Sims 3 having worse graphics after recognising card [ Edited ]

[es_lorax]

Hello!

I got a new gaming PC a few days ago, and I was hoping to set sims 3 up on it, but I'm having an issue where whenever I try to make the game recognise my graphics card through the graphics card & graphics rules files it makes my graphics worse than before it recognised the card (all the textures look extremely blurry, I've attatched some examples to this post) - my deviceconfig file also says that it has found and matched my card

I've tried mutiple solutions suggested on other posts like resetting the options.ini file, messing around with my in-game settings (they are all on maximum, but the quality looks worse than minimum graphics), installing Direct9, updating my graphics drivers, doing a few clean reinstalls of the game, running it without expansions or mods - none of it has worked for me

Here's my computer specs for reference:

Graphics Card: 8GB NVIDIA GEFORCE RTX 3050

Processor: AMD Ryzen 5 5600 6-core processor

16GB Ram

Windows 11 (64 bit)

I'm also running the game on the new EA app if that makes a difference, and I've noticed that the 'edge smoothing' setting resets itself every time I load up a new game, which is a bit weird

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

[roberta591]

@es_lorax Please post your computer's dxdiag - how to run dxdiag   Then attach the txt to the paper clip in the lower right of the forum response window.

[es_lorax]

@roberta591 Thank you! I've attatched the DxDiag here.

I've managed to improve the graphics a bit since my post by messing around some more with the graphics rules file, but they're still not as high quality as they should be on max settings, especially in map view and when looking at things like trees from a distance (my laptop has a much worse graphics card than this PC, and TS3 looks way better quality on there, so I'm still sure there's an issue somewhere)

[puzzlezaddict]

@es_lorax  Please go into Documents > Electronic Arts > The Sims 3, open deviceconfig.log, copy the first 40 lines or so (stop when you get to Options), and paste them here.  This section shows how Sims 3 is reading and ranking your hardware.  You can delete your user and computer names, 20 lines down, if you want; the file doesn't contain any other personal information.

If you use GeForce Experience, please disable the option to optimize your graphics settings, at least for Sims 3.  GFE could be the reason your Edge Smoothing setting keeps reseting.

Please also remove all your mods, including the UI mod you're using and any lighting mod you've installed, at least long enough to test.  While these shouldn't affect graphics to the degree that you're seeing, it's important to know how the game looks in its vanilla state.

[roberta591]

@es_lorax   I have an AMD Ryzen 5600x w/ ASUS RTX 3050 oc. The first time I started the game I got the notice about the video card. I ignored it and I figured I'd get back to it later. I never changed anything and the game runs perfect. If it ain't broke don't fix it. I recommend restore the game settings where you get the message (you only get the message once)  about the video card. If so inclined all you should have to do is add your card to the right place in the graphicscards.sgr file and it should point to the right place in the graphicsrules file. The settings resetting may be OneDrive. As Microsoft has made it harder to ignore OneDrive I recommend opening OneDrive settings and set OneDrive to ignore the user documents/Electronic Arts folder. That's where the game uses but OneDrive has moved the files to the user OneDrive folder to sync files. To change these setting you have to wait until OneDrive finishes what ever it is doing. Then check the option to keep files on this pc. Doing this does not upset any other programs and lets the game find the files where it expects them to be. Windows is redirecting calls to the user files and the game is doing a direct calls to the game files in the user documents folder bypassing Windows.   hth

[es_lorax]

@puzzlezaddictthank you, I've attatched the device config below

I've taken out all my mods / UI recolour and I'm still having some graphical issues, I'll make sure GFE is off though, thank you for the suggestion!

=== Application info ===
Name: Sims3
Version:
Build: Release
=== Rating info ===
GPU: 5 GPU Memory: 4 CPU: 4 RAM: 4 CPU Speed: 3493 Threading: 3
Adjusted CPU: 4258 RAM: 16287 Adjusted RAM: 15775 Cores: 12
=== Machine info ===
OS version: Windows 8 6.2.9200
OS prod type: 0
OS major ver: 6
OS minor ver: 2
OS SP major ver: 0
OS SP minor ver: 0
OS is 64Bit: 1
CPU: AuthenticAMD
Brand: AMD Ryzen 5 5600 6-Core Processor
Family: 15
Model: 1
Cores: 12
HT: 0
x64: 0
Memory: 16287MB
Free memory: 9771MB

=== Graphics device info ===
Number: 0
Name (driver): NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3050
Name (database): GeForce RTX 3050 [Found: 1, Matched: 1]
Vendor: NVIDIA
Chipset: Vendor: 10de, Device: 2507, Board: 630119da, Chipset: 00a1
Driver: nvldumd.dll, Version: 31.0.15.2849, GUID: D7B71E3E-6647-11CF-4B71-0E430EC2D235
Driver version: 2849
Monitor: \\.\DISPLAY1
Texture memory: 8192MB
Vertex program: 3.0
Pixel program: 3.0
Hardware TnL: 1

[es_lorax]

@roberta591I've had that issue with onedrive interfering with sims 3 in the past, I forgot to turn it off this time, so I'll make sure it's disabled!

My last resort was to just reset the graphicscards.sgr & graphicsrules.sgr files back to the originals, I thought it was worth asking here just in case there's something I'm missing or doing wrong, but thank you for your help!

[puzzlezaddict]

@es_lorax  Your GPU is not only recognized but rated correctly, as you probably know already, so that's not the issue.  But maybe some other edit to the files is causing the problem.  I do think it's worth reverting to the original .sgr files.  If this helps, please post the edits you made, or the guide you followed, so I can take a look.

While you're testing, you only need to make sure GFE is not "optimizing" your graphics settings.  It's fine to let the app run, or at least it should be; I don't have any issue with it and haven't seen any reports of its presence being a problem in several years.