because they're stuck in changing clothes? Yeah, unpark the CPU core will help with that. It also helps if you simply pause the game for a few seconds. This is especially problematic in winter if you have seasons where you get groups of them stuck b/c they're changing into their outer wear.

If you're more tech saavy, you can try using Throttle stop. It allows you to adjust the CPU frequency multiplier manually. So you don't have to settle for turbo on and off, but can choose any middle ground in between. This way, you can see if you can find a sweet spot in the CPU that maximize the performance to meet your system.


I'm gonna try unparking my cpu with parkcontrol c: thank you so much your help was really kind !
thanks to igazor too i really appreciate your help c:
Usagi89
Test Subject
Original Poster
#20 Old 26th Oct 2016 at 10:29 PM
Quote: Originally posted by nitromon
Because they're stuck in changing clothes? Yeah, unpark the CPU core will help with that. It also helps if you simply pause the game for a few seconds. This is especially problematic in winter if you have seasons where you get groups of them stuck b/c they're changing into their outer wear.

If you're more tech saavy, you can try using Throttle stop. It allows you to adjust the CPU frequency multiplier manually. So you don't have to settle for turbo on and off, but can choose any middle ground in between. This way, you can see if you can find a sweet spot in the CPU that maximize the performance to meet your system.


And for unparking my cpu, how far should i unpark it ? my pc as 3.41 GhZ. should i put it maxed or a little lower?
@nitromon
Usagi89
Test Subject
Original Poster
#22 Old 27th Oct 2016 at 10:41 PM
Quote: Originally posted by nitromon
I think you are confusing two different things.

Unparking the CPU is simply an on/off switch to unpark each core.

I think you're referring to the CPU max processor state? If you are using the Win OS power control, anything less than 100% will remove the turbo. If your CPU is listed at 3.41 gHz, this is the "unturbo" state, it is probably 4.4 gHz turbo (unless they listed it improperly). So setting it at 99% will cut off the turbo. You can set it lower if you like by reducing the %, at this point it is % out of the max 3.4.

If you use throttle stop, you can actually set the multiplier if you want it between 3.4 - 4.4 gHz. But as I've mentioned earlier, only if you are tech saavy and know what you are doing. Throttle stop is a tool used for overclocking.


Okay thanks c:
So even if i put it at 99% or 100% theres no danger for my pc ? like my cpu wont literally melt ?
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