Excellent - from 99% GPU usage to 23%. Very nice. Thankee.

I couldn't get it to work at first with ATI Tray Tool's onscreen display on. For anyone using that, you may need to turn it off first. (osd, not the entire program.)

Yes, getting 1409fps at movie and 600 at menus wasn't really neccessary, since I notice no difference between that and 60.

I was inclined to think that the clothes at least might be UV mapped because I'm getting 'bleed' of areas (such as belt colour 'bleeding' into the clothes, and pattern edges being blurry - on highest detail level), which is common if your texture map for your UVs is small. That said, I've never experimented much with vector texturing, and that does explain being able to change the colour without eating insane amounts of memory. It's possible the vectors are rasterised but still quite small, which would cause the blur. If vectors were used in Splotch I'd be inclined to think they'd use a similar system for Sims 3, although Splotch wasn't quite so blurry to me.

If it's materials, then it's going to be quite difficult to take out of game - usually materials are set by the software, rather than by an external file, unless Sims allows access to its material/shader files?

For a straightforward object then cubic, planar, spherical texture projections would would just dandy - I can forsee lots of beginner objects having horribly skewed textures if people have to make unique UV-projections, or attempt to map a complex object with a simple projection.

If we're able to use normal maps for detail as opposed to a rediculously high poly, then that's awesome as far as speed ingame is concerned, and it's (afaik) standard for games that want large amounts of detail but not at the expense of speed. At the same time, unless Blender allows you to create normal maps by projecting the high poly onto low poly, I'm not sure of any free 3D apps that have that feature. (And now that the major 3 3D apps have been bought by the same company, their prices are probable soon to rocket)

Are you suggesting that one creates a seperate map for baked shadows (say, ambient occlusion-like shadows as opposed to direct cast shadows, which would be impossible to know without a lightsource) which is then layered over the pattern texture? That's quite nifty - I haven't noticed it myself, but then I haven't been looking for it. I suppose that's exactly the point - subtlety. Is there any ambient occlusion between objects, btw?

How about Sims skins? They're horribly bland at the moment, but of course one can't make a set of individual skins - they've got to be slider-able, and would presumably need to be default replacements. Unless there's a very simple darken/lighten/levels/whathaveyou tool, I'm not sure what format you'd need to make the skin with.

I got artifacts on my games before my old graphics card kicked in - if your RAM is seated next to your CPU and your CPU's been overheating due to lacking thermal compound, then it could be your RAM. RAM can bugger your OS and make it unbootable (trust me) if some system files go through it and get scrambled, so best catch it early. Especially if you're noticing more crashes just after an install/uninstall/update.

Try Memcheck (which you'll need to burn to disc and run before DOS) to check for errors on your RAM. I had something like 17,000 errors and still counting from heat-damaged RAM.
Haven't tried Everest, but failing that, Speedfan can give you HDD temps and CPU load and temps.
ATI Tray Tools or RivaTuner can give you GPU load and temps.

I've managed to limit temps to ~67C (still runs at 99% load ¬_¬) using ATI Tray Tool's forced wait for vsync and refresh locks to lock it at 60fps... but only on fullscreen. Again, it's CAS and menus that are taking the most load, regardless of graphics settings.

Windowed mode still runs away with 300-1200 fps and 80C unless it's not the active window. Pain the the arse, considering I play most of my games in windowed mode.

Are there no vsync options in the game? "vsync on" is unrecognised in the cheat console.

I just got the Razor version by that 711mb patch overwrite thing.

...No changes in video card load for me. I'd hoped they'd put a framerate limiter on the thing, but no - ~1200fps at intro movie, and ~400fps at menus according to ATITool (edit: and the Sims 3 fps tool via "fps on" cheat), resulting in graphics card fry-age. (HD3850) Changing the refresh rate does sod all as far as that problem is concerned, btw.

Is the performance any better in the Razor release? As in, no 99% load and spiking graphics card temps for ATI users that some of us got with the Reloaded version?

Is anyone finding better performance on the Razor/patched release?

Specifically I'd like to know about GPU loads and temps compared to the Reloaded release, but any info on performance in general would be handy for those of us wondering if it's worth getting the Razor release just yet.

V: sorry, wasnt sure if it was technical support over there or more gameplay oriented stuff. I'll have a mosey on over.

I've just gone through CCC and turned catalyst AI off, and everything down to "performance" rather than balanced/quality. All my options in Sims 3 are down to minumum as well. Game still puts on 99% load and shoots me into the 70s-80s temps.

If I switch tasks, but still have Sims 3 in the background (eg, I bring CCC or speedfan to the front, but not actually obscuring the Sims 3 window so it's still rendering, just not the active program) my load goes down to about ~20%. This way I can watch the game (as it will still play, rather than pause) but I can't actually play it (since clicking anywhere in it makes it the active window, even if I have an always-on-top window open). I don't know if that's standard behaviour - it seems slightly bizarre.

I'll try reinstalling the drivers without CCC now, and then if there's no improvement, some different drivers.

Morriganrant, what version drivers are you currently using?

Edit: Uninstalled and reinstalled 9.5 without CCC, and using Rivatuner to monitor temps. Still 99% load and shooting temps. Not being a frequent user of Rivatuner, I'm not sure how to tweak anything with it, so I'll get ATI tray tools and see what I can tweak with that.


The temparature usually falls somewhat rapidly for me when the game is closed, so I'd suggest running the game in windowed mode and having CCC in the background so you can watch the temps as you're playing.

Alternatively, get RivaTuner and open hardware monitoring. It'll create a graph so when you've closed the game, you can see what the loads were while it was running, rather than current load/temp only in CCC.

Edit 2: Just got ATI Tray Tools started: I do not need 680 fps, EA. That's why load goes down to ~20% when not active - the fps falls to 180. Still far to high. In game fps is about 260, which is completely unneccessary. In CAS, it's ~600 again. Result is 99% load and high temps, all for something I can't even notice.

FFS. I had this problem with Civ 4 but you can put an entry in the config files to limit framerate for that game. Any way to do this with Sims 3?

Edit 3: At fullscreen, it's reporting framerates at 60 but I'm still getting 99% load. Windowed mode has the framerate set to 'default' and I can't change it, resulting in apparently 600fps. I'd still like to experiment with limiting the framerate, but I can't find any settings in the .ini files to do so.

Also, is Sims 3 using OpenGL, or D3D?

Just a heads up, I've had problems with X1950s overheating before (and erm... melting. Ahahaha. My 3850 is actually its warranty replacement since the store wasn't selling the X1950 some time later.)

People with ATI and their catalyst control centre, or RivaTuner or anything else that can monitor temps, I'd recommend doing so, especially if you have any of the cards that other people are having problems with or random crashes (In CCC, it's in the overdrive tab. Not all cards support it and my X1950 didn't, or I'd have spotted the problem long before it died.)

Hell no am I buying a new card to play Sims 3. My card should be sufficient and I'm not upgrading something that cost me £80 to play one game when all my other high spec games and even my 3D animation packages run just dandy on it. If I'd actually bought the game, I'd be demanding my money back because running my graphics card into the ground is probably damaging it. (That said, when I next update I'm not touching ATI with a barge pole unless they've fixed their OpenGL issues, even their professional animating rig cards have issues at the moment, and for £400+ that's just not acceptable.)

Miellerie, check that your drivers have installed correctly and are showing as 9.5 - a bad uninstall of the previous drivers can cause problems with new ones.

Sims 3 is making my graphics card suffer something horrific. I've been monitoring temps since a spontaneous reboot;

I also have a HD38xx (3850, to be exact) and while neighborhood and live views run about 60-80% load on my graphics card, and ~70 degrees, menus and CAS run at 99% load and put my card into the 85+ before I shut the thing down myself before my card can explode.

I've turned all the options to minimum (which looks eyebleachingly horrible) and I've just upgraded the ATI drivers from 9.2 to 9.5 with no difference. (latest DirectX, 3GB RAM and a Quad Core CPU, if that's any effect on things)


This is silly. I'd expect it in neighborhood view where there's actually a substantial amount of things to render. CAS consists of one sim and reflection, and the menus aren't even 3D!

What comes to mind is that the menus and CAS menus are super anti aliased or otherwise filtered in order to make them look so super smooth and slick... which is murdering my card!

Neither my Playstation2 emulator and Assassins Creed manage that, and they're super intensive - the later surely must need more power than Sims 2. I can only reach the conclusion that Sims 2 coding is made of inefficient fail.
That, or it's all OpenGL, which ATI has a reputation for neglecting. Such a reputation that you should have thought of that, EA.

edit: menu's aren't even 2D? Muppet. Corrected now.

If Sims are able to switch jobs and breed behind your back like people are saying they are (I don't doubt, I just haven't tried this yet myself) then it might be reasonable to assume they might dump their inventory somewhere stupid, sell it or bin it and so on. That most certainly is a DNW.

Is it possible that EA will deliberately change or update the May 5th release so that saves and so on made with this release won't work with the actual release, or that "well, it's not the final game that was leaked!" ? Or is it too late for them to do that by now?

*unlurk* please don't eat me

Good grief, this game has my graphics card (HD 3850) instantly jumping to 99% load and 70c before the opening intro has finished, nevermind actually playing the thing. I know ATI haven't got the best reputation for good cooling, but I've not got a single app or game that manages that, and it's not an old card.

If I may have a moment of tin-foil hat-ness, is this to be expected of a game of Sims 3 calibur and EA's notoriously inefficient coding, or is something more suspicious going on here, with the arr'ed files? (edit: suspicious .exe aside, since it's been found out and replaced) I'd expect high load for say, the neighborhood view, rendering shadows and reflections and whathaveyou. Not when the game is still loading up, during the menu, or a full system crash when my game is paused.


Back to actual gameplay, I second the major DNW of not being able to switch households. I like to build up my entire household and micromanage every relationship between them. Not having them breeding with random other sims when my back is turned, and losing progress when I want to switch. That just kills it for me, and for most of the Simmers I know.

I do like the moodlets, and the sims seem less moody overall to allow for skilling. The opportunities seem interesting to add to the mix, and while I like having more control over the facial proportions, they still all look far too chubby. I'm all for eliminating size 0s from modelling and the like, but some people that size do actually exist.