More Awesome Than You!

What is your graphics card? Please list the model and driver version if you can.

GeForce FX5500 256MB 8X AGP Drivers 84.21

For the record (since I just found out)  the "boolprop useshaders true" does work for me, but apparently not everyone.

My system specs, just for informational purposes:

AMD Sempron 2600+ (1.83gHz)
1GB RAM
Windows XP SP2

I don't know if I have fish. (No Sims have fishtanks in my n'hood. And I've not been on the game in donkey's years) 

But my graphics card is a GeForce 2 MX/MX 400. Can't remember what drivers are installed.

I have fish.
GeForce FX 5900XT driver 128MB driver 6.14.0010.6681 (is that what you'd call 66.81 ??)
Pioupiou

I've got fish.

Graphics card-Geforce 7800GS
Driver 84.21

I've got ATI Radeon 9200, no fish at first, but they are back.  refer to http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php?topic=4339.msg121456#msg121456 (http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php?topic=4339.msg121456#msg121456) for a possible fix.

Yes, thank you. I saw that and it does not fix it for everyone.

I have fishes.

Graphics Card Geforce 6600 GT
Driver 84.21

ATI 9800 Pro 128mb and I do have fishes.

I am using ATI driver Version: 6.14.10.6606

I also had just before a NVidia 6200 card 128mb and with it I also had fishes.  I was using the latest drivers, this was about 3 weeks ago.

I have fish.

Nvidia Geforce3 Ti200
Driver version: 6.14

I have fish. Nvidia card. :)

Fishies everywhere!

Nvidia GeForce 6600

Yup, I have fishies here and I have the same card as Ness, Nvidia GeForce 6600.

Yes for fishies, both on nVidia 6800 and Ti4200 :)

No fish, ATI Raedon 9250.

Nvidia GeForce 6600.  Driver 84.21


I have fish.

fx 5600 256MB - no fish

Well, so much for this theory  :D    ???

Geforce 7800gtx  (dual)     Fishies.
most recent version as of friday

Nvidia Geforce ti 4200 64mb

driver being updated right now.

I have fishes.

C

I originally had fish with my nVidia 5200. They dissappeared when I installed OFB. When I upgraded to an ATI 9600 they came back.

Here's a quote from a poster in another thread. Just in case it helps anyone.

I have fish.

NVidia GeForce Go 6600 - 256 mb
driver version 7.8.1.0

Lots of purty fishies. 

128MB PCI Express x16 ATI Radeon X300 SE - with whatever driver came with it as I've never updated it (TS2, Uni, NL and OFB all run fine).

I have fishies.

NVidia GeForce 6600
Driver version: 7.8.0.1

Perhaps the fix doesn't work for everyone because not all cards perform "shading" (whatever that is)?

I wouldn't even know where to look for that ability other than game-specific options. I have all my graphics settings on high - I wonder if that makes a difference?

Shaders are, in simple terms, are the card's displaying ability. It is everything from shadows, textures, the shiny effects, for example how the mirror reflects in the game. The stronger the card, the higher it's shader capacity - for example my old Ti4200 had 1.3 or 1.4 shader, while my 6800 has 3.0 shader. There are some newer games that sometimes require cards with bigger shaders - if it's absent, then effects doesn't appear the way they should, or they don't appear at all. Worse, the game doesn't even run. I think in the case of OFB that they modified something with the requirements and to ensure better performance the game turns off little effects, like fishies, on older cards because with the added functions it may cause lag... at least it's just my guess. :-X

Yes, I have fish. I am truly embarrased (but dumb enough to admit) that I'm dumb enough to not have a clue what my graphics card is. :-[

How's that for a completely non-helpful answer. *sorry, shutting up now*

I'm in the same embarassing situation as Elfpuddle.  I have fish and no clue as to what my graphics card is.   ???

snap i have fish but dont know what graphics card .

anybody clever want to tell us how we can find out?

Well, if you would like to find out what it is, it is pretty easy to do. Right-click on "MyComputer", select "Properties", click on the "Hardware" tab, then select "Device Manager." Then, click the "+" next to "Display Adapters" to expand it, and it should be listed right there. If there is nothing there, you are probably using the graphics built into your motherboard. If you want to know which driver version you are using, right-click on the display adapter you have listed (if you have one), select properties, then click on the "Drivers" tab.  :)

Or even easier, go to the EA Games\<latest expansion you have> folder in the start menu, and use the EAsy Info program that comes with all Sims 2 programs.  It'll tell you what you have, and perhaps better if you use the above method, what TS2 thinks you have, which may not be the same in some cases.

I have fish.  NVIDIA GeForce 6800 Driver 6.14.10.8195.

I lost my fish when I had shaders false but got rid of that line coz I like my fishies.

I Have Fish.
ATI Radeon 9550, 256 MB AGP
Driver Version 8.231.0.0

Well, would you credit it?  I'm sure when I visited the Landgraab house there were fish - I remember watching Malcolm watching them and feeding them, and I remember the fish jumping up for the food.  But then I had a crash and a message from Windows that my video drivers needed updating, so I went and did that, and up till now I thought I was onto a winner - everything seemed soooo much better and clearer, but I just went and bought a tank for Lucy and Ricky, and lo and behold, Ricky has just restocked the tank with invisible fish!

Same here. XD

Can't we just make things complicated, please? It makes me feel more smarter and stuff ::)

To find out your computer specifics including video card and drivers run dxdiag.

Well, mine's a 5200 too, and the upgraded driver is version 7189, which in every other aspect works fine.  But I think I'll load 4ESF's cloned fishtank into the game and see if the same thing happens with that!

Yes, unfortunately it has the same problem, which probably means we can't solve the problem by using cloned fishtanks!

I have an ATI Radeon 9600 and I see the fishies.

same here

RADEON X600 256MB HyperMemory

Display Driver 6.14.10.6561

I have fish! 

RADEON X1600 Series 256 MB

I have fish.  :)

You can also open the game logs file, and you will see what the game thinks you have - all your PC specifics are in the file xxxx-config-log

ok that game log thing seems to think i have a RADEON X300 Series  if that means anything to anybody


hey those logs are intresting i really must take to time to finf out what they all mean

Rather you than me!

oh dont worry , i wont get round to doing it my heads about to explode at the moment anyway , with trying to sort my game out , work and the world cup and my thrilling social life (im leaving the house twice this week) , and the doctors keep ringing saying ive missed my appointmet , i know just get over it will you .

mm i think i need to chill out

You should be so lucky!  If I miss a doctor's appointment, no-one bothers to ring me, they just cross me off their list!

they would normaly but ive been quite poorly for a lot of the last 12 months or so and i am supposed to go for blood tests every month . but im not good at remembering to go ,

I think so much depends on the doctors - if I don't go, they don't seem to care, really, and I tend to get the feeling they don't care much when I do go, so I've rather given up with doctors in general.

Just for the sake of this poll, I plopped down a fish tank yesterday. Fish were there. Look nice too. Might keep a fish tank in the future.  ::)
I have a Radeon 9600 Pro w. 256MB RAM, running with Omega drivers which I conveniently forgot to note down!  :P

Well, you won't have invisible fish, then!  Make sure you keep the tank nice and clean, and don't over or under-feed them!  (Sometimes sims get a fear that the fish will die!)

I'm more concerned about the maid's behavior. I dunno if that perpetual fish-tank cleaning thing has been resolved.

Well, if you use macro-clean on one of your sims first, they'll clean the tank, so she won't have to.  But I haven't found a problem.

Heh, if I use macro...clean, what's the point of hiring a maid?  ;)

Not a lot, especially if you have the expensive one >:(  My sims are paying over 50 simoleons for the maid to say, Okay, All set up!  (And if she makes a bed, phew!)

As far as I know, this problem has been solved since Universtiy.  I did not personally experience it since that EP.

Nor me, but I think it was originally *supposed* to be solved in the base game patch!

I'm on a totally clean install with a brand new PC and I have the fish.  The card is a rather boring old integrated nVidia GeForce 6100.  I do have a 6600 PCIE one waiting to go in, but I'm too scared to install it in case I start flashing and everyone can see my skeleton, so I will probably have to wait until I can persuade someone else to do it, or put it back on EBay.  With my old PC, I could see them fine until OFB (or the patch, not sure which), then they mysteriously disappeared.

Well, Ancient, I still haven't patched my game with the OFB patch, and my fish are invisible, so I think it happened with OFB itself.  I suppose it wasn't noticed in time for Maxis to be told about it and do something to put it *right*!

Has anyone got fish who has the OFB patch?   Maybe that did sort it.  I don't remember looking after I patched my game. Apart from a new lot I installed yesterday, I think Malcolm Landgraab is the only one with a fishtank now so it's not something I notice on a regular basis.  Oh and I forgot to mention, my driver is the very latest one available on the nVidia site.  The one that came with the pc was a slightly earlier 8 version and I got blue screens all the time, with this one I only get one after I've played for several hours.  Trouble is, once I get it the screen starts flashing and I have to leave the game and go back in.  I could sort it at one time by pretending I wanted to change resolution but not actually doing so, but now I can't. 

My game is patched, yep

My game isn't, and I don't get blue screens (at least not so far) and I have the latest driver for my card and that's when I noticed the fish, as I said earlier Malcolm's fish were there when I went into his house (before my game pc crashed and I had to get the new driver.

I can see the fish in my greek house and  (ATI Radeon 9600 - fook knows which drivers but I upgraded them about 6 months ago when NL came out)

I have all the EPs, patched, and the dreaded shopping packs (FF also patched)

I can't be bothered to patch my game at present, I'd have to sort through all my hacks yet again!  And I'll have to do that when the next EP comes out anyway.

My game is patched, and I still have fish - that's all patches, including the FFS patch.

I originally had fish with my nVidia GeForce 5200. They dissappeared when I installed OFB.

Mine were there when I went into the Landgraab house, before I downloaded new drivers.  (Mine's an Nvidia GEForce 5200.)

I haveNVIDIA Geforce FX 5500
driver 6.14.00.10.8.198

No fish with the home computer's video card, Nvidia GeForce FX 5200
Have fish with the work computer's Nvidia GeForce 6800.

Bet you don't have old drivers with your home computer!

No little fishies, left in the sea...
No little fishies, just Londo and me...

(A prize of 1000 benes to the first person to correctly guess that quote :D )

I have no fishies.

config-log tells me I have the following:

Babylon 5, third season (I think), Londo and G'Kar are trapped in an elevator after an explosion, and that's G'Kar singing...

:)

CONGRATULATIONS!  Your prize of 1000 benes is currently being mailed to you on the slowest boat known to man.  Enjoy them!

I have fish, and an ATI Mobility Radeon X600. Drivers are apparently 6.14.10.6505.

Well, I have an ATI on my laptop, but the info re fish would be useless as it only just about runs Uni, so to run OFB on it, I'd have to uninstall Uni first!

But, don't know if this will prove anything, I have just the base game with no hacks and virtually no downloads on my other PC, which is linked to this and used the same video card.  I could check and see what's happening on that, if you want me to.

Well so far no fish with the fx5200 seems to be the most popular. Next is fx5500. Have you 5200/5500 people tried the shaders code yet? It did fix it for me, as I said.

I'm a bit wary that it might be too much for my game to handle, and I sooooo hate crashing to the desktop  - I swear one day I'll just have a heart attack and that'll be the end of me!

Why do you say that? I just posted my system specs in the first post, if you are worried about that on yours - for comparison.

We have fish:  Sapphire/ATi Radeon X800 GT AGP, 256 MB RAM. Drivers are the almost most recent set, ver. 6.4; I see that ver. 6.5 was released on 24 May, but I won't upgrade for a few more versions since I'm not having any problems . . . or maybe I will. It seems Catalyst 6.5 (display driver 8.252) has an interesting new feature:

Adaptive Anti-Aliasing for ATI Radeon® 9500 and above

Adaptive Anti-Aliasing smoothes out the surfaces in an entire scene unlike Multi-Sample which works only on edge surfaces. Adaptive AA has the ability to work on transparent or opaque texels, like those that comprise a surface texture. Previously this feature was available on the ATI Radeon® X1000 family products. Starting with Catalyst® 6.5, Adaptive AA support is now available to ATI Radeon® 9500 products and above.
© Copyright 2006 ATI Technologies Inc.

In any case, with Catalyst 6.4 (display driver 8.241), I have fish in patched OFB.   8)

 

If this piece of info is of any worth, I tried Catalyst 6.5 for a brief period of time, but I was getting poly spikes and such. At first I thought it was because of the recent mini-heatwave that swept over Greece, combined with my overclocked Radeon 9600 Pro. However, the poly spikes were there even when I lowered core and memory frequencies, so I decided to revert to Catalyst 6.3. No problems once again. Oh and I still have fish.

Thanks for the information. I guess I'll lay off the new drivers for a while.

 >:( no little fishes here !!

I have a Sapphire Radeon 9200SE 128mb Driver Version (latest) 6.14.10.6517

I too have not turned on my shaders as I did that once b4 and my game started to lag!


soooo does this mean my graphic card must should be upgraded?

processor = AMD Athlon(tm) XP1700 + 1460.8
RAM        = 640.5mb
Memory   = System Total = 640.5
              = Virtual Total  = 2047.9
              = PageFile Total = 1532.1

I have Univ, NL, OFB latest patch for OFB no FFS stuff thou

** my fishes all showed b4 installing OFB and still did not appear after any patch!  :'(

I wonder if it has to do with the 128MB cards as opposed to the 256MB cards. The ReadMe for OFB says 256MB card is required to run the game.

Er, no, it doesn't. It says that 256MB of system RAM is required, and 32MB of video RAM.

Heh...you are right. I read that all wrong

I still wonder if that has anything to do with it anyway

I have an MSI ATI Radeon 9250 128 MB card, which I just got recently to replace my old 64 MB nVidea card.  I didn't get cutscenes before but I do now.  But no fishies for me.  I haven't tried putting the useshaders line in because I can live without fishies.  I don't even use the fish tank, which is why I had to put one in a house and have the sim "restock" it (how can you restock if it's new and has never been stocked in the first place?)  I wonder what else might be missing, but I have to keep in mind the balance between speed and quality.  I am willing to take a few small hits in performance to have more detail, but not to the point that it lags insufferably.

I am using the drivers that came on the CD with the card, because when I tried using the drivers Windows installed for me, I got all kinds of weird graphical glitches, like little lines on the screen when sims would move and stuff.  I don't know if it's the same thing DrBeast describes, and I'm not sure what version of drivers were on the CD, but the weird stuff went away when I uninstalled the Windows drivers and reinstalled the ones off the CD.  It didn't mention Catalyst, so I was somewhat confused when I went to see if there were any new drivers at the ATI website.  Is that what ATI calls its basic drivers?  I put in my card, and that's what came up, but I just wanted regular drivers, not any extra fancy programs that I don't need.   :-\

Maybe a new poll should be made to see if the people who have fish have more than 128 MB of video RAM?

Omega drivers are your friend.

And yes, Catalyst is what ATI calls their drivers+software package.

I have fish and I have a NVIDIA GeForce 6800 XT. 

I guess I should probably check out this Omega thing one of these days, since I have version 6.14 or something of the ATI Radeon drivers and I do intend to try upgrading if I continue to have issues with Body Shop.

I still haven't gotten around to checking whether I have fish. Don't use 'em.

Must? Well no. You can play the game after all. But the 9200 was a budget part even when it was current a few years ago, and you can't hope to see probably half what the game has to offer visually with this board. For one thing, it supports only up to DirectX 8 in hardware, whereas TS2 is a DX 9 game. This means that some graphics features in the game need to be rendered by the CPU instead of the graphics board, significantly slowing down your game's performance (and some features won't be available at all). In addition, the image quality in "2D" (that is, Windows) probably isn't the best.

In the ATI line, the "lowest" you can go and have DX 9 in hardware is the 9500 series, but even those are now a few generations old and are not a good value for money. At this point, as AGP boards are phased out altogether, the best value for money in the ATI line (for an AGP part) is the X800 series. You can save a few tens of dollars and go for a 9600-series board, but the performance hit isn't worth the savings unless you're going to buy a whole new PC in the next few months, because whatever AGP board you buy now will probably be the last one you ever buy, so you'll be stuck with it for as long as you keep your current PC. In the U.S., you can get a Radeon X800 GT or  X800 GTO for under $180; Radeon 9600 boards are under $150 (but hold out for the XT model, as the "lesser" versions are underpowered). Not long ago, the Radeon 9800 Pro (once the fastest board you could buy) was a good value, but the newer X800 boards are the same price these days, and are about 25% faster.

HOWEVER . . .


The real bottleneck for TS2 is here. You may not be able to get nice shader effects with that graphics board, but game performance in TS2 depends mostly on CPU power, and by today's standards this is way underpowered. The XP 1700+ should have (according to AMD) the same performance as a 1.7-GHz Pentium 4, and I can tell you from personal experience that the slower P4s don't cut it for TS2. Heck, the 2.8 GHz P4 I have now isn't really fast enough.

Problem is, the Athlon XP series is obsolete (they are no longer being made—the XP 1700+ was the slowest chip in the line . . . in 2003), having been supplanted by first the Atlhon 64 and now the new dual-core Athlons, so you may be hard-pressed to find a replacement CPU that will fit your motherboard and be enough faster to make it worth the cost; and current processors won't fit your motherboard. Quite frankly, at this stage it's probably not cost-effective to upgrade your PC. For not much more than you would pay for replacement parts, you can get a whole new PC from HP, Dell, or Gateway that will be way faster than anything you could build up from what you have now, with current technology (CPU and motherboard, RAM type and speed, hard-drive capacity and speed). You already have a keyboard, mouse, and monitor, so you just need the PC itself. For $600 shipped, you can get a new PC that will make your current PC seem like a slide rule by comparison.   ;D


Keep in mind that the Omega drivers are just tweaked versions of older ATI driver sets (he's usually a couple versions behind the current ATI release). They aren't anything magical or radically different.

Well, apparently I have driver version 6.14.10.6476 (which dates back to late 2004 according to the control panel). What I'm wondering is whether I have any real reason to upgrade at all, why I would or would not want to have this Catalyst software in addition to ordinary drivers, and what driver version I ought to be using if it's not the one I've got.

...actually, out of curiosity... 3.0GHz processor, 1GB RAM, ATI Radeon X300 (128MB RAM). I am largely very happy with game performance and graphics and am not sure if I won't just spend any money I allocate to upgrades on a big fat second hard drive for music and video, but I've never been in a discussion of hardware and game performance before where I was at all convinced that anybody else involved was likely to have a better idea of the answer than me. In what areas of game performance would I notice a difference if I got a video card with 256MB of RAM? In what areas would I notice a difference if I jumped up to 2GB of system RAM? I'd never in a million years spend $180 on a video card when there's nothing wrong with the one I already have, so how far down the series can I go from the X800 and still get 256MB of RAM and an upgrade over what I already have that's worth paying anything for at all?

He's actually up-to-date now -- he just released his version based on the 6.5 ATI drivers.

I went from the base X300 that came with my Dell to an X700 (about $150 at the time) with 256MB Ram, and it improved graphic performance considerably.  I already have a gig of RAM and a high-speed processor (3.x gighertz Intel). I may go up another gig of RAM one of these days, but for now I'm much happier with how the game performs.

ATI calls their basic drivers Catalyst. Here (https://support.ati.com/ics/support/default.asp?deptID=894&task=knowledge&folderID=293) is a link to the main drivers page to select your OS if you want it.

I personally noticed a difference switching from 128 to 256, but my computer is not as fast as yours so I can't say much beyond the fact that I can run all graphics on high, even with my pokey processor.

Well, what the manufacturers will usually tell you is not to upgrade drivers unless you're having a problem or you need a new feature, but this may be more typical for chipset drivers than for video drivers. ATI for one generally adds features, eliminates bugs, and/or tweaks performance with each driver release (go to the Web site and read the Release Notes to see the changes and bug fixes in the current driver set), so there is often good reason to upgrade drivers if you haven't done so in a while. Of course, sometimes a new driver release introduces new bugs or has other issues which can make it unstable with certain applications (usually games), as evidenced by the problem with the 8x-series drivers from nVidia and TS2 (and ATI has had similar episodes in the past). These days, driver sets are of the omnibus variety, in that one download includes the drivers for all supported models. While there may be no compelling reason to upgrade to every release, it makes sense to upgrade two or three times a year, or perhaps quarterly; and with a driver set from 2004, I would definitely upgrade, although perhaps not to the 6.5 set given what Dr. Beast reports about that set earlier in this thread. You can find the 6.4 driver set on ATI's Web site.

There are two components to the ATI driver installation. One is the actual video drivers, and one is the Control Panel or Control Center, which is the applet that gives you access to the various driver settings. Each can be downloaded separately, or you can get it as a package. The Control Center is rather controversial, as it installs a couple services that run in the background, requires .NET Framework to run, and takes up about 100 MB of RAM for no good reason. Mostly it offers a fancy user interface and a 3D animation so you can see the results of various 3D settings; and on X1000-series boards and XT versions of some earlier boards, it allows for overclocking from within the driver software. The older Control Panel doesn't have the 3D interface and doesn't support the  "Overdrive" overclocking function, but it also doesn't require .NET or take up an additional 100 MB of RAM. Although ATI claims that the Control Panel isn't supported by more recent driver sets (6.xx), I've been using the last released version (which I think is from Catalyst 5.8 ) with the 6.4 drivers with no problem.

TweakGuides's ATI Catalyst Tweak Guide (http://www.tweakguides.com/ATICAT_1.html) offers ways you can tweak the Control Center (basically by disabling some functions and preventing others from loading on startup) that will get you back to pre-CC memory-usage levels, but unless you have a board that supports Overdrive and you want to overclock it, I don't see any reason to mess with that when you can use the old Control Panel.  8)


To be honest, I can't give you a firm answer regarding video RAM. In terms of TS2, I suspect if you switched to a 256-MB version of the X300, you would be able to enable some of the graphics features or increase their settings. Basically, the on-board RAM is the "frame buffer," where the board stores 3D information like textures, so the number of textures and other stuff the board can keep in its frame buffer will depend on how much RAM it has. Increasing the video RAM may improve the look of your game, but it probably wouldn't make it run any more smoothly. OTOH, it would depend on how much of the game's 3D data is kept in the frame buffer; if it will all fit in a 128-MB frame buffer, going to 256 MB won't necessarily speed up the game, but if it can use more than 128 MB, then going to 256 MB could result in a noticeable increase in frame rates as well as more visual detail, since otherwise some video data will be swapped out to system RAM over the comparatively slow PCI bus.

However, in real life and upgrade of video RAM would accompany an upgrade of the GPU itself. The X300 was pretty much a budget part to begin with, with only four pixel pipelines, comparted to 16 pipes for the top-of-the-line X850 models and some versions of the X800. Not long ago, some ATI partners were offering X800 GTO boards with a 16-pipeline GPU for less than 200 USD (Powercolor is known to have done this) although these usually have 12 pipes; and for a little over 200 USD you can get an X850 XT with 16 pipes. If you shop carefully you can get an X800 GTO for under 140 USD after rebate, or under 125 USD for an open-box model. Some of these X800 GTO boards can be flashed with the BIOS for the X800 XL to unlock the four remaining pipelines (for a total of 16), if you're the adventurous type.   ;D

As an aside, note that ExtremeTech.com is reporting that TS2 runs without problems on the Vista beta, and ATI has released a Catalyst driver set for Vista.   :)

Adding system RAM up to the point where the game can load all its data into RAM will increase performance by eliminating the need for data to be fetched from the hard drive; beyond that there will be no performance benefit. If you look at the screens I posted above, on my PC the game maxes out at around 1350 MB RAM and 7 MB in the paging file (this with Cacheman XP and Firefox also running), so you may not see any noticeable improvement with more than 1.5 GB RAM. The important thing is to reduce the size of the paging file and disable Executive Paging to force WinXP you use all your RAM instead of paging tons of data to the hard drive when half your RAM is still available.

Can anyone tell me what this means?  I got this error when installing the new Catalyst drivers from ATI's website.

(Click for larger immage)
(http://img81.imageshack.us/img81/782/screenshot0057pk.th.jpg) (http://img81.imageshack.us/my.php?image=screenshot0057pk.jpg)

I don't know if the drivers were installed successfully or not. :(

http://www.rage3d.com/board/showthread.php?t=33698123

That is one article I found on it.

Also you could try uninstalling your card and drivers then reinstall. Apparently this happens with some ATI cards, from my search results.

Thanks, I will give it a shot.

I did the total system purge they described on the site, and it didn't solve the problem.  :(  I guess I"ll have to do some more research.  It doesn't seem to be affecting the game though.

I have a Radeon X1300 card with 512 MB. Interesting thing is, I not only have fish, but they never die or need feeding.  It's one heck of a graphics card.  :D

I'm not sure why people would keep fish in a tank forever just to feed them. It seems rather pointless. Besides, fish are supposed to be self-perpetuating, with big fish eating small fish and small fish eating the tank algae and big fish that have died. Then occasionally when there are too many big fish, you eat one.

Or the cat does!

I've been looking around the Web and this appears to be a machine-specific problem, as users report moving the graphics board in question to a different machine and installing the same drivers without difficulty. In other words, something in your Windows installation is not quite right.   ::)

These are the things I would try before backing up my data and doing a clean install of Windows:

First, have you previously had an nVidia board in your PC? If so, I would download Driver Cleaner and use it to clear out any nVidia cruft left behind by the nVidia uninstaller:  http://www.drivercleaner.net/professional.html
There is one thing the instructions don't mention that I would do:  Aafter uninstalling any nVidia or ATI drivers that appear in the Add or Remove Program list and rebooting, cancel out Windows's attempt to install drivers for new hardware. You want to run with the standard generic VGA drivers that ship with Windows. Then run Driver Cleaner.

If you haven't had an nVidia board in the past, try these steps:

1.  Download the driver removal tool from ATI's Web site.
2.  Uninstall all ATI software using Add or Remove Programs
3.  Go into Device Manager to see if any graphics boards are still installed (Display Adapters). If so, right-click on the entries and delete them.
4.  Reboot, cancel out the Add New Hardware wizard (don't let Windows install drivers for the ATI board), and run the driver removal tool.
5.  Reboot again, cancel the hardware wizard again, and install the drivers manually, using this method:
https://support.ati.com/ics/support/default.asp?deptID=894

If your graphics board supports dual displays, you will need to do this for both the primary and secondary display (in Device Manager, Windows will report that you have two identical graphics boards installed)

6.  This is optional.  Download just the drivers file instead of the combined drivers/Control Center file, and install the drivers separately. You will still probably need to use the manual installation method, but you can run the EXE file to get the driver files unpacked on your PC. All the driver files get unpacked in the C:\ATI folder; each driver set gets its own subfolder. You can also download the Control Panel (not the Control Center) from Catalyst 5.8 as a separate file, and install that instead of the resource-hog Control Center.

You do have .NET Framework installed, right? The Control Center (not the Control Panel) requires .NET 1.x.   ;D

FYI, I downloaded and installed the latest Omega ATI drivers, which are based on the 6.5 version, and I was stunned at how much better the game looks when I played it last night.  It just looked way more 3-D than before, and the graphics response was a lot faster, too -- I could actually turn shadows back on and not experience any graphics lag.  And this is with an ATI X700 Pro card (256 MB). 

Updated my drivers yesterday.  While I got less graphical 'bleeding' (one floor tile insisted on shooting off into the sunset no matter which way I turned the view), I still have no fishies.

Oh well. :'(

I sometimes get that problem, and usually find that saving the game cures it - at least for a while!

Like you though, still no fish.

I just wanted to thank you Hegelian for this very helpful information, I definitely need some upgrading and I figured getting a new CPU would be the best way to go.

Just one question, now as for getting towers from HP, Dell, etc, is that really the best way to go.  The reason I ask is because all my local tech guys don't think this is good because of the lack of local support, problems and support desks and all that and trying to upgrade as well.

I would be definitely be interested in your opinion on this. :D

thanks

Um, do your local support guys want you to pay them to build a PC for you??   ;D

So much depends on your level of expertise / comfort in messing around with the machine yourself. Building it yourself gives you total control over the parts and installed software, but you are also your own tech support (of course, fixing your mistakes is one way of increasing your knowledge). Generally (yes there may be exceptions), unless you have access to wholesale prices, you can't build a PC for the price of a pre-built system from someone like HP.

However, if you do buy an HP (which in my opinion is the best value at the moment, at least in the US), Gateway, or Dell, buy from their Web site and go through the custom configuration. The really low prices you see on name-brand PCs at online retailers like Newegg or in chain stores like Circuit City are achieved by cutting corners on RAM and hard drives:  too little RAM, and slow (5400 RPM HDDs). Plus, you can sometimes avoid the clutter of preinstalled junk software so many pre-built systems come with. Keep in mind that you are not obligated to buy a monitor when you by the PC, if you're happy with what you already have. Also, the graphics-card options can be pretty limited, so an argument can be made for going with the integrated graphics than a lot of OEM motherboards provide and buying a graphics board from a discounter like Newegg.

As far as warranty service, it seems that most PCs come with a one- or two-year warranty with the option to buy an extended on-site service contract. Whether this is worthwhile is something you need to decide for yourself. But ask yourself this:  will your tech guys come to your house for free to fix your PC if it messes up or a part fails? HP, for example, uses local service contractors to provide same-day or next-day on-site service (depending on what plan you buy) and all costs are covered by the service plan.

Basically, if you're not particularly computer-savvy and/or lack the inclination to get down-and-dirty with your PC, a pre-built system from a major vendor is probably the way to go—although you can sometimes also do well with local, independent builders.

I just configured a PC with the following specs, for 775 USD (after $50 mail-in rebate):

 Windows XP Home Edition     
AMD Athlon 64 3800+ (2.4GHz / 512KB L2 cache)    
1GB DDR-400MHz dual channel SDRAM (2x512)  [two RAM modules needed for dual-channel operation]   
160GB 7200 rpm SATA Hard Drive    
Double Layer 16X max. DVD +/-R/RW drive    
3.5 in. 1.44MB Floppy Drive    
Integrated NVIDIA GeForce 6150 LE graphics
Sound Blaster Audigy 4, 24-bit ADVANCED HD Audio    
HP Keyboard, HP Scroller Mouse [can't opt out]   
Microsoft Works 8.0/Money 2006/MSN Encarta Plus    
Two-year on-site service plan
   
Eliminating the service plan knocks this down by $85, and reducing the CPU to a 3500+ takes off another $80.

A similar machine with an Athlon 64 X2 3800+ dual-core CPU and nVidia GeForce 7300LE is around $1120 (with 2-year on-site service plan), but now we're into territory where you can build one yourself for less money—see this topic (http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php?topic=4293.0) for links to DIY gaming machines for less than 1000 USD.

This seems as good a place as any to point out that you can get a slight increase in CPU performance by buying a Sound Blaster audio card and disabling the on-board audio, since on-board audio uses the CPU for audio processing. Adding an Audigy 2 board will free up some CPU cycles as well as improve your sound quality.   :)

Well thank you again, your advise is awesome and I will definitely have some thinkin' to do b4 I can purchase one.  This information is very helpful and I appreciate your advise for sure. ;D

I got a price for just the CPU for around 650.00 + tax, Canadian, including labor, but I don't have all the specs as of yet. My guy did mention its a Celeron 3.0 Pentium 3, a 6ghz CPU, video card included, no detail on that yet, can add higher video card for extra 65.00 + tax, if I want to upgrade to a P4 3.0 add another 125 + tax, it has 512 ram (definitely have to up that to 1gb!!) and 80 gb hard drive, that hurts because I just upgraded my computer to a 120 gb (2 harddrives)!! but anyway, 2 yr warranty, keyboard, mouse, and DVD writer/player.

If you go to a small firm that makes and upgrades computers, they may be able to build you one using a lot of your existing hardware.   A lot of the small components may not cost much individually, but add them up, and there's your second RAM stick!

Yes to fish!  OFB patch1 installed.

NVIDIA GeForce 6600 GT 256MB

Driver Version: 6.14.

Max

i have the infamous 82915g  chip  and as of OFB (or was it OFB?)  i no longer have fish.

good take on the B5 quote.

Please don't be offended when I say I'm quite confused by this.

There are no 6 GHz CPUs for the PC; the fastest you can get in raw clock speed is a Pentium 4 at 3.8 GHz.
The Celeron is a diffierenct product line, a budget part with lower performance; the fastest one is ~3.3 GHz.
The 3.33 GHz Celeron D 355 is US$84 from Newegg; the dual-core Pentium D 950 (Presler) at 3.4 GHz is US$344. A plain old LGA-755, 3.4 GHz Pentium 4 is US$276, and a 3.0 GHz P4 for Socket 478 is US$192.

If the C$650 is just for the processor, then I'd say someone is trying to rip you off. If by CPU you mean the entire box (processor, case and PSU, RAM, hard drives and optical drives), then it may not be so bad, depending on what you're really getting in it. Definitely stay away from the Celeron processors if you want the best performance in TS2, since these are basically for folks who just want to browse the Web and send email.  ;D

Be careful about the graphics board and do your homework. If the choices offered by the seller are limited and not something that is really suitable for the game, then buy what you want elsewhere and install it yourself. The two main players offer a bunch of products at different price-points, and all the model variations (Pro, XL, XT, GT, SE, etc.) can be pretty confusing. You really ought to be looking at about US$170-$220 for a graphics board if you're looking to have a more-or-less up-to-date PC. The Radeon X800 continues to be the best value for money at the moment—the Powercolor X800 GTO PCI-E at US120 (Newegg) is a steal (I don't think you can get anything from nVidia for under US$200 that will outperform it, and by all accounts the image provided by the Radeon will be much better); for a hundred dollars more you can get much higher performance with a Sapphire Radeon X1800 XT (US$239). IMO, the X800 boards are a better buy than the newer X1600 boards, so if you were to go with an X1000-series board, you'd want to stick to the X1800 or X1900.

If you're planning on retiring the old PC, you can move the hard drives to the new PC (although you'll want to reformat the drive that has Windows so you don't have two boot drives at the same time). Even if you're going to keep using the old one, you can always move just the second drive.  :)

Heh, someone got robbed, paying $650 for a Celery...

 ;) ha, ha JM your funny, a celery!!  ;D

I am definitely not offended as I probably misunderstood what my guy left on my voicemail.  So I definitely don't know where the 6 comes into it. The $650 is for the entire box (processor, case and PSU, RAM, hard drives and optical drives), and a keyboard and mouse, which I really don't need!!

Cool about the second hard drive thou, I definitely need that for all the downloads and such  ::)

So does this sound like a good plan too?


The only thing I'm worried about going to a computer company is that they will try to convince me to add more than I really need!

oh I am soooo confused!!  I know this may be asking alot, and you've definitely been so very helpful, but if you could outline the minimum processor I need and two examples of brands and the same with the graphics board or card (??? not sure if that means two different components).  I'd like to stay with the Radeon, if the X800 is good for the game, I would use that.  So basically you are saying the processor and the graphic card/board are the two main areas to be concerned about right?

And the power supply.  Never hurts to have a new mouse, but keyboards - if you like the one you have and are comfortable with it, why change?  I still use the keyboard from my old IBM ME which went the way of all computers a while back.

You can in fact put all your game files (i.e. your entire My Documents folder) onto your second hard drive.  You just right click the short-cut on the desktop, and you get the option to move it.  Can't quite remember what it said, since mine's already there, so of course, I know longer get the option.  Windows just routes everything to the correct files on that drive, and it leaves plenty of room on the main drive for all the rest of the expansions!  (If I should live so long......)

I'm not sure it is possible to answer that question. The minimum is on the box and in the Readme file on the CD. The minimum for you depends on what you want from the game. Because TS2 is largely limited by CPU power, the more capable the processor you have, the more the game will do:  better frame rates (smoother camera motion and no stop-action on community lots), more sims on a lot, more and better detail on clothing and objects, etc. I personally don't know if there's a CPU speed beyond which no improvements in game performance can be seen, but I suspect it will take advantage of a 3.73 GHz Pentium 965  Extreme Edition if you could afford one (US$1045).

Presumably this PC is intended to last some time; therefore, although TS2 and most other games are "single-threaded" and run faster on higher-speed single-core CPUs than on lower-speed dual-core CPUs, once you get past the 3-GHz level either in clock speed (Intel) or equivalent processor performance (Athlon 64 3000+ and up), the differences are not particularly significant. But single-core CPUs are essentially living dinosaurs, on their way out, and dual-core CPUs are the future for now. The current range of Intel CPUs still show some performance deficiencies in games compared to the new dual-core Athlons (the X2 series that fit in the new AM2 socket), but if you were to wait until the end of July when Intel's Core 2 processors are released, that situation is likely to be reversed in a big way.

But if you are buying today, this is what we're looking at. We'll take C$650 to be about the same as US$550 (at today's exchange rate, it's actually a bit more, but I'm not going to include VAT here), and, because I don't have a good way to judge, we'll assume equivalent pricing although prices in Canada tend to be higher for most things even after correcting for the exchange rate.

Unless you're willing to overclock your CPU, in that price range you're probably going to get better performance for you money with an Athlon 64 CPU (I don't think you're going to get a dual-core Athlon at that price point—at retail, the least expensive Athlon 64 X2 is about US$300); you should be able to get the 3500+ rather than the 3200+, but the performance difference may not be great enough if the price differential is more than $20-30. You're going to want 1 GB of DDR RAM (the Athlon 64 CPU has the memory controller built in and does not support DDR2) and a 7200-RPM SATA hard drive. Watch out for the chipset: AMD does not build the support chips for their CPUs and the third-party chipsets vary in quality. Stick with a chipset from nVidia, ATI, or VIA.

Buying an AMD-based PC can be an adventure, because of the multitude of CPUs and configurations. The standard socket for the Athlon 64 has been socket 939, although there are also Athlons for socket 754 and socket 940. But AMD is in the process of migrating its entire product line to the new AM2 socket, and the various Athlon 64 models are now available in both socket 939 and AMD versions, for the same price. Since socket 939 is going to be phased out, perhaps by the end of this year, buying a socket-939 system now could siginificantly constrain your upgrade options in the future. If I were buying AMD today, I would try to get an Athlon 64 3500+ in an AM2 motherboard. In truth, however, I wouldn't buy today—I would wait until the big AMD price drop on 24 July, the day after Intel is slated to release its Core 2 CPUs, and then go for a dual-core Athlon 64 X2 in an AM2 motherboard. Besides, the X2 CPUs support DDR2 memory.

Things are a bit different with Intel, since you can get a dual-core Pentium in your price range. Indeed, with after-market cooling, you can overclock a lowly Pentum D805 to 4 GHz. :)  But in this price range, you may be able to get a Pentium D820 (2.8GHz dual-core) or a Pentium 4 524 (3.06 GHz). Again, watch out for the chipset, but for different reasons. Intel makes its own chipsets and there's no reason not to go with that, since Intel's chipsets are perfectly matched to its CPUs, are ultra-stable, and don't suffer from dodgy drivers. System builders often keep their prices down by going with cheap OEM motherboards with third-party chipsets; if you must go that route, stick to ATI or VIA and avoid SiS or ULi (a spinoff from ALi, which was notorius for instability and driver problems). With an Intel CPU I would definitely opt for two modules of DDR2 RAM operating in dual-channel mode.

As with AMD, if it were me, I would wait until after Intel releases its Core 2 products before making a buying decision unless it was absolutely imperative to buy a new machine before then.

Regardless of what you get, try to budget WinXP Pro instead of the Home edition, and avoid the Media Center edition.

Avoid Celeron (Intel) and Sempron (AMD) CPUs, which are performance-impaired budget parts.


We have two PCs with 2.8-GHz P4 CPUs and X800 graphic boards, and can run with all detail settings at high, shadows and reflections, and Smooth Edges at the first setting (2x anti-aliasing). With these settings, residential lots with many residents and/or lots of CC can be slow, as are community lots (especially downtown), but this can be speeded up a bit by turning off Smooth Edges (personally I don't like jaggies); and in any case this is mostly a function of the CPU. The X800 GT and GTO are terrific performers at current prices, so if you have one already then there's no reason to buy a new graphics board right away. I suspect that later in the year prices for X850 models will come down and those will probably become the price/performance leaders. For a bit (or a lot!) more money, the X1800 XT or X1900 GT will probably give you a significant performance increase, but I haven't seen anything to suggest that the less expensive X1600 line performs better than the older X800 boards (which were something of a breakthrough in their day, and, unlike the X1600 series, the top of the heap at one time). See this topic (http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php?topic=4293.msg131231#msg131231) for more.  :)

"Graphics board" and "video card" refer to the same thing:  a plug-in display controller, the thing to which you connect your monitor. The display controller determines how the image on your monitor appears (sharp, fuzzy, etc.) and the 3D graphics capability of your PC. At this price point, you are likely not to have an actual graphics board at all, but rather a display controller integrated into the motherboard chipset (the chips and circuits that support the CPU, control things like hard-drive access and network connections, etc.). This is known, not surprisingly, as integrated graphics. Integrated graphics have improved greatly in the last five or so years, so that you can actually play TS2 on a PC with integrated graphics without too much pain. Nonetheless, for best results you will want to add a plug-in graphics board and disable the integrated graphics in the BIOS (follow the instructions for entering Setup when you first start the PC, usually by pressing F1, F2, F10, or DEL depending on the motherboard).

Speaking of integrated stuff, virtually all motherboards these days include integrated sound. Again this is much improved in recent years, but even if you are perfectly happy with the quality of your PC sound, integrated sound uses the CPU for much of its data processing, so adding a relatively inexpensive Sound Blaster Audigy 2 or X-Fi board to your PC can free up some CPU cycles for the game.

Thanks for this tip --  I went out earlier to get another gig of memory for my system (to bring it up to 2Gb), and Best Buy had an Audigy 4 for a decent price, so I got that as well.  I'm already impressed with the improved sound over the on-board device, and I'll be interested to see what difference it makes in the game later when I fire it up.  Though I suspect the extra Gb of RAM will make a bigger difference. :)

Try this:

Take an inexpensive integrated amp or receiver and some reasonable "bookshelf" speakers (such as the Epos ELS 3, NHT SB-3, or PSB Alpha B1), connect the amp to the sound card using one of those high-quality audio cables marketed for iPods that has a standard stereo mini-plug on one end and a pair of RCA plugs on the other (I got my 3m Audioquest cable from Audio Advisor), and load MP3s of your favorite music into the various "channel" folders in My Documents>EA Games>The Sims 2>Music. Then go into the game and de-select all the Maxis music in the various categories. Your game will be much more enjoyable—you may even want your sims to leave the stereo on when they go to work or to bed!   ;D

phew, that's alot of info, thank you again Hegelian, I probably will wait until the end of July, and get those better prices.

I'm not sure if you care anymore, but I just installed OFB (yes, I always wait a while). Nothing has changed with my computer other than the new game. I had visible fish with NL and now I have invisible fish. Ah well, good thing I usually don't zoom in closely. :S