More Awesome Than You!

My SLI'd NVidea GForce 4 are dying, or at least one of them is. Swapping them over has extended the time til they crash my PC and I'll next try working with only one to see if it's only one or both (yes I do run with frame limiter).

What should I be looking for in a new video card for Sims? Is it only the RAM or are some of the functions/features more important. There's so much on offer with some of the cards out there that I can't tell what's good/useful.

AGP or PCI-e slot? Wattage on your PSU?

I like the ATI cards myself, I hear the HD6850 cards are a good balance of price and performance, but if your CPU is weak you don't want to go too high.

PCI-e, is what I've got, so I know that I have that available on my MB. I've got an 850W PSU so I shouldn't have too much problem with supplying what any GPU might need. I'm leaning towards a single card this time rather than the SLI. The only reason I went that way last time was that 2 x 250mb RAM cards was cheaper than getting a single 500mb card at that time. I've always tended towards NVidea, but I'm not wedded to the idea.

The MB of the card doesn't matter as much as the clock speed. 2 x 250MB cards is not always better than one 500MB card, for example.

See, this is why I'm out of my depth here.

As another poster said, you are wasting your money if you get a whopping big video card if your CPU isn't up to the task, as it will bottleneck the performance of the GPU. Similar goes for not having enough RAM. Your current PSU should run at least 2 high end ATI cards without hassle, but SLI/Xfire wont help you in Sims 3 anyway as it's not supported.

As for what to get. I'd get an ATI 5850, as they are a good price and performance is great. I haven't bought an Nvidia for a few years, purely because I found ATI to be cheaper, quieter, produce less heat and crash less often. However, you really need a quad core at least just to make sure it isn't bottle-necked. For example,  I found my 5870 was bottle-necked on my old Quad Core, and works much better with an i7 behind it. If you have a dual core system, then I wouldn't bother spending big on a video card unless you are intending to upgrade the CPU later. Anymore than a 3xxx series ATI and you are wasting money.

Also get your RAM upgraded if you haven't already. If your OS is 64bit, then get yourself a min of around 6-8gig, which will really help the Sims. If you are on 32bit, then max it out to 4gig RAM.

I used to have an old Nvidia 9800GT 512MB and it was great with TS3 at 1920x1200 resolution.  I have since upgraded to a GTS 250 1GB, and don't notice any difference at all with TS3 over the old 9800GT.  It did make a world of difference with GTA IV, so that tells me there's a point where TS3 just doesn't take advantage of increased GPU speed or video memory.  The GT240 seems to be the modern replacement for the 9800GT and I've seen those around $20-50 (if you're in the US).  I would say something like that should be more than adequate.

I dunno about the 3xxx series, they're not that great. They do make low-med end 4xxx and 5xxx cards, which probably perform better, cost less, and are easier to find.

The Sims 3 is a 32-bit program, so even with 8GB of RAM it can only address I think 2GB maximum, even if you have a 64-bit OS.

With the LN patch, EA made the Sims 3 large address aware, so it can now access a full 4GB.  Still 32-bit, obviously.

It's definately looking more like I should stay with my now single card (only one of them seems to have died). And go back to focusing my attention on a more general upgrade. I've only got a dual core.

Good to hear about the large address change.

3xxx series might not be available now, but what I meant by that is that you don't need an excessively powerful card for sims. Its more RAM and CPU. Prior to my 5870, I was runing a 3870x2, while obviously only a single gpu was being used for Sims, I didn't notice a lot of increase in performance by upgrading my vid card. More noticeable difference was obtained by applying the 4gig patch to the .exe (now included in official patches) and then upgrading my CPU to an i7 from quad core.

While playing the sims, I will often utilize around 80% of my 12gig of RAM. So it will definitely use it when needed. Just sitting here with the browser open I'm using 40%, so windows certainly needs breathing room which 4gig no longer provides. I would say 4gig is absolute minimum required for a smooth running system these days. Lucky RAM is cheap. The more vid RAM you have, the more System RAM you need (1:1 used by vid card.) So if you have 4gig of RAM and a 1gb vid card, you really only have 3gig left to run windows, background tasks and games. With sims using 2-4gig on average, that doesn't leave much, which leads to slowdowns and more HDD thrashing.

Where was this in the patch notes?

It wasn't.  However, the patch did indeed make the game LAA.  FordGT90Concept's Patch Downloader, which used to have the feature to force LAA, no longer does, as noted by the creator:
I could probably dredge more up to support this, but yes, the game is large address aware.

However, the sims3.ini still needs to be changed to allow for a higher mem usage limit. It is still default at 2gig.