Mac Requirements for Sims 3 + All Expansions

[Tilia]

Just curious, what kind of Mac system is necessary to avoid constant glitching, etc. with the expansions. 

For reference, I'm on Snow Leopard 10.6.8 with 4GB of Ram and a 2.66 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor.  For the longest time I was running the game with Generations, Late Night, Ambitions, and World Adventures with zero problems.  I mean, I could play for ridiculous amounts of time without having to worry about saving. 

When I installed Showtime, that seemed to be fine, but it was around the time that I got Seasons and Pets that things started going wonky.  However, this was also around the time that I discovered the store.  I went ahead and grabbed supernatural too, which hasn't worsened the issue, but it is a pretty shocking difference from a few months ago to now, where I have to save around twice per Sim day, and after two Sim days, generally get an Error 12 or a freeze/crash.

I clear out all of my caches and superfluous files after every game. 

I moved my Legacy family to a new town to see if that helped matters, installed Overwatch and ErrorTrap, and disabled memories, but still no dice.  Anyway - any insight at all would be welcome.

[SadieHamming]

Just curious, what kind of Mac system is necessary to avoid constant glitching, etc. with the expansions. 

For reference, I'm on Snow Leopard 10.6.8 with 4GB of Ram and a 2.66 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor.  For the longest time I was running the game with Generations, Late Night, Ambitions, and World Adventures with zero problems.  I mean, I could play for ridiculous amounts of time without having to worry about saving. 

When I installed Showtime, that seemed to be fine, but it was around the time that I got Seasons and Pets that things started going wonky.  However, this was also around the time that I discovered the store.  I went ahead and grabbed supernatural too, which hasn't worsened the issue, but it is a pretty shocking difference from a few months ago to now, where I have to save around twice per Sim day, and after two Sim days, generally get an Error 12 or a freeze/crash.

I clear out all of my caches and superfluous files after every game. 

I moved my Legacy family to a new town to see if that helped matters, installed Overwatch and ErrorTrap, and disabled memories, but still no dice.  Anyway - any insight at all would be welcome.

I don't really know all about the tech part, but I do play on a mac, so maybe I could help a bit.
What type of computer do you play on?

[Tilia]

A macbook pro

[SadieHamming]

Okay. I play on a desktop, I believe I have all the expansions, and a fair amount of store items, and it works fairly okay.
I have played on a mac book pro, and  had almost all of the expansions on it, excluding Seasons, Supernatural and World Adventure, and it would glitch sometimes. It mostly would glitch and freeze because it would overheat.
The two things you might want to check is, if you haven't already, is that your computer has enough memory space to play, and that you play on a cool surface so it doesn't overheat.

[Tilia]

Hm, the overheating definitely was not an issue prior to installing the expansions.  As far as memory space goes, there's plenty of it.  Which is why the Error 12 is so frustrating to get repeatedly.

[SadieHamming]

Overheating definitely can cause issues. When I play on my laptop, I have to be really careful to save a lot so I don't lose things, when it overheats and crashes.
I had the same issue with the desktop, now that I think about it. I even think it was the same error. What I think happened is I had taken a lot of screen shots and there was too many of them. Also, I think if you have too many files it can cause the game to glitch a bit. Or at least my does.

[shibamistress]

As I understand this, the crashing also has to do with your graphics card, not just the amount of RAM.  I think part of the problem is a not so good graphics card without dedicated memory will cause problems.

I only recently learned about all this, though, so my info. may be only partially right.  I was able to play on my Macbook with Pets and Sn for quite awhile, but when I added Seasons, it all fell apart and I couldn't play at all without crashing.  It was a graphics card issue for me, not a RAM issue, as I also had 4 GB RAM.  I also did play with a fan under my laptop.

I ended up buying another laptop with a much better graphics card, and 8 GB RAM and it plays beautifully now.

[Tilia]

This might be totally irrelevant, but as a test, I started up Sims Medieval and played for a bit.  No lag or freezing whatsoever.  Does this ... um, mean anything?