How fast is your TS3?

[edalbformat]

Hardware development is going relatively slowly at the moment, comparing with previous experience in the past, when RAM and processor capacity almost doubled every year. The reason must be that if you are not using a computer to play games, you don't really need even the half of the capacity available today.
I use Windows XP 32 bits and have 4GB RAM installed that probably only 3GB is being used. RAM plays an important role in TS3 once I compared two computers, one with 2GB RAM and one with 4, both with powerful Graphic Cards and almost same CPU size. The biggest have AMD core and the other Intel Processor Duo Core too. The Intel had better performance, but failed by reason of too little RAM. So, RAM plays a big role.
As to upgrade computers, I have always a plan for when I'm going to acquire my next computer and prefer to wait until this buy is worth. No reason to buy something that is just a little bit better. Upgrading not always save that much money, once as much advanced a technology becomes, it also drops the price for a whole buy. At least here by us, buying spare parts can be much more expensive than going to something totally new. Not counting that in the case of Microsoft, it uses to subsidiate hardware when you install their product so much that buying a brand new PC can be more advantageous than buying a new graphic card or even some RAM. Of course, it is not the same in every land.

[Skadi]

Nice video card but it' s hugely bottlenecked by your cpu a phenom II would be a better match. Hopefully your current cpu is socket am2 and not 939.

It was a freebie for building a computer for a friend. I've got a brand new mobo that supports amd 2/3 and the plan is to buy a new cpu after I drop some money on a better psu and cooling.

[Buzzler]

Have you tried overclocking your existing cpu/mem? Defragged? Why spend money if you do not need to in my opinion.

You would get a more noticeable gain with a new cpu vs ram. Bad idea to buy faster ram, more is better, what I mean is 6-8 gigs of 6400 ram is more productive then 4 gigs of 9600 ram, cheaper too by roughly half. This is only appicable in a 64bit OS. Your video card will be a bottleneck if you upgrade to a faster cpu.

Overclocking can't do miracles. It's a good result to squeeze 3GHz out of a Brisbane-Athlon but the resulting 20% perfomance increase are just on the edge of noticeability. There's no way it can compete with a Phenom II at any rate.

I seriously doubt more than 4GB of RAM would do any good. Sims3 can only allocate up to 2GB anyhow and it's far from doing even that. And the graphics card won't be a bottleneck, TS3 ist just as CPU-limited as TS2.

I am wondering if it would be worthwhile to arr-quire a copy of 64 bit XP to take advantage of the new hardware. Does 64 bit XP recognise more ram or is 4gb still the limit?

There won't be an overall 4GB limit anymore with XP64 but the 2GB allocation limit for TS3 will remain, so if that's the whole reason to it there's not that much of a point. Besides I wouldn't arr Windozes past 2K, circumventing the activation while still being able to patch on an OS that can't be definitely stopped from calling home isn't that much fun.

Nice video card but it' s hugely bottlenecked by your cpu a phenom II would be a better match. Hopefully your current cpu is socket am2 and not 939.

Sims 2 does not support multicore processors, so your performance leap may not be as profound.

There's no such thing as a general bottleneck, there are limits, and it really depends on the game you're playing. Unless you don't go and try to play TS3 on an IGP or something it's going to be CPU-limited no matter what.

Hardware development is going relatively slowly at the moment, comparing with previous experience in the past, when RAM and processor capacity almost doubled every year.{...} RAM plays an important role in TS3 once I compared two computers, one with 2GB RAM and one with 4, both with powerful Graphic Cards and almost same CPU size.{...}At least here by us, buying spare parts can be much more expensive than going to something totally new.

"Doubled" is just a little over the top, and especially RAM was a big issue in the past since in relation to the rest of the computer it was way more expensive. Now RAM is dirt cheap and we're stuck at the 2/4GB limit for some time now and probably are bound to be stuck for another "some time" in the future.

I've read before that TS3 runs better on machines equipped with 4GB instead of 2GB but I still don't get it. There's no way TS3 can benefit from that extra RAM directly since it cannot allocate it and it doesn't even come near its max memory allocation. Windows can use it as Cache but if there's a point to that why is TS3 dropping these contents out of its memory area in the first place? Smells fishy...

In Europe (well most of it) it's pretty much impossible to have a rig built from parts be more expensive than an entire PC, unless you don't go and pick out parts to have them assembled at the store... and then have Windows installed on it manually...

[Luisa]

Fair enough, sounds like my speeds aren't too bad then considering I'm running it on a pretty much silent machine despite it only being air-cooled - which is what I wanted when I built it. Have built and owned overclocked rigs in the past but since I sometimes leave them on for arr-quiring stuff I thought I'd best save on the old electric - what with the AC needed to cool my kit down our bill is already about £60 (that's about $100 US) a week so yeah, I'll learn to be happy with what I got for now.

Thanks for the all the help and information tho, much appreciated. I'll leave the PC as it is for now and concentrate on getting a laptop that can play TS3 so that I don't have to leave my game behind when I travel or have to go into the office.

I suppose it'll be even tougher to get a laptop to play TS3 well than a PC, but I guess it can't hurt to try.

[Rockermonkey]

Your speeds are fine. Mine is only a bit faster then yours at startup.

Never overclock, unless you have extra fans because it will cause the processor or card to become more unstable it most cases. So you have to be ready for wilder temps. My card was factory OC'd so I'm not sure of performance boosts but I'd say no don't do it unless you are liquid cooled or have a case with many fans. Whoever said that overclocking would be good needs to google because overclocking is usually something that many try not to do. Overclocking a card will only give a small gain but also give a pretty big chance of a faster death, of either being burnt out or the person clocking it to high and then, well burning it out XD. Leave overclocking to the maker's of the card, Sim fans aren't the kind of gamers who should even have to bother with overclocking, because if you can't play the game fine it's not going to get any better just because you overclocked a crappy card or processor.

[J. M. Pescado]

Overclocking can't do miracles. It's a good result to squeeze 3GHz out of a Brisbane-Athlon but the resulting 20% perfomance increase are just on the edge of noticeability. There's no way it can compete with a Phenom II at any rate.

Overclocking can do apparently miracles if you're willing to resort to extreme measures like having the entire computer and boards immersed in liquid nitrogen.

[Skadi]

I am wondering if it would be worthwhile to arr-quire a copy of 64 bit XP to take advantage of the new hardware. Does 64 bit XP recognise more ram or is 4gb still the limit?

There won't be an overall 4GB limit anymore with XP64 but the 2GB allocation limit for TS3 will remain, so if that's the whole reason to it there's not that much of a point. Besides I wouldn't arr Windozes past 2K, circumventing the activation while still being able to patch on an OS that can't be definitely stopped from calling home isn't that much fun.

If the WGA is an issue, you're not trying hard enough.  Found a legitimate key, modded my hosts file, and haven't looked back since. Same way I get CS4 to play nice.

[kuronue]

I've read before that TS3 runs better on machines equipped with 4GB instead of 2GB but I still don't get it. There's no way TS3 can benefit from that extra RAM directly since it cannot allocate it

I believe the point is that background applications and the OS will still leave more than 2GB free at all times so Sims can use as much as its greedy little heart desires.

[Bouncing Pink Ball]

I'm playing on a low spec, by comparison to most here anyway, system and haven't noticed any troubles aside from mod or prepatch game-related ones that are no longer an issue. My game is noticeably slow to load and save, but once it gets going there's no obvious lag in game play. I'm a bit surprised by that; my computer is primarily set up for design, not gaming. I have graphic, animation and editing apps, not to mention huge graphics files, eating up most of my (one and only) hard drive right now, leaving me with less than a third free prior to even installing TS3, but I do have 4gb ram. Back when I built my own desktop pcs, I used to keep a stock supply of extra bits around and make regular visits to a work-related parts supplier (discounts!), taking time to build game-ready systems, but finances and life in general kind of made all that less of a priority.

I never even attempt to play games, TS3 included, without shutting down any unnecessary process my computer might have lurking about for no useful reason. I even switch off my internet connection and shut down the firewall just for any extra resources I can free up. Maybe that's why, even on a Vista os laptop and with all options aside from sim detail at the highest setting, the game seems to run as it should. So far, anyway.

[Buzzler]

Never overclock, unless you have extra fans because it will cause the processor or card to become more unstable it most cases. So you have to be ready for wilder temps.{...}

Stability is a binary thing, "more unstable" makes little sense. And yes, the temps increase if you overclock but this doesn't necessarily mean there's going to be problem about it if the airflow isn't increased. There's a linear dependency between clock speed and generated heat and a quadratic dependency between generated heat and supply voltage. Ergo: If you don't or only moderately raise the supply voltages heat usually doesn't become a problem, not unless it was a problem to begin with.

Overclocking can do apparently miracles if you're willing to resort to extreme measures like having the entire computer and boards immersed in liquid nitrogen.

So we're talking about excessively overclocking and overvolting every single IC, yes?  ICs don't work below a certain temperature, when cooling a CPU with liquid nitrogen the system needs to be booted first before the liquid nitrogen gets applied so the CPU doesn't get cooled down too far. On a mainboard the northbridge and SMPS transistors are probably the only devices besides the CPU that generate enough heat to "defend" themselves against being cooled down too far.

I believe the point is that background applications and the OS will still leave more than 2GB free at all times so Sims can use as much as its greedy little heart desires.

The problem with that theory is that TS3 isn't even that greedy.

[laylei]

I'm actually experiencing a lot of freezing... not the game itself, but my entire computer will freeze up for about 10-20 seconds often while I play the game. I figure this is because I'm playing it in windowed mode and browsing Firefox at the same time. I'm not willing to give up Firefox while I play, so does anyone have any recommendations as to what I could upgrade to stop the freezing of my system?

Video Card: NVIDIA GeForce 7600GT
Processor: Intel(R) Pentium(R) D CPU 2.80GHz (2 CPUs)
RAM: 2046MB RAM

Oh, and I'm running XP, I'm assuming 32 bit? It's XP Professional, I have no idea otherwise.

[wes_h]

There won't be an overall 4GB limit anymore with XP64 but the 2GB allocation limit for TS3 will remain

With Vista-64 and 8 GB of RAM, I can fire up the game andwhile chat, internet, Visual Studio or whatever else I happen to be working on are still open, without shredding my hard drive from constant system paging. Vista has a reputation for being memory-hungry because it will use all that you have available to avoid paging.

So yes, TS3 is stuck with a 2 GB limit, but here it has its own 2 GB, nothing else needs to get the heave-ho for it to be running.

[Zazazu]

I'm significantly faster: 25-27 seconds to menu, 'hood load depends on the population but is around the same time you have. Save is about 10-12 seconds, depending on population again.

Addison is very clean. Ridiculously so, both outwardly and data-wise.

[dedust]

I'm actually experiencing a lot of freezing... not the game itself, but my entire computer will freeze up for about 10-20 seconds often while I play the game. I figure this is because I'm playing it in windowed mode and browsing Firefox at the same time. I'm not willing to give up Firefox while I play, so does anyone have any recommendations as to what I could upgrade to stop the freezing of my system?

Give up on that Firefox. It's known to leak memory on the long run, so the longer you have it on, the more it hogs up your resources. Even more so if you have multiple tabs open. Also you could try upgrading your video card drivers. And play in full screen mode, you can always alt+tab to desktop.

I myself have a late 08 MBP, 2.8 GHz Intel/4GB RAM, running TS3 in OSX. It used to be faster, then it became slower, and then probably patch 1.3 fixed the graphics so now it's nearly as fast as it used to be. Of course I have some patterns that slow the game down, with bigger houses it's actually quite annoying. (DAMN YOU LANDGRAABS!)
No idea on the actual loading times, as I still have to watch trough the intro movies, no mods there yet. Also I'm currently experiencing a wave of loading crashes, and letting the intro movie play works for this  I don't feel it's too slow, but I fear TS2 speeds are coming, and that's just nasty. Tried to install TS3 on Win7, but for some reason the system froze during installation, TWICE, so no luck there.

Those of you still using xp or vista, I suggest switching over to win7, If your hardware supports it. It's significantly faster, uses the resources much better, and generally works. Also I believe it's still legally available as RC1, you'll get a serial from Microsoft if you already have the software. Though they don't let you download it anymore 

[blackgryffin]

Give up on that Firefox. It's known to leak memory on the long run, so the longer you have it on, the more it hogs up your resources. Even more so if you have multiple tabs open. Also you could try upgrading your video card drivers. And play in full screen mode, you can always alt+tab to desktop.

I myself have a late 08 MBP, 2.8 GHz Intel/4GB RAM, running TS3 in OSX. It used to be faster, then it became slower, and then probably patch 1.3 fixed the graphics so now it's nearly as fast as it used to be. Of course I have some patterns that slow the game down, with bigger houses it's actually quite annoying. (DAMN YOU LANDGRAABS!)
No idea on the actual loading times, as I still have to watch trough the intro movies, no mods there yet. Also I'm currently experiencing a wave of loading crashes, and letting the intro movie play works for this  I don't feel it's too slow, but I fear TS2 speeds are coming, and that's just nasty. Tried to install TS3 on Win7, but for some reason the system froze during installation, TWICE, so no luck there.

Those of you still using xp or vista, I suggest switching over to win7, If your hardware supports it. It's significantly faster, uses the resources much better, and generally works. Also I believe it's still legally available as RC1, you'll get a serial from Microsoft if you already have the software. Though they don't let you download it anymore 

Same configuration than yours : late 08 MBP, 2.8 GHz Intel/4GB RAM, running TS3 in OSX

I found the Sims 3 faster since the last 1.3.24 update. I want first read everything related to the last 1.4 update before updating the game now. I'm not in the hurry since the 1.3.24 stabilzed the gameplay ...

Never tested on XP via Parallels : I prefer a lot playing on the Mac 

[Doc Doofus]

If you could only upgrade one thing, I'd go for maxing out the RAM.  But since you will probably find out you need a new motherboard to do that effectively, you'll probably end up having to upgrade everything, cheap.

A few weeks ago when TS3 came out, I bookmarked some cheap upgrade items on Newegg.  I bookmarked this ASUS motherboard ($69.99) with dual core Phenom II cpu ($102.99) as a reasonable starting point.  It has room for 16gb ram, although 8 would be more than enough to last until the next upgrade.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131381

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819103680

[RiceBall]

Overclocking can't do miracles. It's a good result to squeeze 3GHz out of a Brisbane-Athlon but the resulting 20% perfomance increase are just on the edge of noticeability. There's no way it can compete with a Phenom II at any rate.

If she can get the cpu up to 3ghz it will be noticeable; I have yet to see any evidence sims 3 fully utilizes quad cores preventing maximized returns on phenom II.

And the graphics card won't be a bottleneck, TS3 ist just as CPU-limited as TS2.

There's no such thing as a general bottleneck, there are limits, and it really depends on the game you're playing. Unless you don't go and try to play TS3 on an IGP or something it's going to be CPU-limited no matter what.

In the context of sims 2/sims 3 this is true, but Skadi purchase a gt250 which is overkill for the sims 3, I made an assumption that she also plays other games where her current cpu will bottleneck; she has acknowledge this herself.  

Whoever said that overclocking would be good needs to google because overclocking is usually something that many try not to do. Overclocking a card will only give a small gain but also give a pretty big chance of a faster death, of either being burnt out or the person clocking it to high and then, well burning it out XD. Leave overclocking to the maker's of the card, Sim fans aren't the kind of gamers who should even have to bother with overclocking, because if you can't play the game fine it's not going to get any better just because you overclocked a crappy card or processor.

Your advice is sound for the "average" sims player who purchase their computers off dell.com but both Luisa and Skadi and stated in their posts they built their computers themselves, thus are already quite tech savy and capable of researching and deciding whether it a good idea.

If you could only upgrade one thing, I'd go for maxing out the RAM.  But since you will probably find out you need a new motherboard to do that effectively, you'll probably end up having to upgrade everything, cheap.

A few weeks ago when TS3 came out, I bookmarked some cheap upgrade items on Newegg.  I bookmarked this ASUS motherboard ($69.99) with dual core Phenom II cpu ($102.99) as a reasonable starting point.  It has room for 16gb ram, although 8 would be more than enough to last until the next upgrade.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131381

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819103680

Luisa current gigabyte mobo supports up to 16gb of ram spread over 4 mem slots; Luisa is based in England and newegg does not ship internationally.

[Brand]

The only relatively significant difference I found is that my game starts up in about 37 seconds (awesome mod and skip intro).

ASUS P5B-E
Intel Core 2 Duo E6400 Conroe 2.13GHz 1066MHz FSB
CORSAIR XMS2 4GB TWIN2X2048-6400 (800mz running at 667 because my MB is weird about having 4 slots full)
nvidia 9800GTX+ SSC (EVGA overclocked to 792/1152)
Vista

[Skadi]

You're right Rice Ball, I've been building PCs for 7 years. If I had more money, the rig would be bleeding edge. Unfortunately Shroomlet comes first. I've been circling around Win7 but I still play old games, and I would hate to lose the compatibility, and I'm currently to busy to make my machine dual boot. The joy of computers is they only run as fast as your slowest component.
Yes the GTS250 is over kill for TS3, but RA3 sure looks purty!

Mez forgot to allocate money for da game!!!!!      Oops... SILLY ME!!!
I've gotta wait 4 weeks now until I've got the money to get it! LOL...  Know am I not Awesome or what!!   

Getting in before Pescado: PIRATE CAT DOESN'T PAY FOR HIS GAMES!

[Verbed Noun]

My TS3 performance varies wildly from silk-smooth to 0.1 FPS for no apparent reason (it's not story progression delay, apps running in the background, or any particular activities or locations).

AMD Athlon 3800+ 2.4GHz
1GB RAM
Nvidia GeForce 6600 GT 128MB
Windows XP SP3

I'll accept that the "apparent reason" is my laughable hardware only if someone can explain to me why it is that the game runs fine sometimes.

[Brand]

Your best, and cheapest, bet is more memory.

[RiceBall]

I've been circling around Win7 but I still play old games, and I would hate to lose the compatibility, and I'm currently to busy to make my machine dual boot. The joy of computers is they only run as fast as your slowest component. Yes the GTS250 is over kill for TS3, but RA3 sure looks purty!

Win7 pro or better can completely emulate XP via virutal machine, your current setup already supports it, though I don't know the performance hit you can expect from the overhead. I'm confident you can run most apps fine, gaming on the other hand, the picture gets blurry.

RA3 and it's expansion is so last year; CNC4 is out in 2010.