Does anyone have a lag-free game?

[Shirin]

As awful as it sounds, Carl, I'm glad you have an extremely skippy speed 3. I have the same, and I was starting to wonder if my 1.5 year old machine was just too old suddenly. You've confirmed for me it's not just me!

(But I am NOT glad that we both have it!)

[NancyJ]

My bf has a brand new gaming rig, the only cc he has is the registration freebies and the only mod he has is overwatch (unplayable without it after a few weeks game time) and its still laggy on his machine. The game improved for me quite a bit when I installed an FPS limiter (tested without it I was getting 200-1300 fps on high settings) but since IP it just gets laggier and laggier as the game goes on.

[brappl]

I have a powerful machine and the game still lags for me. Things just.. hang sometimes, with skips here and there that last 1-2 seconds and an extremely skippy speed 3. I went and installed Overwatch. The only possible bottleneck on my machine now is the processor and I have a core i5 2500k which was midrange a generation or two back. I want to upgrade it for the next Expansion Pack and if I still experience that type of lag I'll be quite annoyed given I want this machine to play Sims 4 smoothly and am designing it to do so part by part. I have one of the most powerful graphics cards available (gtx 780) and 16gb of gaming ram now, playing on a solid state drive ( HIGHLY recommend and I will make a post about this soon). I didn't expect graphics to improve the fast-forwarding as it's not a graphics heavy game. I'm not saying all this to brag, point is I have upgraded to the point I expected much less lag on a machine like this and if I've played a game a few weeks, lag just.. happens, and freeze crashes begin to happen more frequently. When I upgrade my processor I expect things to smooth out, it's the only thing that could explain it. It doesn't take a muscle-heavy graphics card, but does need at least 4-8gb of RAM. The game just takes a lot of processing power because of all the stuff happening in the world from these EPs. I want the latest generation of Intel which will thankfully fit in my board, but they are pricey.

I responded earlier that my game was lag free but forgot to mention it was NOT lag free in China (have since fixed that).  After reading the recent responses to this topic I am struck as to the wide variations of systems which do and do not experience lags.  My PC is 3 years old and the OS is Win 7.  Three years ago it was considered a better than average gaming computer (nothing like you have Carl).   It is an HPElite with a total of 9 Gigs DDR3-SDRAM (1333 MHz) deployed in four different slots.  Intel i7 CUP 950 w/ 3.07GHz which is currently running at 3.14.   The video card is not the newest either: GeForce GTX 260.  I use an external HD so am able to keep the PC HD wide open to install more "stuff".  All my graphics in game are set on High. I am reading people are identifying specific worlds they experience lags (mine was China).  Now, with the exception of IP, I have never really played in the EA pre installed worlds. I've been playing in Yume no Shima and Blue Bay for years with no problems at all.  The lag in China appeared after the latest patch went in.  The fix for that was on this site and that is no longer a problem.  To date, and I've been playing IP a lot, I have had no lags in that world.  What I am wondering is could these lags be caused by routing issues in, say, Bridgeport as Seabody mentioned?  By gaming standards, The Sims 3 is not nearly as demanding as most of the other games that are out there so it would seem that there is something within the game itself causing this, not necessarily the players system. 

Whew, Carl, your hardware is impressive!!  I'm curious, are you running on Win 7 or 8?

[Frey]

Now that you mention Bridgeport, my game does lag when I play there. But I don't really like that world so that's not much of a problem.

I have a 2009 Samsung laptop with 3 GB usable RAM, an i3 processor and a very old graphics card that was never the best in the world. But I play with everything set to medium/low since I hate lags and freezes and prefer to sacrifice graphics experience. I haven't tried improving the settings since my RAM upgrade though, I think I'll do that today and see what happens.

[jmz95]

I have not had any lag in my game and I have a 4th gen i7 processor, 8gb of ram, GT 750M graphics card.

[Mahmeya]

8GB RAM, GPU GTX560, CPU i5 3,1GHz 4-core, win 7 64bit
Game runs smoothly with smaller families or houses, but large houses with multiple sims under my control tend to lag a bit and ultraspeed is, well, not that ultraspeed. I believe it depends on how much objects the game needs to render and thus having more items and sims under your control slows it more. Most lags I had was when 3+ of my 6-sim household were on different lots (meaning the game needed to work with 4 lots actively).

[Angélique]

I don't know if you have all seen EA's live broadcast on June 18? In Graham Nardone's demo the game was definitely not lagfree. There were lots of stuttering and stop-and-start movements, which he didn't seem to notice. He just remained cheerful and enthusiastic all the time, as if everything was running perfectly nice and smooth. I was so surprised to see this. I mean, if even they can't make the game function properly, what are the prospects for the rest of us doing that? Not very bright, I fear.

[oldspook]

I don't know if you have all seen EA's live broadcast on June 18? In Graham Nardone's demo the game was definitely not lagfree. There were lots of stuttering and stop-and-start movements, which he didn't seem to notice. He just remained cheerful and enthusiastic all the time, as if everything was running perfectly nice and smooth. I was so surprised to see this. I mean, if even they can't make the game function properly, what are the prospects for the rest of us doing that? Not very bright, I fear.

I hate lagging, it takes all the fun out of playing for me. I've had Island Paradise for over 2 weeks but have not installed it yet. I was waiting, hoping they would release a patch to make it work better.

If I do install it, will it make all my other games in other towns lag more? That's what I am afraid of.

[Frey]

I hate lagging, it takes all the fun out of playing for me. I've had Island Paradise for over 2 weeks but have not installed it yet. I was waiting, hoping they would release a patch to make it work better.

If I do install it, will it make all my other games in other towns lag more? That's what I am afraid of.

I have all EPs now, including IP, and I haven't had any lags since I installed it. I play in medium/low settings though, and every computer is different  .

[Turoskel]

When I first installed IP I was having a lot of general glitches not just lag, I decided to do a reinstall as it had been some time since the last one, I also altered my settings after reading some people say that it played better on higher settings so I maxed everything then later tweaked it slightly to bring down maximum lots loaded to 4 and trees and visual effects to medium.

It played like a dream for the first few weeks, took me about ten weeks to finish the Grand Explorer lifetime wish and up until I took over Hobart's it was great, as soon as I got that resort my game would not just lag it would lock up entirely forcing me to use task manager to close the game, after I bought it I sold almost everything then went into edit town and bulldozed the lot to empty it completely, I regularly checked for spawners in case it was those but it wasn't, in the end I found the only way I could get that last island was to just leave it to run itself after I'd done most of the building and never to look at it unpaused as if I did it would lock up again 

As soon as I got the island I sold the resort, and had no more problems, I also upped my graphic settings in my dynasty file when I went back to it and that is playing smoother too, I guess it's natural to think lowering them would help especially as the tooltips say higher settings might affect rendering performance but ironically for me raising them has made it better 

I had pets turned off in IP and the fact the islands have no strays is a good thing I feel, one issue I found with stuck sims was showtime performers, they didn't pick good spots to perform for tips half the time causing routing errors with people trying to watch them, I wish we could turn those off too or that they only spawned if you added a venue.

[Aspen]

I've had brand new games in IP start to lag 1 hr in when Im playing a single player house and I've seen the game run silky smooth for hrs when Im playing a 3 person household with tons extra content and in a huge decorated house. Sometimes I lag when Im zoomed in one 1 person all alone in their house, other times I can watch my entire resort in action moving about flawlessly on a Saturday afternoon, so its very baffling to me- I would think the smaller the household the less processing for the PC.

[Louise56]

I don't have real lag in my game, it is only kind of less smooth when my mermaid swim and with speedboats. I've noticed a lot of 'lost' boats in the ocean by week seven. I guess townies that can't get in their boats cause some of the lag people is getting.

[Gaelicsunrise]

I went through and deleted a bunch of abandoned boats on the water, even found an abandoned protest.  After deleting about two dozen boats and the protestorless protest things seem to be running abit smoother.  I think I'll look for the house an earlier poster was discussing and see if I can clear up some pathing there too.

[MeestorMark]

I've had brand new games in IP start to lag 1 hr in when Im playing a single player house and I've seen the game run silky smooth for hrs when Im playing a 3 person household with tons extra content and in a huge decorated house. Sometimes I lag when Im zoomed in one 1 person all alone in their house, other times I can watch my entire resort in action moving about flawlessly on a Saturday afternoon, so its very baffling to me- I would think the smaller the household the less processing for the PC.

Aspen, your lag you are describing here sounds a lot like the lag I get when I leave a sim's collection helper turned on to show some type of collectible around the map. I used to get all these random periods of lag that never really made sense and would come and go. It affected me in every town I played. Finally I put it together in my head one day and since then I only turn on the collection helper when actively looking for stuff. But when done, I put it back on the "None" option and that lag I could never figure out before went away.

Edit: As for the lag I was getting in IP, I could never figure out its cause other than I think it is the more complex pathing all the sims have to take. All of my other towns are playing just fine without the lag that IP has. So I think the faster, newer machines can handle the routing processing better than my middle-aged one can. After trying EVERYTHING I read on multiple forums and posts for three weeks or so, I just decided I will play in other towns, or maybe break down and build my own island world.

[Decima]

I'm glad it's not just me that has lag, and a very skippy fast speed! I play on a laptop not really designed for gaming, the previous expansions I have were fine but since installing IP it's been laggy. It's quite annoying sometimes, but I build more than I play, I only play when I want a break from building for a bit. Building there is no problems whatsoever.

Thanks for all the info.