Graphics Card no longer recognized?

[ayszuh]

I haven't played The Sims 3 since earlier this year (February) but I don't remember having this problem before, I was able to launch and play my game then with little to no issue.

The Sims 3 itch is back now, and even though I'm playing on the same laptop as I was back in February, my game gets stuck on a low resolution flickering loading screen.

I tried using The Sims 3 GPU Add-on Support TOOL on Nexus mods, but doesn't seem to fix it. And the name of my graphics card isn't similar at all to the others listed in the Graphic Cards .sgr, so I'd rather play it safe and not try and edit that file myself in case I mess something up.

Really hoping I can get some help. Thanks in advance.


=== Graphics device info ===
Number:          0
Name (driver):   NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2070 with Max-Q Design
Name (database): NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2070 with Max-Q Design [Found: 0, Matched: 1]
Vendor:          NVIDIA
Chipset:         Vendor: 10de, Device: 1f10, Board: 20021a58, Chipset: 00a1
Driver:          nvldumd.dll, Version: 30.0.15.1296, GUID: D7B71E3E-5C50-11CF-F87C-0D000EC2D335
Driver version:  1296
Monitor:         \\.\DISPLAY1
Texture memory:  32MB <<OVERRIDE>>

[ayszuh]

A little update after a few hours: I think I was able to add my graphics card since the Device Log now says [Found: 1, Matched: 1], and the game now launches full screen resolution.

But the flickering still persists.

I uploaded a video of it to reddit and also added some context there in the comments:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Sims3/comments/xmkp2o/help_with_flickering_loading_screen/

[MrsFlynn]

I edited the graphics card files. The zip file can be found here:
https://www.carls-sims-4-guide.com/forum/index.php?topic=26753.msg446248#msg446248

However, I did some more digging since the problem is continuing.

It's been suggested to limit the FPS. Tips thread linked below:

Frames Per Second (FPS) Tips
https://www.carls-sims-4-guide.com/forum/index.php?topic=27183.msg450945#msg450945

A couple suggestions that may help are to play in windowed mode and try turning Edge Smoothing up to high. If you have an option.ini file. You can open it with notepad, check to see that it's says edgesmoothing = 2 (for medium) 3 for high. These suggestion come from the thread linked below.

Sims 3 screen flickering
https://answers.ea.com/t5/Technical-Issues-PC/Sims-3-screen-flickering/td-p/7105890

And just in case you're still not able to get the game to load, we've got some troubleshooting tips.

Game Will Not Launch/Start/Load
https://www.carls-sims-4-guide.com/forum/index.php?topic=25717.msg433695#msg433695