I installed The Sims 3 today for the first time and it came up with an error message saying the graphics card is not recognised and that the settings have been set as "high possible". The game works but the performance is very slow and stuttery. I've tried setting all the textures and animations to the lowest detail but it makes no difference. No mods or custom packages have been installed, I'm working with a 100% vanilla and up to date copy.

Earlier today I tried following the instructions here to the best of my abilities but it caused the game to crash upon start up and I have reinstalled since. There were a couple of things that I didn't fully understand about these instructions so maybe I edited the .sgr files incorrectly.

Re: editing the GraphicsCards sgr, the instructions say:

My graphics card is the NVidea GeForce GTX 750 Ti, the closest entry I could find to this was:



so I added the entry: "card 0x1380 "GeForce 750 Ti" (I checked the device number on the DeviceConfig document so that part should be correct.) to the next line ensuring the spacing was correct. I even tried changing the entry to just "card 0x0191 "GeForce 750" but that still caused the game to crash.

One thing I wasn't clear on was does it matter which line I put the new entry as I couldn't find the previous GeForce model on the list so there was no way of adding my entry directly afterwards.

I also followed the instructions re: the GraphicsRules sgr but the closest entries I could find were 2 entries ending in:



so I added the entry: GeForce G7??*" immediately afterwards. I wasn't sure whether this was correct as I couldn't find any entries beginning in GeForce GTX.

I'm using a Windows 7 PC with an NVidea GeForce 750 Ti graphics card, 8GB ram and an intel core i5-4460 processor.

I'd be grateful if anybody could help me with this issue and I can post a DxDiag if it would be of any help?

First of all: Have you updated your graphics card's drivers to the latest version? If not, do that before going to the next step.

For the next steps, make sure you start with the original, unedited GraphicsCards.sgr and GraphicsRules.sgr.

Now, open GraphicsCards.sgr, and find the following line:


If you don't see the Vendor ID (as listed in the "Chipset:....Vendor:" line in DeviceConfig.log), add it (with "0x") prefix.

Below that line, find the following line:


Duplicate that line and edit the topmost of the two according to your graphics card.

Save the file.

Next, open GraphicsRules.sgr, then find, select & copy the following piece of text:


Be CAREFUL: Make sure the parentheses count match! There should be ONE EACH of "(" and ")"! And there MUST be ONE SPACE in front!!

With the above piece of text STILL selected, paste twice. You should see the following:


Edit either one of the two "*GTX 6??*" codes into "*GTX 7??*"

AFAIK, DeviceConfig actually does detect the device. But, the detected device does not exist in the database in the .sgr files, so after successfully detecting the VGA Card, TS3 still doesn't know what to do, so it reverts to the minimum settings.

I checked the DEV_ID that OP mentioned against the several PCI Databases, they all match with GTX 750 Ti.

Hi guys, thanks for responding.

I opened the DeviceConfig file and now it reads: Name (database): NVIDIA GeForce GTX 750 Ti [Found: 1, Matched: 1] so the graphics card problem seems to have been resolved.

Unfortunately the gameplay remains the same so I'm guessing there's not much I can do about that.

Thanks for your help anyway!

Well, now that TS3 properly recognizes your graphics card, I suggest checking if your graphics card's driver has an update.

My driver is up to date but it doesn't seem to make any difference, it seems odd that this game would struggle so much when my PC surpasses the minimum requirements, is this just an issue with the programming or could there be something else I'm missing?

I agree with @nitromon above.

There's another 'trick' you may try with Nvidia graphics card though, explained here in TheSims Forum. In summary: Using Nvidia's control panel, customize the 3D settings for TS3W.exe so that "Vertical Sync" and "Triple Buffering" are both set to "On", and "Power Options" set to "High Performance".

@pepoluan: I tried making those changes and I think the performance may have improved somewhat although still not perfect.

@Nitroman: I haven't had any problems with freezing or crashing yet but whenever I move my camera the motion can be stuttery at times. Sometimes movement is smooth but it'll always get caught for a second especially when I'm moving past a big house.

This is my deviceconfig log by the way:

=== Application info ===
Name: Sims3
Version:
Build: Release
=== Rating info ===
GPU: 5 GPU Memory: 4 CPU: 4 RAM: 4 CPU Speed: 3192 Threading: 3
Adjusted CPU: 3856 RAM: 8061 Adjusted RAM: 7549 Cores: 4
=== Machine info ===
OS version: Windows 7 6.1.7601 Service Pack 1
OS prod type: 0
OS major ver: 6
OS minor ver: 1
OS SP major ver: 1
OS SP minor ver: 0
OS is 64Bit: 1
CPU: GenuineIntel
Brand: Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-4460 CPU @ 3.20GHz
Family: 6
Model: 12
Cores: 4
HT: 0
x64: 0
Memory: 8061MB
Free memory: 5847MB
User: Mark
Computer: WIN-7Q0K2TFJBH6
=== Graphics device info ===
Number: 0
Name (driver): NVIDIA GeForce GTX 750 Ti
Name (database): GeForce GTX 750 Ti [Found: 1, Matched: 1]
Vendor: NVIDIA
Chipset: Vendor: 10de, Device: 1380, Board: 288a19da, Chipset: 00a2
Driver: nvd3dum.dll, Version: 9.18.13.4709, GUID: D7B71E3E-50C0-11CF-0F68-87081FC2C435
Driver version: 4709
Monitor: \\.\DISPLAY1
Texture memory: 4024MB
Vertex program: 3.0
Pixel program: 3.0
Hardware TnL: 1

This is the first time I've run The Sims 3 so I have no point of comparison other than playing The Sims 2 on my old computer and experiencing similar lag in larger neighbourhoods although my solution was to simply create a small neighbourhood for smoother performance.

I haven't noticed the game loading up grey meshes as you describe and I'm running the game without EP's.

I'll try and see if I can record a few seconds of gameplay this week to give you a better idea, is there still a record video feature on The Sims 3 like there was on The Sims 2?

Hello again.

I'm running dual graphics cards yeah. I couldn't find the "run with graphics processor," option when right clicking on any of The Sims 3 icons, each time it brought up the following options:



I went to the Nvidia control panel anyway and now TSW.EXE has been added to the drop down menu so now it looks like this:



Does that look ok?

Also I captured some recordings on high, highest and medium quality but I'm not sure how accurately it showcases the issues, this first video is on the "high" setting: High Quality. This is probably the most accurate demonstration of the performance issues.

This is on highest recording quality: Highest Quality For some reason the playback is flawless in this one, the game never runs as smoothely as this.

And finally this is a medium quality capture: Medium Quality This video probably exaggerates the issues a little but the performance is closer to this than the highest video.