Purely technical question about lag.

[michelou]

My computer specs are:  

9600 Quad Core AMD Phenon 2.3 GHz
8 G DDR 2 RAM
nVidia Geforce GTX 460 vid card
XP Professional 64 bit
Approximately 60 GB of hard drive space left free. (17%)

Question is: is it my computer or just the game when I get lag. The game lags especially in France and it does lag in the homeworld, in this case Sunset Valley, when the lot being played has been expanded and "beautified" with lots of stuff, but I would expect that.

The lag causes the game to make the place I am going to come up slowly, with objects filling in first in grey, then becoming what they really look like.

This is an old, bloated save, but it does happen in France in a newly made game. Oh, and I don't have an FPS limiter, but it is my understanding that nVidia's force synch means I don't need it. Plus, I do have various (not tons, but a fair amount, hair, furniture, clothing and LOTS of patterns and pictures, and are a mix of .packages and Sims3packs.) CC and a few mods, Awsome Mod, the no Mosaic, and Buzzlers dig site fixer.

This is not really a problem, just slightly annoying, and I am really just curious. Oh, and my computer is a household one and is used for heavy gaming, MMOs, FPS, RPGs and have Steam (I know, I know... ).

Ah, edited to add: I forgot to say I have WA/HELS/Amb, if it matters.

[AlexanderMorgan]

It's the game. I have a configuration more or less like yours and that happens to me too. The engine's made that way, the game loads the textures on the current lot the camera is centered on and that takes time, so until it happens you will only see white meshes of the objects. It will stop to annoy you after a time. Just bear in mind what Sims 2 was like (having to wait for loading screens all the time) and what Sims 3 is like now and this issue becomes irrelevant.
If you jump between several lots i suggest you go to Settings ingame and enable more high detailed lots. In that way the textures from the lots and their detail will remain in the RAM and will take far less time to load up when you revisit it.

[J. M. Pescado]

Yes, the slowly-filling-in-textures thing is normal. What it indicates is that YOU NEED MOAR RAMS.

[ascarrott]

Have you tried defragmenting your hard drive and lowering the High detailed lots setting to say bellow 3 or even 1?

[michelou]

Yes, the slowly-filling-in-textures thing is normal. What it indicates is that YOU NEED MOAR RAMS.

How much more would you suggest? I would have thought 8 GBs to be sufficient, most people are playing with 4 and under.

Have you tried defragmenting your hard drive and lowering the High detailed lots setting to say bellow 3 or even 1?

I defrag every couple of days and my High detailed lots setting is at three. I will have to try lowering it, see what kind of visual/performance level I get and if I can live with it.

It's the game. I have a configuration more or less like yours and that happens to me too. The engine's made that way, the game loads the textures on the current lot the camera is centered on and that takes time, so until it happens you will only see white meshes of the objects. It will stop to annoy you after a time. Just bear in mind what Sims 2 was like (having to wait for loading screens all the time) and what Sims 3 is like now and this issue becomes irrelevant.
If you jump between several lots i suggest you go to Settings ingame and enable more high detailed lots. In that way the textures from the lots and their detail will remain in the RAM and will take far less time to load up when you revisit it.

Hmm, this advice seems contrary to to ascarrott's. I guess I will try both, see what I get. Like I said, it's more curiosity than anything. And perhaps I was wishing for someone to say "it's your processor!" to "create" a vailid excuse to get a better one. lol

[ascarrott]

Plus, I do have various (not tons, but a fair amount, hair, furniture, clothing and LOTS of patterns and pictures, and are a mix of .packages and Sims3packs.)

Come to think of it, this sounds like package file lag, do you have over 100 or more package files in your mod folder?
If you do look here:
http://www.modthesims.info/wiki.php?title=Game_Help:Package_File_Lag

[Ambular]

Plus, I do have various (not tons, but a fair amount, hair, furniture, clothing and LOTS of patterns and pictures, and are a mix of .packages and Sims3packs.)

Come to think of it, this sounds like package file lag, do you have over 100 or more package files in your mod folder?
If you do look here:
http://www.modthesims.info/wiki.php?title=Game_Help:Package_File_Lag

Concur.  I have a Core 2 Duo and only 4 GB of RAM, and a fair amount of CC, but killing the problem files tagged in Process Monitor made a HUGE difference in my game's performance.

[snapzit]

I have a quad core with 3 RAMZ. It was very laggy, choppy, and horrible to try and play, but the Dashboard Tool cleaned it all up. I didn't have to use the process monitor. It runs very smoothly now. *Keeps fingers crossed*

[Ambular]

I have a quad core with 3 RAMZ. It was very laggy, choppy, and horrible to try and play, but the Dashboard Tool cleaned it all up. I didn't have to use the process monitor. It runs very smoothly now. *Keeps fingers crossed*

The Dashboard is very helpful, and certainly worth trying first (it's useful for just keeping track of everything and identifying some other issues as well.)  But it missed quite a few files that were slowing my game to a crawl.  So if the Dashboard doesn't fix everything on the first try, keep trying other options!

[snapzit]

Yes, my game issues were minor and I got lucky with the Dashboard. I don't have huge amounts of CC.

[Morlock]

Question is: is it my computer or just the game when I get lag.

Merge your package files to reduce lag:

http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php/topic,17746.0.html

[michelou]

Well, as soon as I get some actual time to sit down and merge, I will. I'm sure it will help in general.

On a side note, though, I tried removing all CC/Mods including store stuff from the actual store and tried with a completely vanilla game. I am still getting the lag in France. What the Hell is it about France? Is it using more memory for some reason? Does the destination itself just contain more stuff? I am unable to play in Windowed mode at the moment (a seperate, long story), so I am unable to moniter the resourses being used there.

I can only conclude that it is from the game itself, or it is my processor.

[snapzit]

Everybody knows what it is about France that causes lag. It's the wine.

[Morlock]

Possibly your graphics card is struggling a bit, particularly if it is the 768MB version.

Have you tried reducing graphics settings? Start with view distance and number of high quality lots and see if it makes a difference, reducing smoothing and texture detail might help too.

[vorpal]

As far as my experience goes, France is different from the other two vacation worlds in that it has both explorer and tourist Sims. My game always lags in France at 4 pm and that's when the tourists are being sent home. It also lags, but less so, in the morning, when new tourists are spawned. And lags inbetween are sometimes caused by Sims trying to access the little island in the river or when they try to access the nectar shelves in the Nectary all at once.

[tizerist]

I remember about a year ago there was some sort of ini file in the TS3 folders you could edit to (in theory) change your cache limit.
But I can't find it now. It was one of the early methods to combat error 12.
Anyone remember that or know where that file is located?

[littleblackdog]

http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php?topic=15623.120;wap2

[tizerist]

Thanks. And is it worth editing it? I saw no real difference last time..

[J. M. Pescado]

How much more would you suggest?

I'd recommend at least 128 GBs of RAMs and RAMdisk. This should be enough to enable you to install the entire game uncompressed into RAM for the fastest possible loading times.

I would have thought 8 GBs to be sufficient, most people are playing with 4 and under.

Most people are also playing with the slow texture load, so...if you wanna get rid of it, you can't be like them.