More Awesome Than You!

Just wondering if the speed my game runs at sounds about right to other players considering the hardware...

This is how long it takes TS3 (with latest EAxis patches and Awesomeware) to do the following actions after a clean boot into WinXP SP3:

46 secs: Boot TS3 with 3booter, fpslimter, nointro, and AwesomeMod. This is from clicking the desktop icon to the point where I'm at the main ts3 menu.
26 secs: Create new sunset valley game.
21 secs: Load standard game Glover family into Myrtle Bungalow.
23 secs: Save the game.
14 secs: Quit without save.

The machine I'm running this on is a rig I built a couple of months ago to be a good lo-energy machine and TS3 is installed on the Velociraptor (fast system drive).

Gigabyte GA-M720-US3 AMD Nvidia 720D Socket AM2+
Antec 300 Three Hundred Black Case
Antec EarthWatts 650W 80Plus PSU
AMD Athlon 64 X2 4850e 2.5GHz Socket AM2 Energy Efficient 1MB L2 Cache
OCZ 4GB (2x2GB) DDR2 800Mhz/PC2-6400 GOLD XTC Memory Kit CL5(5-5-5-18)
PowerColor HD 4670 PCS Edition 512MB GDDR3 Dual DVI HDTV Out PCI-E
Western Digital VelociRaptor 150GB 10000RPM SATA-II 16MB Cache - OEM (WD1500HLFS)
Western Digital 640GB Hard Drive SATAII 7200rpm 16MB Cache - OEM Green Power
Western Digital WD5000AAKS 500GB SATA II 7200RPM 16MB Cache - OEM

Given those specs, what do people reckon to the posted times - does anyone know if they sound about right for TS3?

To me the game seems a little slow sometimes, especially since I like to save often in a crash causes me to lose valuable playing hours. I'm wondering what h/w upgrade might give the best extra speed for my money when it comes to TS3 - whether it be going up to a Phenom II, or faster RAM, etc?

And I'm wondering what speeds other people get for doing the same basic actions I listed above, or how I might speed up my game software wise? Only thing I can't change is my OS: need it for work sadly.

I can't give you load times and the like, even though I understand exactly why you would want them. I can tell you my framerates though - fairly related topic.

I run the game on a 2008 Macbook Pro, in Boot Camp, fully patched + Awesomemod, with XP SP3. The main specs on the 08 MBP:

Intel Core 2 Duo 2.5 GHz
6 MB L2 Cache, 800 MHz bus
2 GB of RAM (yeah, I need to put in another stick)
NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GT with 512 MB of onboard memory

At 16x12 (on an external LCD), with everything on high and shadows enabled, I get anywhere from 20-28 fps. In a game like this, that's kind of okay for me. It's not an FPS or an MMO and nobody can kill me because I was too slow lol.

I usually turn it down some if I'm in a busy area though, and disable shadows. Then I get 30+

As an aside, I used to run the game in OSX, and I would describe TS3 (and Cider emulation) performance there as: laughable, pathetic, and unplayable. Running at 1024 x 768 with everything on low, 5-15fps. On a good day. Yeah, and that's okay. I did that for two weeks when I got the game, because it's really nice not to have to switch OS to play, and then I read about how bad Cider is. Promptly switched, and will never again play another game that runs on that piece of garbage.

Other aside: even in Windows, when ghosts appear, they destroy my framerate. Don't know why, would like to know. Overall, my impression is there's a lot of memory leaks still in TS3, and it's certainly a system hog. Sooooo many objects to draw. Your times look damned nice, and I know I could get something like that if I built another gaming box, but it's just not in the money cards right now.

It takes me longer to load a save-game than it does to start the game .exe.

It's really a matter of your processor, your RAM, and installed CC. Of course, the more CC you have, loading a save and ending the game takes a while. I just use Game Booster to terminate unnecessary programs to increase my RAM. 

Krib, the OS X performance problem has nothing to do with cider. EA fucked up the graphics for OS X in patch 1.3.

I'm running 1.2.7, and I have no lag whatsoever with all settings on High. My machine is older and lamer than yours.

No clean boot, sorry

45 secs: Nointro, awesomemod, +1.5 gigs of custom content(dccache+mods folder)
29 secs:
12 secs:
24 secs:
11 secs:

Not sure if you wanted my sys specs but I'll post it.

Vista 64 bit
Slow WD Sata HD(5.3 WEI Score)
Abit IP35 mobo
Core 2 Quad Q6600 2.44ghz
Patriot 800mhz (2x2)+(2x1) Cas 4-4-4-12
BFG 8800 GT OC

Are you using XP 64 bit? If not, your on 32 bit xp will only recognize 3 gigs of ram not 4.

Hey guys where can I go to download more RAM is there a torrent.

(http://ghostisland.files.wordpress.com/2009/03/lolwut.jpg)

!

(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v730/nz_witch/Smileys/stupid1.jpg)

Don't fret, Mire. I was able to catch your joke.

Don't worry, guys. I found a legit site (http://downloadmoreram.net/).

Anyways, I'm running a 2007 iMac with Boot Camp ( Windoze XP SP 3 )

Core 2 Duo Processor ( Intel )
2 GB RAM
ATI Radeon 2400 video card

Hope this helps.

Everybody that is playing this game "Non-EA" way is having a pretty impressive hardware. All the results match yours.
None of us is satisfied. When you go public and say that you are creating a game that plays "at real time", have to accept claims that "real time" don't delay any second.

Sweet, thanks for the info guys. And yeah I'm on XP 32bit so Windoze only sees 3GB for now.

The reason I was asking is because I'm wondering if an easy upgrade (like processor or RAM speed) might improve my TS3 experience... I initially built the PC for TS3 to be low noise and energy efficient but didn't realise how much of a hog modern games can be having not played any others since TS2. :D

I could either upgrade

A) Processor from AMD Athlon 4850e Dual Core to Phenom II X4 Quad Core 920 2.8GHz (AM2+)

B) RAM FROM 4GB PC2-6400 (800MHz) to 4GB PC2-9600 (1100MHz+ ish)

Anyone know which of these would give me the most noticeable speed increase in the TS3 operations I listed (like loading, saving etc)?

Thanks :)

(http://bestlulz.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/05/icame.jpg)

I'm no computer buff, but I believe you already have enough RAM. I think increasing from Dual to Quad would be more beneficial. I have about a 2.4 GHz Dual Core Processor, 3 GB RAM, and a 9800 GT Nvidia Video Card, and my speeds are above average (with about 300 MB of CC installed).

To exchange your RAM with the same amount of faster RAM would be ludicrously stupid as this would give you less than 10% more perfomance. Upgrading your CPU is the way to go. You might consider going for a Phenom II X3 720 BE (2.8GHz as well). Since Sims3 can utilize two cores plus something it should be just as fast as the Phenom 920, and the Black Edition Phenoms have an unlocked CPU multiplicator so it should be easy to overclock it to 3.2GHz or more.

I just checked how long my rig (Core2Quad 9550 @3.8GHz, 4GB RAM @450Mhz, Geforce 8800GT/512MB, Samsung T166 500GB) takes to do the operations you mentioned and it takes pretty much half the time for everything.

It took me 49 seconds to get all the game loaded and into a saved neighborhood.
This is with no-intro mod, no awesome mod, on a Quad core Vista-64 machine with 8 GB RAM.

I downloaded another 256 MB of RAM from that site link, but it didn't help any.

Try putting your monitor on the floor and the PC on a support, so it's in an higher place. Data run faster downhill.

That's a bad idea, trust me. Sure it works at first, but the increased data pressure leads to increased stress on the seals and that is bad because a) seals are cute and b) defective seals lead to data leaks and therefore data loss.

No, what you should do is microwave the ethernet cables for a minute or two before use. Data travels fastest when excited by heat.I smell a Mac fan.

If you buildt your own rig you should be fairly tech savy and comfortable installing/tweaking hardware.

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.

Overclock first then buy new hardware if you're still not satisfied.  :)

these threads always make me wonder...

I play the game on a 12 inch tablet laptop, with that whore that is Vista, half the time with several other programs running also, and have never felt that the game was running particularly/annoyingly slow for me? I remember TS2 took waay longer to load, back in the day....

will try to get specific specs later to see if i just have way lower standards than yall...

You misunderstood why I came. Your legit site made me come.

Since we're throwing around hardware configs and questions, I just upgraded to a AMD 4600+ dual core with 4gb ram and a shiny new Nvidia GTS250 1gb video card. TS3 flies, and I'm looking forward to reinstalling TS2 to enjoy it at a reasonable speed.
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? I'd rather not go to Vista, I just find it really clunky.

XP 64 recognizes up to 128gb of ram. If you going the arr route might as well go with Windows 7(ram limit ranges from 8-192gb between the six editions) to take advatage of dx10+, you can switch back to XP 64 of your not happy.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

"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...

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. :D

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 :D 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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

So we're talking about excessively overclocking and overvolting every single IC, yes?  ;D 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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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  :P

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  :P :P

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

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.


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.  


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.


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.

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

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!


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

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.

Your best, and cheapest, bet is more memory.

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.  ;)