Sims 3 never uses more than 1.7gb RAM? (crash)

by rinlinlin
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Sims 3 never uses more than 1.7gb RAM? (crash)

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★★★ Novice

Recently I've been trying to get into Sims 3 again and I've done a bit of research on increasing game performance, mainly using this guide as reference.

 

I playtested on a fresh save on a medium custom world and my game crashed within a couple minutes of playing. The game ran pretty well other than weird mouse rotate lag on build/buy mode, but I noticed that it never used more than 2gb of my RAM (stayed around 1.7gb most of the time). I read that Sims 3 has been optimized to use 4gb instead of 2gb since quite early on so I assumed it was just all the game needed to use, but is it supposed to be able to use more? I'm wondering if it's a memory crash. 

 

I am on a Win10 64-bit ROG Strix G531GU laptop. My specs are:

Nvidia GeForce GTX 1660 Ti

Intel Core i7-9750H Processor

16gb RAM (5991mb disp. memory)

 

I installed Sims 3 and all packs on a D drive. I'm on patch 1.67. I have CC but they are merged with CC magic. 

 

Any help would be amazing! Thanks!

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Re: Sims 3 never uses more than 1.7gb RAM? (crash)

@rinlinlin  The deviceconfig looks good: your hardware is recognized and rated correctly, so no problem there.  Excessively high framerates could explain all the crashing, especially on a laptop with a reasonably powerful card.  An hour of smooth play should be more than long enough to confirm that the game is running well now.  If you go back to your custom world and happen to get more crashing, you'll know it's likely not your computer but the world itself or something happening in it.

 

For a disc install, you could run the Super Patch to repair if you ever needed it.  I don't think there's any reason to run it now, and it's not commonly required, I'm just saying you could if you wanted to.  The Super Patch will revert graphicscards.sgr and graphicsrules.sgr to their original versions though, so be sure to make a copy of each file beforehand if you don't want to have to redo the edits.

 

https://forums.thesims.com/en_US/discussion/175477/official-ea-download-link-for-the-sims-3-cumulati...

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I don't work for EA. I'm just trying to help fellow players with their games.

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Re: Sims 3 never uses more than 1.7gb RAM? (crash)

@rinlinlin  Please test your game in Sunset Valley or Twinbrook, two of the best EA-made worlds, to set a baseline for performance.  Some custom worlds are great, some are not, and some work well under certain circumstances but not others, so it's easier to deal with a known quantity.

 

The first thing to do is check your in-game framerates.  Open the cheats console (crtl-shift-C) and enter "fps on" without quotes.  A number will appear in the upper right corner, and it should never go above the refresh rate of your monitor (probably 144 Hz, maybe 120 or even 60) or whatever number you've used to manually cap fps.  Excessively high framerates can cause crashing and other issues as well.

 

If your game crashes even though fps is locked in, please remove your custom content and test again.  I'm not saying you need to play without cc, just that it's worth testing before moving on to other potential problems.  Even one bad cc item can cause repeated crashes despite the game otherwise running smoothly.

 

Please also post the first 40 lines or so of deviceconfig.log, which is in Documents\Electronic Arts\The Sims 3.  (Stop when you get to the Options section.)  You can remove your user and machine names, about 25 lines down, but please include everything else.  This will show how the game sees and rates your hardware.  Since the guide you linked recommends a few edits to the game's .sgr files, I'd like to see the results.

 

By the way, what kind of install is this?  I'm not going to tell you to patch to 1.69, but troubleshooting is different with a disc install than it is for a Steam install.

 

And yes, to answer your question, Sims 3 can and does use more than 2 GB memory.  It often doesn't need that much though, especially in a new save in a smaller world, or if you don't have all the expansions installed.

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I don't work for EA. I'm just trying to help fellow players with their games.
Message 2 of 5 (1,610 Views)

Re: Sims 3 never uses more than 1.7gb RAM? (crash)

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Oh geez, I forgot to add an fps limiter earlier. Explains why I crashed. I've been playtesting in Twinbrook with no mods for an hour and so far it's been playing very smoothly. I did install the game by disk because I wanted to downgrade to 1.67.

 

I also attached my device config!

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Re: Sims 3 never uses more than 1.7gb RAM? (crash)

@rinlinlin  The deviceconfig looks good: your hardware is recognized and rated correctly, so no problem there.  Excessively high framerates could explain all the crashing, especially on a laptop with a reasonably powerful card.  An hour of smooth play should be more than long enough to confirm that the game is running well now.  If you go back to your custom world and happen to get more crashing, you'll know it's likely not your computer but the world itself or something happening in it.

 

For a disc install, you could run the Super Patch to repair if you ever needed it.  I don't think there's any reason to run it now, and it's not commonly required, I'm just saying you could if you wanted to.  The Super Patch will revert graphicscards.sgr and graphicsrules.sgr to their original versions though, so be sure to make a copy of each file beforehand if you don't want to have to redo the edits.

 

https://forums.thesims.com/en_US/discussion/175477/official-ea-download-link-for-the-sims-3-cumulati...

——————————————————————————————————————————

I don't work for EA. I'm just trying to help fellow players with their games.
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Re: Sims 3 never uses more than 1.7gb RAM? (crash)

★★★ Novice

Thank you for your help!

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