My machines stats:
AMD x2 Dual Core Atlhon 64 6000+ 3.10 ghz
8 GB Ram (only 3.5gb showing since windows xp)
2 SATA 500gb hard drives (One that the games on and another that system resides on).
ATI Radeon HD 4850 512

Windows Home XP sp 3, Fairly New machine (few months)

Got all the expansion but pets, only Kitchen and mansions stuff packs.

Getting a weird slow down but only when the is loading stuff. Real noticeable when i load the game. It's random but game can take just a min or so to load or up to 5+ (i've had it once for go almost 10min) to load and my CPU and the rest are reading 50%+ or higher loads. Some times longer load times with neighborhoods, but usually loads fine.

I tried with out my downloads folder but same, but mines only about 50-60 megs.

The wired part is the load times are about the same or more then my old machine that only had a gig of ram, Ati Radeon 9600 xt and a 1.67gh athlon 2000+ xp. Though it only had Deluxe and OFB installed on it.

Might moving the page file to my other sata 1 TB drive if that will speed things up (Hate to put ware and tear on that drive but if I need to test it I can). Page files only about 800megs. Haven't seen it with other programs but rarely goes above that even with stuff like Oblivion, fallout 3, or Supreme commander going. And I can run and load them all at max setting at 1920x1200 with out trouble. Even spore with as much as I've dl for it still loads fast.

As far as I've seen my ram is fine as well.

Is this normal for a machine this size?
Any recommendations would be helpful.

Last edited by StarDruid : 5th Feb 2009 at 02:01 AM.

XP can only use between 3.2 and 3.5 GB of RAM. The other 4 are useless unless you upgrade to 64bit OS. The page file is used regardless if your RAM is full, flaw with Windows OS. SP2 supposedly added support for dual-core, but I have not read yet if it's true usage of it or just recognizing it and somewhat using it. I would tend to believe that it still doesn't take full advantage of dual processing as a 64bit OS does.

I take it your drives are not set up as a RAID? But if they are and they are RAID 1 then it will lower the access time.

Anytime you add more to the game the load time takes longer. If you delete your thumbs or cache, again it will take longer to load. 50-60MB...that's like game mods only. You must not have any skins or hair.

yah, just a few body mods, global change mods and that it. All ready tried deleting the caches, and still basically got a basic install since I never install much into the game beside the mods in the download folder. So beside what the expansion added (Just got all the rest beside pet the last few weeks) my Ea games\sims2 folder is still stock.

Sounds more and more like it's what to expect. I know in other games we'd repackage all the files into one large file to help things run smoohter. Wish we could do that here.

5-10minute load is not slow. Especially with all those expansions. Far as I can tell load times are a function of poor game coding. Maybe someday someone will find a way to make it more efficient but I can tell you that my hdd can read game files and cc much faster than the game actually loads it and the CPU is nowhere near full tax, so as far as actual computer capabilities, I don't think there ever will be a computer that can make the game actually load quickly once it gets a certain amount of content installed.

You were supposed to have gone through this before posting: http://www.sims2wiki.info/wiki.php?...lp:Game_Problem So, what happens when you remove or rename your EA Games folder found in My Docs?

Not much, slight decrease in load times (Opens and closed the game a few times to test) but that because it's not loading the homes I add to the Neighborhoods. Not much else besides that.

So it comes down to crap coding. K, thanks for the info. Guess I deal with it since I doute there ever come out with a fixed engine or allow us to repackage all the expansion/stuff packs we have into one file.