SWEET!
Runs much better now. Not... perfectly. But noticeably much more fluid.
Ultimately I think I agree that nothing but a rewrite of the code to take advantage of better systems, or running with fewer expansions, will save it.
I have a bloated game (long family history) and every expansion pack, barring the stuffs packs.
My 2008 laptop used to play sims3 smoothly; now my 2012-era desktop left it lacking.
Or maybe my standards are just higher now. Let's face it-- a first person shooter might require cutting edge graphics, but it has nothing of the inventory management that sims3 has to do. I'm spoiled by the rapid load times of any rpg or shooter.
The only time far cry 3 ever had a hickup on my machine, was opening a full backpack and trying to sell 80 items at once. My sims matriarch has 5000 life fruits and 2500 bottles of nectar in her inventory, each uniquely identified.
Yeah-- I did fresh installs. Built a new system recently and reinstalled everything.
Yeah-- I tried the 4gb thing, at least before. As I read somewhere --and someone, please chime in if you know for certain-- since late night, sims3 takes advantage of 4gb ram anyway and this is a moot point. Although I just checked; and right now (paused) it's only taking 1.7gb. Maybe I should double check that I DO have the patch...
Yeah-- I've got the processor, the ram, and the graphics card.
The processor never goes past 40% on any single core (3.8ghz-- 4.2 overclocked). Quad core. So don't waste your money on a cutting edge processor; a $100 2nd hand i7 920 will do more than fine.
The ram never goes past 40% either (16gb; most of that is for windows itself and tabs on google chrome. sims3 isn't the only thing running) So if you have 8gb and don't have 30 chrome tabs open, spending money on ram isn't going to help.
The graphics card never gets hot. FPS doesn't lose speed-- the GAME does. That is to say, snow, rain, flapping wings, all those run smoothly on ultra and 60fps. And the characters will do a stop motion thing. I have a 7950 now; but I get the impression that it's not necessary and isn't what's holding back my performance.
Today I bought a SECOND solid state drive, and set both of them up in a raid 0 array for theoretically twice the read/write speeds. They're hooked up to sata3 ports fwiw--but that might not be a limitation. Sata 3 is capable of twice the sequential data transfer rate, but sims3 probably has more to do with random read/write and seek times. Sims3 probably does not actually need to transfer >3gb/s at all, so don't rush out to get a sata3 compatible motherboard.
I also have all game files installed onto the solid state drives (not onto a separate disk drive). The theory being that it's managing all the little reads and writes that slows the game down, especially with a bloated game like mine.
I noticed that anything at all to do with inventory froze it solid. God help my game if I wanted to add an item to carter's display case, for example; or take everything out of the fridge. Seriously, 10,000 veggies in the fridge is a game breaking liability.
I timed it, and sims3 starts in 2 minutes. My bloated game loads in under 3 minutes. And while I'd be lying if I said it was silky smooth, the chronic stuttering Every Other Action has become more occasional hiccups. I was running it on one solid state drive before-- now it's on two solid state drives in raid. It might be that having less data per drive also helps (I had a 128gb drive until a few months ago-- when there was 8gb free space left, it slowed to a crawl. free space is critical for realizing the advertised speeds).
If you're on a disk drive, that surely hurts a great deal.
Now, I just spent a total of $300 on 2 solid state drives. That's a lot just to make sims3 tolerable with all the expansions. So I don't know... but it does also boot ms word in in less than a second!
And it really seems to help!
All in all I've got $1500 in my computer. Some parts I bought 2nd hand. Every part was bought online, usually on some kind of sale-- don't buy a single component at best buy!
But it isn't all necessary (the processor, the ram, the video card are not being used to their limitations).
It seems that maybe a pair of solid state drives (samsung 840 non-pro, sandisk extreme, or the older samsung 830 are good values) in raid 0 might be the best $300-$320 ever spent.
