Does anyone's PC run Sims 3 with all the EPs lag-free and smoothly? Does your game crash regularly?

If yes and no respectively (or just yes to the first question), what are your PC's specs?

I'm in the process of buying a new desktop and I was just interested to get an indication as to what to look at spec-wise. The person who is organising it all for me works in IT and says it should be fine, but I thought I'd just ask ya'll first. I know how Sims 3 can be!

Completely lag-free is perhaps impossible as some lag can be caused by things that happen in game, but I run it largely lag-free on an i7 3770 @3.4 Ghz, 8GB RAM and a Nvidia Geforce GTX 570 with 1GB VRAM. Windows 7 64-bit is on the main C drive, which is a SSD, and The Sims is on a separate, regular D drive that spins at 7200rpm and has 2TB memory space.
I play without internet connection and without Origin and the computer is only used for games. I haven't turned all graphics options to max, although I probably could, according to Nvidia Experience. Edge smoothing is at medium, reflections to only mirrors&water, tree detail high and high detail lots at 6. Everything else is maxed. I also force Vsync via the driver settings.

Hi there Joe95! I have, over the last few years, continually tried to upgrade my system to cope with Sims 3, and at the moment it is tolerable, in that it very rarely (if ever) crashes and has minimal lag (more like stuttering) even when running Twallans SP and all the graphics maxed out.

I also get 12 or more Sims appearing in park lots and my towns do now have a "busy" feel that I think is down to my system having the power to handle more Sims at one time on screen.

Windows 7 64 bit
AMD FX-8320 8 core 3.5 GHz
8GB RAM
AMD Radeon HD7850 GPU 2GB GDDR5
Samsung 256GB SSD HD plus 1TB SATA HD for storage
AOC 27" E2752V monitor

The SSD gave a real boost to loading times, the 8GB RAM pretty much eliminated "error 12's" and the CPU and GPU made it run smooth. The big monitor is sweet!
I found that removing as much CC as possible plus a couple of expansions and worlds I didn't use much (Pets, Uni, Supernatural, Dragon Valley, Monte Vista and Midnight Hollow) helped with the smooth running. I will warn you that with everything loaded I don't think it was so quick.

Some of this gear is already old so you may be able to do much better and therefore should run everything fine!

You would not believe how enraged I am now, to find that after spending all this time and money upgrading, that the Sims 4 will run on a pocket calculator! At least it's beastie enough so I can play Euro Truck Simulator with it! :lovestruc

EDIT: Pretty much beaten to the specs by Don! Looks like this sort of rig will do it for you.

I have all the EPs installed except for Into the Future. I haven't had a crash in quite a while - can't even remember when. I have had a few Error 16s, but I do Save As - if that happens. At the moment I'm not experiencing any lag - sims aren't freezing, etc, but let me know how you define lag.
OS: Windows 7 64-bit.
16 GB of RAM
CPU: Intel i3-2120 (I just got an i7, but haven't installed it yet)
Graphics card: GE Force GTX 650 Ti Boost
The hard drive where the Sims is installed had 1T of storage - has around 650 GB empty now.

@Flaygor - Same here. I've been upgrading over the past 5 years - thought my computer would be all ready to receive the wonderfulness of Sims 4. Joke was on me.

Thank you all for taking the time to reply!

I only have 7 EPs, but (correct me if I'm wrong) I think unless your computer really can barely handle the base game, it shouldn't matter as much how many eps you have (not that it doesn't matter at all) as it matters which EPs you have. I just bought a new desktop earlier this year.
It's pretty sweet. I have all the settings on their highest and have only encountered lag during normal gameplay twice: once when playing Isla Paradiso (that world ran like trying to ride a bicycle through a steaming pile of poo), and again another day when playing Bridgeport and it started raining. No idea why. I do get freezes and lagging when I try to use Nvidia ShadowPlay, and it shows in the recorded video.

Completely lag free is kind of impossible, since the game is limited to 4g of ram. I have an Intel i7 3770k, 24g ram, Radeon 7950 with 3g of rame, and it runs fairly smoothly. Isla Paradiso brought me my first game freeze, and I have some lag in Midnight Hollow, but otherwise I can't complain. The only lag I experience is when a neighborhood process gets borked, but NRaas mods usually take care of those pretty quickly.

All EPs, no SPs and a smooth game. Not perfect, but I don't think this game can be perfect. Mostly some stuttering, but over all smooth.

OS: Windows 8.1 64-bit
RAM: 8 GB
CPU: Core i7-4700MQ
Graphics Card: NVIDIA GeForce GT 755M
Hard drive has 1 TB total, 678 GB free.

EDIT: This is a laptop though, so you're probably looking at some different models than what I have.

I'm afraid it's not possible to have a complete smooth experience. I have all EPs apart from ITF, a high end-machine, and nothing makes this game run perfectly.

NRAAS mods certainly made the game playable, but it doesn't completely stop the engine from bloating your saves or creating the constant route faillures. And crashes happen ocasionally simply because they do.

I do play in Isla Paradiso, and Bridgeport before - which are the worst words for playing. The others ran fine but I don't know how long it takes to break the town. They tend to get worse in time.

As for especifics, for some reason the game doesn't recognize all video cards available, especially newer high-end cards. You will have to follow a guide, which is a pain in the ass, to make the game recognize it, otherwise it will keep crashing. Lemme know later if you encouter this problem, but it's easy to find it on Google.

The most important thing is, WHATEVER YOU DO, NEVER, EVER RUN THE GAME WITHOUT THIS: http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/s...p?topic=15585.0 (first 2 posts).

This is the main reason why I won't ever trust The Sims team to do anything. I don't know if you are aware of this problem, but the game doesn't limit FPS at all, even though it only supports up to 30. This means that the game won't tell your card to stop after it reaches 30 FPS, so it will keep on working faster and faster until it reaches its own limit. I regret that I found out about this too late, it was enough time to let it fry my sister's card. That's when I read about this on the internet and checked my game, which was reaching ridiculously high amount of FPS (100, 200, higher if it was on CAS). When I installed the file above, the difference was shocking. My card was running noise-free, instead of that constant loud noise from before. And the team never bothered to fix it. It took a person to create a patch, which was under 100kb, to stop the game from harming people's hardware. But apparently, TS4 won't have this problem because Graham himself made sure they limited FPS to 100 this time.

That's pretty much it. One tip is also to turn off EDGE SMOOTHING and leave your card to handle it though its control painel. Through there, you can select The Sims 3 and tell the card to use its AA instead of the game's. It makes a huge difference for some reason.

Finally - do the usual stuff people do to make the game more playable. Most NRAAS are mandatory but you have to read a bit about them to see what you can turn off to make the game more pleasant.

Most importantly, don't expect a perfect gaming experience. The game is broken. The first time I upgraded my PC I was devastated to see that it barely make a difference. That's when I found out the reason for lags was the game itself, and discovered the wonderful world of NRAAS...

Major thing to remind yourself of: RAM. Lots, and lots of RAM as well as a 64 bit OS. Whether your other hardware is strong or not, get at the very very least 6GB DDR3 RAM. I've yet to upgrade to 8GB (Currently at 4GB) to make my game run smoother. Currently on medium settings with fairly poor performance. Playable, but frustrating at times.

The Sims 3 doesn't read anything beyond 4GB of RAM though, so it doesn't really help the game to have more. It simply ignores anything past it.

Where would I find the option to do that on an NVida Gforce card? I'm not seeing an option that looks like it will do that. There's a little widget that will select the best settings it can handle though and that has my edge smoothing set to the in-game Medium setting.



And running pretty damn smooth with lots of the graphics settings maxed (including Reflectivity Mirrors and Super Water) and the entire suite of Nraas story progression. Things lag for a few minutes after I start while it sets everything up and turns off EA story progression but after that I get 30-60 FPS most of the time (which is higher than the game supports as I understand it but never comes close to the "burn out your graphics card" danger zone) Sometimes if something intensive is going on I might drop to about 19fps but not usually.

^ Open the Nvidia Control Painel, you can do it by right-clicking on your desktop.

Mine is in portuguese, so it might not be word by work, ok? I hope it's somewhat similar, so here we go:

Look for something that reads "Manage 3D Settings", it should be on the left menu.

Once clicked, you might see "Global Settings" and "Software Settings". Globals settings is for all games. By picking the Software Settings, you will be able to manage game by game.

Pick The Sims 3 under programs you want to customize.

There, change Anti-Aliasing Mode from Application Controlled (which is how it normally is) to Override Application's Settings. Then, try changing all Anti-Aliasing settings to one that doesn't lag your game. If your card can handle it, it will improve the game's by a lot!

Intel Core i7-2600K CPU, 3.70GHz processor (not overclocked)
8.0 GB RAM
Windows 7 64-bit
NVIDIA GTX 560 Ti GPU

I used to rarely crash at all. And I've always played with some CC but after the last patch I added a lot more; now I get Error 12's again if I play the game for over 4 hours and occasionally my PC will crash. Probably that infamous memory leak that everyone says it has. I just try to remember to save often, especially before editing someone in CAS, as that seems to make it prone to crashing.

I do get lag, but part of that is probably because I can never resist adding lots with the in-game editor, and more often than not, it borks the routing. Which then causes lag. This is partly why I like to play custom worlds that have all the EP lots added to them already; you can find some good ones in this thread: http://modthesims.info/showthread.php?t=433957

I also think it would lag a whole lot less if I turned off the wild horses with Twallan's Register mod but I kind of like them so rarely do that. I suspect the Pets EP causes a lot of the routing errors. The game I had been playing (haven't played it all month, but I'm in the process of moving) is about 26 sim weeks along, and some days it plays fine and other days I have a lot of hesitations that are very annoying.

Edit - Thanks, Rodrigues, I'm going to try adjusting that in my game, too!

As far as I understand, Pets and Island Paradise is a deadly combination if you play on Isla Paradiso I used Register to stop all animals there. As far as I understand, the game spaws animals on islands and they can never leave because they don't swin nor boat, thus, creating a thousand of route faillures. It's beyond me how they let that happen, but they did.

I thought they added some programming to Isla Paradisio to stop the animals from spawning. I think - not sure but I think - it is NRASS mods that are adding them back in there!

Anyway, the only animal I've ever seen in that world was a Unicorn and that's because I didn't adjust the Register mod's settings. I need to go do some research on the NRASS site but I'm sure I read some where that animals were not supposed to spawn on Isla Paradisio.

You are not alone with this in Bridgeport! I found the tall apartments also caused lag.

With Isla Paradiso, I found through using NRaas Error Trap, families that were sticking the most and moved them to a different house and deleted the faulty lots. Also, a lot of houseboats caused issues so I deleted them. Game runs much better.

Edit: Ah! I have uninstalled Pets so maybe that helps my Isla Paradiso! :D

Thanks!

I'm no expert, but wouldn't there be other non-sims related processes running at the same time as the sims? Windows stuff, antivirus stuff, background processes for other stuff, etc. So while TS3 itself can only take advantage of 4GB, having more would mean that the other stuff on your computer wouldn't be stealing RAM from your sims game, so TS3 would be able to use the full 4GB it's capable of.

It's also a big help if, like me, you're someone who tends to have other programs open at the same time. I typically play in windowed mode with multiple other programs running. For a start, I always have a web browser open so I can check up on stuff while the game is saving or loading. And browsers can be quite the memory hogs! And I nearly always have one or two other things open as well.

So yeah, to answer the OP, I've got 8GB of RAM, an i5-750 CPU and a Radeon HD 5750 GPU. I get some lag but it's still very playable, even in worlds with a high lot density. Don't have settings turned up to max, but they are medium-high. Idk how different it would be without the other stuff running or in fullscreen, but the way I play, that's the kind of result I get.

You are welcome, guys. Notice that this probably won't affect performance, it's more of a tip to improve edge smoothing and make the game look so much better. Remember to turn it off on the ingame settings, and be reasonable, use settings that won't lag your game. Try on the highest available and see if it won't lag you, which it shouldn't do if your card is relatively new.

Oh, good point. I don't know actually! But for me, upgrading from 4GB to 8GB made no difference at all, but I don't usually have anything else running other than the game (and the usual anti-virus, windows and all those other applications that I have no clue what they do because I didn't actually opened them)

If open up the performance monitor as the first thing I do when I log on to my computer, before instructing any programs to run or anything, I typically see 1-2GB of RAM already in use. So based on that I'd recommend a minimum of 6GB for a good simming computer.

Edit: also AwesomeMod's autosave feature helps a lot with preventing crashes. Forces the game to save once an hour which makes it much harder for the game to crash due to lack of RAM. I don't think I've had a single crash since I installed that. (Well, apart from a couple of CC related crashes).

Will be following all these helpful tips - thank you. Will also definitely be getting that FPS fixer..wow never even realised that was a thing! Glad I was told sooner rather than (too) later.

I'll add mine for the heck of it.
MS Windows 7 Home Premium
AMD Phenom II x6 1055T Processor, 8.0GB RAM, AMD Radeon HD 6570
All Expansion Packs, two Stuff Packs.
Runs: AwesomeMod, Nraas: MasterController, Overwatch, ErrorTrap, and Traveler.
Also useful: Make Your Own Memory Mod by velocitygrass here on MTS.

1. The only time I end up having lag or excessive crashing is when I play EA worlds. But since I have started playing my own customized worlds, I hardly ever get lag, and the only time the game crashes is when I have been running it for about four hours or more. Quitting and reloading the game solves this.

2. I suggest running a quick disk defragment tool each time you exit the game. I get upwards of 800 to nearly 2000 fragments each time.

3. As the others have said, an FPS program is a MUST--but the one on MATY stopped working after I installed either the Pets or Showtime expansion. So I went here: http://downloads.guru3d.com/download.php?det=163 and downloaded the very large Rivatuner. What you want is the D3DOverrider program that's buried within. Once Rivatuner is installed, run a search within the installation folders for D3DOveridder and copy all of the files that show up to a safe location. Uninstall Rivatuner. Startup the D3DOveridder and add your game execution files. I took no chances and added all the exe files from the Basegame: TS3W.exe, TS3.exe...etc. I also added the exe files for all of my EPs and SPs, though that may or may not be considered unnecessary. If you want to make sure you did it right, download the free version of Fraps, and watch the frame rate flicker back and forth in the top corner of your game screen. If it doesn't go above 60, you did great.

4. It's best not to play while connected to the internet (I go so far as to lockdown my firewall). If you run CCleaner after playing, you might discover some file trails leading back to the internet. TS3 likes to talk whether you want it to or not. I've noticed that TS2 does not do this.

5. Avoid Origin like the plague.

6. Be sure to check your CurrentGame folder (located in the Documents section) if your game crashes. You need to delete whatever files are in there, or else you risk game corruption when you reload your save.

That's all I can think of at the moment.

I'd used nraas master controller before but I didn't realise all these other aspects! They're great. Thanks for posting, guys. So far I'm going to be downloading:

- Nraas: MasterController (used before)
- Overwatch
- ErrorTrap
- Traveler

Is AwesomeMod worth it too? I thought it was always like an alternative to Nraas but I may be (very) wrong.

Any other add ons that will be helpful?