MORE advice for a smoother-running game?

[Pam]

I meant no offense in my response. As i have mentioned in my post, i am very frustrated that i spent quite a lot of money on this game and the expansions and people are saying to trash the expansions and just play the base game or wait till the better game comes out. Cutting out 85% of the gameplay is not a solution or help. That's like me saying "well, have you tried not playing the game how you want to play it?"

The thing is, Fap, that we've already published everything we know that helps the game run better.  There's almost four years of Sims 3 experience on our Technical Help board and when someone says they need more advice, it's difficult to produce.  Nobody was minimizing the original poster's problems.  It's just hard to come up with more and better advice than what we already have, which includes the things you've probably already tried.

If you read my whole post. I mentioned that I have deleted all the CC. I'm starting to think that my Graphics card just isn't compatible with this game. As crazy as that sounds considering its published by EA and I have played many, many EA games with no problems.

She meant the mods you still have installed.  It wouldn't hurt to remove them, do a fresh re-install, and see what happens. 

[DaDewd]

Hi all you wonderful people! Hi to Carl, Pam, Tom too! (did that come out wrong?) 

I was gonna ask about SSD drives, I unfortunately haven't got any yet, and would really like to speed up mostly the game's 'loading screens'. If any blame should be addressed (ahem), I suppose it would be EA games! THEY are the ones who coded this game in the first place, yet, no two computers are alike are they ?

Do you have firm ideas and experience with SSD drives, I'd like to hear of it, or perhaps someone's got videos of the loading screens, something like that ? I'd like game to load like FAST, and no waiting.

So, about that speeding up, I somehow had success using 'FXAA tool'. My setup in short: win7-64bit, core i7, 3.5ghz(4.2ghz), 16gb 2133mhz ram, tons of HDD, radeon HD7850 2GB.. and happy enough with that. Only some SDD's would be nice. However, SSD's are so costy, so for now, HDD must do. I'm not 100% sure that SDD would just like that speed up the game, suspecting loading lags mostly has to do with the game, and not just any drives. Until the SDD's drop in price! Again, it could be the RAM usage, or lack of ? I will check out that sims3w.exe file. .I don't see much documentation of or comments on this executable file, I will have to take a look first. Posting this post a bit early, yes.

So, with that setup of mine, i DISable antialiasing in the game and DISable it in ATI catalyst as well (set to "program's settings". I ENable it in FXAA tool (highest setting) the FPS and everything else is quite ok, and the detail is the best I suppose, limited to sim textures and clothing texture sizes (guessing) or the particular GFX engine used by game. It's essential to DISable as mentioned above, if NOT, the double AA settings will slow things down and make everything choppy. One thing I CAN recomment, is the FXAA tool, thats by far the best performance in sims3 I have xp with. It's not the best hardware I have, but I'd encourage people with slower hardware to try it out, you could have a great performance gain.If you want pictures and stuff, ask, and I can post screenshots of whatever is asked for. video footage, however, doesn't make sense to me, my hardware would take a bow, just by recording alone, so I don't see the point, as it would not really indicate any FPS / performance or the likes. I do have a shipload of custom mods installed in the game, and all expansions etc for that matter. This also means, that changing clothing takes too long, to load the shirt list, pants list, and so on.
Time to do a defrag of the hard drive for what that's worth. The HDD is a sata3 3TB, rather new.

The lagging/dragging for me, is mostly, when travelling out or travelling home, and simply starting the game. The loading screens are SO slow. Sims3 gotta be the slowest game I tried. The 'loading bar' is inconsistent too. It shows like 1% for a long time, then suddenly chops away up to 100%. What's up with that!! 

Thanks for the OP and folks' hints as well. Looking forward to this forum.

much love,

"* EDIT: Sorry, I mixed things up, the .exe file I was referring to, was a tool / app in another thread: http://www.carls-sims-3-guide.com/forum/index.php/topic,16157.0.html , which supposedly is beneficial for people with =>4 GB of ram. I haven't taken a look at this yet, but will reply in that thread with my experience with it.