Just bought The Sims 4 + Seasons, unplayable lag!

[PillzSufrie]

I need help regarding my game, I just bought it alongside the Seasons DLC and it is unplayable.

The game lags from the get go, the menu stutters and runs at around 10 FPS, and in-game it gets even worse.

My PC is quite powerful and I can run Star Wars Battlefront II and Battlefield V on Ultra at 80-100 FPS with very rare stutters (or any other game really).

I have tried every popular solution (deleting cache, resetting to factory settings, repairing on Origin) to no avail.

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

DxDiag file is attached below:

[puzzlezaddict]

@PillzSufrie  The most obvious issue is that your C drive has only 5.7 GB free.  This isn't enough room for Windows to maneuver, even without accounting for the temp files you'd get while playing.  Try to clear as much space as you can; 15 GB is a good minimum goal.

Your dxdiag also lists a number of errors related to Razer Synapse Service and Game Manager Service.  If you don't want to uninstall the software outright, try killing both in the Task Manager before you launch TS4.  If that doesn't work, you could go through the clean boot process and only disable those two services.

https://www.windowscentral.com/how-clean-boot-windows-10

If this doesn't help either, try playing while your computer is disconnected from the internet, as in, disable wifi and/or pull the ethernet cable.

[PillzSufrie]

@puzzlezaddict I've cleared my C drive to about 18GB, disabled both those services through msconfig and still to no avail, the game is still unplayable and stuttering extremely.

I'm just wondering why I haven't encountered this problem with any other game before, including other Origin games (like stated above SWBF2 and BFV).

[puzzlezaddict]

@PillzSufrie  There's an issue sometimes just with Sims 4 where having any internet connection at all will cause massive fps drops; playing while the computer is entirely offline fixes the problem.  Please let me know if it helps you, and I'll merge your posts with the master thread on the issue.

If that doesn't help, there is one TS4 error in your dxdiag that's most likely related to your graphics card driver.  Your driver is very new, but there's an even newer one available from Nvidia, if you want to try updating.

https://www.nvidia.com/Download/index.aspx?lang=en-us

[PillzSufrie]

@puzzlezaddict I tried disabling my internet, no results. My driver is up to date, no results. I was playing other games fine earlier today with no lag and stutters so the problem is exclusive to Sims 4. Even lowered the graphics quality.

[roberta591]

@PillzSufrie This game does some post video adjustments in software. Your low free space and dual monitors may be affecting performance of this game. IMO 18Gb is not enough free space on the system device. A 113Gb storage device is not going to be big enough for a gaming rig. This game creates some good size temp files as it runs. IMO with the price of ssds today there is no reason to have a small ssd for a primary system storage device.

[puzzlezaddict]

@PillzSufrie  Sorry for the late reply.  Sims 4 uses different resources than other games (no surprise), so some apps that don't cause issues elsewhere can slow down TS4 or even crash it completely.

Since you play other Origin games without problems, and playing offline didn't help, it's unlikely that your antivirus/firewall is the issue.  Still, it's an easy test: restart your computer, disable any third-party programs you have, and play the game.  If it runs normally, you can set exceptions for Origin.exe, TS4.exe, and TS4_x64.exe.

If that doesn't help, try playing in a clean boot:

https://www.windowscentral.com/how-clean-boot-windows-10

And you're right, this has nothing to do with the strength of your hardware.  Nor should you need to lower the graphics settings—you're way over the recommendations even for ultra graphics.