Please suggest a good Sims 2 Video Card

[Braveheart]

I have a 128mb GeForce FX5200 and ever since installing Nightlife I am unable to get it to work properly. My game crashes,reboots,glitches and generally screws up. I have tried about 10 different driver versions all to no avail and I am finally getting to the end of my rope. Any suggestions on a new card would be appreciated. I am hoping to keep the cost to about $150 Canadian.Thanks.

[dizzy]

I use the exact same video card, and I have never had any serious issues with it. I use the latest drivers from nVidia.

[Braveheart]

I wonder if I have a different configuration in some way that is causing issues? I have a 2.2mhz Pentium 4, 1000mb ram, 80gb hard drive, Windows XP home. Can a card become unseated? Would that cause these types of problems? Any ideas,thoughts or suggestions?

[dizzy]

What type of sound card do you have? Sims 2 has a ton of issues with audio.

Try adding "-nosound" to the end of the "target" line in your Sims 2 shortcut icon and see if that works.

[Braveheart]

I have a Realtek AC'97 audio. Really don't think its a sound issue, but I will try the -nosound option. At this point I will try anything suggested. Thanks

[dizzy]

Also use the "-w" option. I never run in fullscreen mode.

[Motoki]

Another thing I reccomend doing is temporarily taking out your downloads folder, you can move it to the desktop, and trying to run the game. Don't save anything, just see if it runs okay. There's a lot of things in downloads that have the potential to cause problems, especially after you install an expansion. Even if you have no hacks, sometimes other types of custom content have been known to cause problems. It's a good idea to just try and eliminate any of your custom downloads as a possibility. If they aren't the cause, you can always just move the downloads folder back and no harm is done.

[witch]

I have a 128mb GeForce FX5200 and ever since installing Nightlife I am unable to get it to work properly. My game crashes,reboots,glitches and generally screws up. I have tried about 10 different driver versions all to no avail and I am finally getting to the end of my rope.

I've had endless video driver problems. I have GeForce 5700. Recently when I tried the newest nvidia driver, released at the beginning of this month, I read some advice on installing drivers. Usually I just uninstall one driver, then try re-installing a new one. This time I read in a forum to uninstall and reboot into VGA mode. (F8 on bootup, choose 'run in vga mode'). I installed the driver once I reached the desktop and so far, touch wood, no glitches. This seems to be a cleaner video driver install to me.

[Braveheart]

Thanks Witch, I will try that too. I tried Motoki's suggestion, but the graphics are still choppy and slow to render. I'm getting really tired of this and am considering the new card more and more all the time. This card worked fine with University, all these problems started with Nightlife. Did Maxis change the way the game uses graphics or something? I am so frustrated! I checked to see if my card was seated firmly and that looks fine, but I noticed that the fan plug (a little white plug) on the video card isn't plugged in anywhere, could it have come loose and thats what my problem is? Where do I plug it in if thats what I need to do?

[themaltesebippy]

I have a GeForce FX5500 and only problem I have is after I go from downtown to reg neighborhood, many of my houses turn red and white.  I also can't see any of the enter buttons when I try to get into a lot.  I just have to click around and guess.  It turns to normal after that.

[MsMaria]

I switched from a ATI Radeon 5200 series to a PNY Geforce 6600 GT AGP 128 with a core clock speed of 500 and the difference is between night and day. I also removed my old 512 memory and added two Kingston 512 3200 (400HZ DDR) and now my game is smoking.

[Braveheart]

Finally gave in and took my computer to a shop. I have always done all my own teching about, but I cannot for the life of me figure out why my graphics are so crapped. I am hoping the shop will cost less than a new graphics card. The cards are so expensive. Will let you all know if there are any significant finds from the tech. Thanks for all your help and suggestions.

[DrBeast]

Thanks Witch, I will try that too. I tried Motoki's suggestion, but the graphics are still choppy and slow to render. I'm getting really tired of this and am considering the new card more and more all the time. This card worked fine with University, all these problems started with Nightlife. Did Maxis change the way the game uses graphics or something? I am so frustrated! I checked to see if my card was seated firmly and that looks fine, but I noticed that the fan plug (a little white plug) on the video card isn't plugged in anywhere, could it have come loose and thats what my problem is? Where do I plug it in if thats what I need to do?

Uh...did the graphics card ship with a fan? If so, and having heard of the infamous heating problems of nVIDIA chipsets, that might have been the problem: overheating. Damn I wish I had seen that post of your sooner, might have saved you some cash!

[linolino]

yes, it may be overheating... you know i have a nVidea GeForce4 MX 440 it alwasy worked fine (as far as you can consider it fine). I mean i have some gliches like the ground textures don't look much bigger than they should, and the water animation from the bathtubs looks weird, but that's about it. It worked just fine for the other things

However, i started trying to do some overclocking, and at the beggining of the game it actually worked fine, however after 5 minutes the game started to slow down and the there were some graphic glitches, with stuff not showing or blinking.

Obviously the overclocking had overheated the video board and so it was't working ok

[LynnMar]

I have a 128mb GeForce FX5200   

I have that same card that I just bought for UNI and it was great.  I could even run the game in 800x600 which is better for the middle age eyes.   


 but now with NL, the graphics suck.    I have had to go to a higher resolution and the little tiny icons are making me blind.   
 
 I am going to buy a new card with 256Mb of ram,  I guess I will get another Nvidia because it is the only card I have ever tried.      I hope I can get a decent one for about a hundred, twenty because I have to pay to get it installed too.   The sims and EA are sending me to the poor house.   

[linolino]

just a note:
The game has since ever , ran better with radeon video cards.
there are inumerous glitches posted in forums and even in tech support, that happens with nVidea Cards.
my friend has a 9600 XT 128 and his game runs with no graphic issues
i'm buying a x600 XT 256

[Motoki]

I can't speak for Nvidia cards, but I can say the game runs fine in my experience with an ATI Radeon 9500, 9700 and X300. The only problem I've ever encountered is after installing Nightlife getting all my settings defaulted to the lowest, but I was able to change them and to invite more guests again via the cheat code. Anyhow, I think everyone's getting that and it's just something particular to Nightlife.

[themaltesebippy]

I hope I can get a decent one for about a hundred, twenty because I have to pay to get it installed too.   The sims and EA are sending me to the poor house.   

My graphics look good but I had an issue with the main neighborhood making the computer reboot.  No other hoods or parts of my custom hood were doing this.  I deleted all the characters and took away some houses and it stopped.  I am going to make a completely new hood anyway, my current terrain is way too HUGE.

Why do you have to pay to have someone install your card?  It is not too hard to do and myself and I am sure others here could give you tips on how to install it yourself.

[witch]

Look for 'cabelle' in recent posts, last fortnight maybe? There was a thread of info on how to install your own video card. Cabelle did it successfully.

[LynnMar]

okay you say that the raedon is better so how about this one ?

 PowerColor Radeon 9550 / 256MB DDR / AGP 8X / VGA / DVI / TV Out / Video Card 


I can get this one for about 70.00.    I just want to be able to invite more than two people to a party,  I used to be able to invite 8.  and I want my download clothes to not look weird with square shoulders like before I installed NL.

I don't think I need more ram because I have a gig of ram and winxpro and a 2MGHertz processor.  So, I must need  more ram in my video card.   

thanks you guys are so nice but believe me I can't install my own video card.   I  bought a stick of ram last year and was gonna install it myself.  I read all the directions and even bought a wrist strap, well it took me forever to get the case open and when I did  I could not even find the slot because I was afraid to undo the cables because I might not get them reconnected right, so I called the tech shop and said "hurry up and send me a man over here, I have this case open and I don't know what to do"   He got there in about 10 minutes and he charged me 70.00   

but in a way it was funny too, there I stood with my little wrist strap on and I was lost and confused.   
 

[Motoki]

It's a decent card. I had a Saphire 9500 which is similar. Don't expect to be able to invite 8 sims without a cheat though. I honestly think it's a bug with NL and how it identifies our hardware. It seems to now assume everyone's hardware is crap no matter what you have.

[Hook]

From the config file:

Memory levels are:
Low: 256
Medium: 384
High: 512

Cpu Levels are:
Low: 1000
Medium: 2200
High: 2800

The CPU levels are up from 600/1200/1800 pre Nightlife.

If you meet both high RAM and high CPU speed, then it checks your video card.  The code is more than I wanna tackle at the spur of the moment, but it appears that you want a non-integrated graphics card with at least 128 MEG video ram.  More modern ones should have the necessary processing power to give you the high end options.

Hook

[LynnMar]

but it appears that you want a non-integrated graphics card with at least 128 MEG video ram.

     

no, I already have 128 FX 5200 NVIDIA,  now I am going to upgrade to 256MB card.   but the other man said that no matter what card you have,  NL will not let you have more than two people for a party.
 But when I use the cheat with the current card I have, it makes my game slow down.

I hate what they have done to the sims with NL, people don't know if they need to upgrade their hardware or if the game is  messing everything up,   

 I just know my graphics look weird since NL, also I cannot enable  the picture in picture,  because it resets back to off as soon as I do.

[Motoki]

You know Hook my specs meet or exceed all those requirments except my video card is integrated, but it's a decent integrated card. It's an ATI RS480 chip which is essentially an X300 but with 2 pipelines instead of 4. It's got 128 MB of video RAM too. The only thing I can think of is that this particular chip is not on this list in the file they have of various video card settings. I did add it, but it didn't seem to help so I just cheated to get 8 guests and have had no problems in doing so. *shrug*

[Hook]

You know Hook my specs meet or exceed all those requirments except my video card is integrated, but it's a decent integrated card.

The configuration script doesn't seem to care what the specs are on an integrated card, just that it's an integrated card.  I'd have to go research it again to give you details, but having an integrated card forces your settings lower.  My specialty is software, not hardware, so I have no idea why the config script would do that.

Hook