New Video Card Primarily for Sims 3

[Sonshine]

Hi, I'm currently looking for a new video card that I need primarily for my sims. The game gets very sluggish and freezes up frequently, especially when Im recoloring things. I just had it happen again. The rest of my specs are really good, but my card is kind of med at best (GeForce GTX 680). While I'm at it, a new card that can also render the shadows in TS2 w/Win 7. Right now, with shadows turned on, I get black boxes under their feet. So, I'm looking for a card that can both run TS3 smoothly and also render the shadows on TS2 if it is possible. Thanks!

I don't know if this is normal or not, but when I bring my sim home from the future, it takes forever! Right now, it's been at least 10 min.

[KhaineGB]

Um... a GTX680 is still a VERY good card. I mean, they still sell for £200 over here in the UK!

I'm running a GTX560 in my desktop and a Radeon 6650M in my laptop, both of which can run the game on high with minimal stuttering... and your card destroys BOTH of those!  If you're game is stuttering, then we need to look at other issues.

How often do you clear your game cache?
Do you have memories turned on?
What is the rest of your system like?
Are you running the game from a very full hard drive? Is it a normal drive, or a solid state?

[Lisa46]

Some other questions... How many EPs and SPs do you have? Any CC or store content? How many saves? Recoloring things can be a resource hog, but if the game card is good that shouldn't be a problem.

[Sonshine]

Hi! To answer your questions, yes I clear  the cache all the time. The rest of my specs are Win 7/64 bit, an Core i7 960 CPU, 15 gig RAM, GeForce GTX 680 (I've heard that the one below that is much better though) which has 4.38 gig memory. I also run some facebook apps in the background at the same time as my sims and that might be a problem. The family I'm playing now is pretty big and needs to be split off. That will happen soon.

[KhaineGB]

If you only have 4GB RAM, that could be the problem.

As Lisa asked, what expansions and stuff packs do you have? Any custom content?

[Sonshine]

Sorry about that! I have all ep's except SN. I also have 5 sp's. I've heard that the shadows problem is specific to the Nvidia cards. I don't know id the newer cards render the shadows good or not or if a different card will be better. If anything else on TS2, turning the shadows off works well.

[KhaineGB]

That sounds more like it's a driver issue. I think Sims 3 is OpenGL (hence why it runs on Mac), which might be the issue.

I also misread your post. A 4GB GTX 680 is more than enough for Sims 3. Your CPU is good (my desktop is a Core i7 920 overclocked to 3.9ghz... and even THAT stutters with Sims 3 occasionally!) and you have enough system RAM.

At this point, I would make sure you empty sims inventories and store items anywhere else you can. If that doesn't help, you might want to look into some mods. I find Nraas ErrorTrap, Overwatch, GoHere, Traveller, Saver and Register almost necessities while playing Sims 3. Register can be used to remove a lot of the wild animals that wander around, and that helps out with performance quite a bit.

[Sonshine]

Thanks Khaine! I use Overwatch, MC, SP, Traffic, and Tempest. I used to have Error Trap, but for some reason took it out. I'll try putting it  back in and also Register. I've never used the GoHere one and I'm not sure about Traveller. I'll look into it.

[KhaineGB]

GoHere helps to reset sims with routing issues (cutting down on lag).

Traveller I just like because it helps remove bugs regarding travelling, so useful if you go on holiday or university.