December 2019
I'm interested in buying the sims 3 through Origin, I have this GPU; AMD Radeon R9 200 Series
how do I know if the game will recognize and support my GPU, as I heard some newer GPU's are not supported by the game.
Solved! Go to Solution.
January 2020 - last edited January 2020
@Loose_Fox Thanks for the info. You need to edit two files, graphicscards.sgr and graphicsrules.sgr, both located inside the game's program files. For an Origin install, unless you changed the install location, the files will be in the default path:
Program files (x86)\Origin Games\The Sims 3\Game\Bin
For anyone else reading, these instructions are specific to the original poster's card. If you'd like help getting your own card recognized, please create your own thread and post the first 40 lines of your deviceconfig, found in Documents\Electronic Arts\The Sims 3.
First, open graphicscards.sgr, and right at the top is the list of AMD cards, starting with this:
vendor "ATI" 0x1002
card 0x6798 "AMD Radeon HD 7900 Series"
card 0x6799 "AMD Radeon HD 7900 Series"
card 0x679a "AMD Radeon HD 7900 Series"
under the vendor "ATI" line, create a new line and add this:
card 0x6810 "AMD Radeon R9 200 Series"
(with the proper spaces before the word card).
Save, quit, and open graphicsrules.sgr. Hit crtl-F and search for 29?0, which will take you to these lines:
elseif (match("${cardVendor}", "ATI"))
if (match("${cardName}", "*HD 29?0*") or match("${cardName}", "*HD 36?0*") or match("${cardName}", "*HD 38?0*") or match("${cardName}"
[etc.]
Change the HD 29?0 to R9 200 , but don't touch anything else, not even the asterisks. This will classify your card as uber. Depending on performance, you may need to turn down some of the in-game settings to high; it's impossible to say without knowing your specific model of GPU.
Still within graphicsrules.sgr, go back to the top, and look for this, 8-10 lines down:
if ($textureMemory == 0)
seti textureMemory 32
setb textureMemorySizeOK false
Change the 32 to a 1024, and put a # and a space in front of setb, so that the lines look like this:
if ($textureMemory == 0)
seti textureMemory 1024
# setb textureMemorySizeOK false
(While your card may have more than 1 GB of VRAM, the game can only use 800 MB.) Save, quit, launch the game, and check deviceconfig again. You should now see a [Found: 1, Matched: 1] value next to your card's name.
By the way, it's a good idea to check your in-game framerates as well. If they're consistently too high or fluctuate wildly, you'll need to use an outside tool to cap them. This is necessary to protect the health of your card; it's also pretty straightforward most of the time.
To see your fps, open the cheats console (crtl-shift-C) and enter "fps on" without quotes. A number will appear in the upper right corner of your screen, and it should never go above the refresh rate of your monitor. ("fps off" makes the number go away.) For AMD cards, RivaTuner Statistics Server works very well; since you have an Origin install, be sure to use TS3.exe to create the profile. Let me know if you need help with the setup.
December 2019
@Loose_Fox Your card isn't in TS3's database (I just looked), but that doesn't mean you couldn't add it. All it takes is copying and pasting a couple of lines in the correct files; I could write those lines out for you if I knew the device ID of your card.
But it's not usually necessary to add a modern card to the database—the game will run fine most of the time on an unrecognized card. There does seem to be a minor improvement in performance with many cards, but it's not clear whether that's only subjective.
If you happen to be on a Mac and are running Catalina, the game won't install at all, regardless of your graphics card, because Sims 3 is 32-bit, and Catalina is 64-bit only. There's an update coming for the Mac version of the game, but you might want to wait to buy it until that happens.
December 2019
Thank you for the response!
How do I check my device ID so that you could help me with your solution?
I'm using PC and those are my specs:
December 2019
@Loose_Fox There are a few different ways to check, but there's no point in doing so until you have the game installed, since you'll be editing two of the installed program files. Launch it once, just to make sure it's working, then go into Documents\Electronic Arts\The Sims 3, open the file called deviceconfig, and copy the information under "Graphics device info," from about 25 to 40 lines down. This will list the card's device ID, as well as confirm that the game is using the correct card rather than the chip integrated into the processor.
Another way to find your device ID is to run a dxdiag and look under "Display Devices," near the top of the saved file. The "device key" (six lines down) has the relevant information. It will look something like this:
Device Key: Enum\PCI\VEN_1002&DEV_67EF&SUBSYS_0179106B&REV_C0
where (in my case) 1002 means AMD, 67EF corresponds to my model of card, and the other stuff probably refers to the manufacturer of the card.
January 2020
OK I bought the game and installed it, I ran it once ad got a message that my graphic card is not recognized.
That's the text from my deviceconfig:
January 2020 - last edited January 2020
@Loose_Fox Thanks for the info. You need to edit two files, graphicscards.sgr and graphicsrules.sgr, both located inside the game's program files. For an Origin install, unless you changed the install location, the files will be in the default path:
Program files (x86)\Origin Games\The Sims 3\Game\Bin
For anyone else reading, these instructions are specific to the original poster's card. If you'd like help getting your own card recognized, please create your own thread and post the first 40 lines of your deviceconfig, found in Documents\Electronic Arts\The Sims 3.
First, open graphicscards.sgr, and right at the top is the list of AMD cards, starting with this:
vendor "ATI" 0x1002
card 0x6798 "AMD Radeon HD 7900 Series"
card 0x6799 "AMD Radeon HD 7900 Series"
card 0x679a "AMD Radeon HD 7900 Series"
under the vendor "ATI" line, create a new line and add this:
card 0x6810 "AMD Radeon R9 200 Series"
(with the proper spaces before the word card).
Save, quit, and open graphicsrules.sgr. Hit crtl-F and search for 29?0, which will take you to these lines:
elseif (match("${cardVendor}", "ATI"))
if (match("${cardName}", "*HD 29?0*") or match("${cardName}", "*HD 36?0*") or match("${cardName}", "*HD 38?0*") or match("${cardName}"
[etc.]
Change the HD 29?0 to R9 200 , but don't touch anything else, not even the asterisks. This will classify your card as uber. Depending on performance, you may need to turn down some of the in-game settings to high; it's impossible to say without knowing your specific model of GPU.
Still within graphicsrules.sgr, go back to the top, and look for this, 8-10 lines down:
if ($textureMemory == 0)
seti textureMemory 32
setb textureMemorySizeOK false
Change the 32 to a 1024, and put a # and a space in front of setb, so that the lines look like this:
if ($textureMemory == 0)
seti textureMemory 1024
# setb textureMemorySizeOK false
(While your card may have more than 1 GB of VRAM, the game can only use 800 MB.) Save, quit, launch the game, and check deviceconfig again. You should now see a [Found: 1, Matched: 1] value next to your card's name.
By the way, it's a good idea to check your in-game framerates as well. If they're consistently too high or fluctuate wildly, you'll need to use an outside tool to cap them. This is necessary to protect the health of your card; it's also pretty straightforward most of the time.
To see your fps, open the cheats console (crtl-shift-C) and enter "fps on" without quotes. A number will appear in the upper right corner of your screen, and it should never go above the refresh rate of your monitor. ("fps off" makes the number go away.) For AMD cards, RivaTuner Statistics Server works very well; since you have an Origin install, be sure to use TS3.exe to create the profile. Let me know if you need help with the setup.
January 2020
Thank you so much! it worked the game is recognizing my GPU now.
I checked the fps inside the game with the cheat console. it seems that the numbers are pretty high and can reach 250-300..
If I set in the game options to limit the FPS to 60, would it do the trick?
if not, how do I limit the game fps?
thank you again you are really very helpful and I appreciate your help very much
January 2020
@Loose_Fox The in-game setting doesn't do anything most if not all of the time. You'll need to use an outside tool instead. For AMD cards, RivaTuner Statistics Server works well. Install it, create a profile for TS3.exe, manually set the fps limit to 60, and check in-game to make sure it worked. Please keep in mind that RTSS does need to be running while you play in order for it to work. But it can just sit in the system tray and not bother you; it also has very low resource use.
If you happen to play Sims 4, be sure to close RTSS before launching it, or TS4 may repeatedly crash at the Main Menu.
January 2020
When I limit my FPS from an app outside the game it causes screen tearing while gameplay. so I decided not to linit the fps, I haven't seen the game getting much more then 200 fps, and I think the GPU can handle it if it makes my game run smoother actually.
January 2020
@Loose_Fox By not limiting fps, you're risking overworking your graphics card. It's your choice, but you might want to play with the settings first. Check whether you have screen tearing in windowed mode, and if not, you can use Windowed Borderless (free download) to get the fullscreen effect.
Or you can use AMD's built-in controls alongside the outside tool. The Catalyst Control Center I have doesn't do a thing for framerates, but maybe enabling one of its settings will get rid of the screen tearing while the outside tool locks down the fps.