Has anybody found a fix for this yet?

I'm still having this problem. Given the fact that that I've been playing games on a potato for nearly a decade before I got my current PC, my standards aren't very high. I wouldn't mind this stuttering so much, except it gets worse the bigger the save gets. Eventually it gets so bad the game freezes for minutes when I move the camera.

This happens regardless of the game setup. I ran it with expansions, with mods, with expansions and mods, just the base game, just the base game and one expansion, repacks, etc. Nothing changes except the loading times.

What's funny is that the potato I mentioned above actually ran The Sims 3 base game pretty well. Took a whole century to load, and I was pretty much stuck in Sims 2 mode (no Town View or traveling to other lots on the regular basis) but it was playable.

Sims 3 ran better before all the patches, as they patched more the game requirements have gone up. You can check here the requirements community has made - http://modthesims.info/wiki.php?title=Game_Help:TS3_System_Requirements

Since it happens as your save game bloats, you can help yourself by getting some Nraas mods - Overwatch and Errortrap

That stutter is very common when for instance routing issues happen - game tries to recalculate the route continually but it can't so it tries over and over again. Overwatch will find errors like this and reset those sims. It will also clean up your world every sim night. There are also some world fixes at MTS that get rid of the holes in routing layer, you can check those out as well. I personally don't use them, I just use Nraas mods.

urmom wrote:Sims 3 ran better before all the patches, as they patched more the game requirements have gone up. You can check here the requirements community has made - http://modthesims.info/wiki.php?title=Game_Help:TS3_System_Requirements

Since it happens as your save game bloats, you can help yourself by getting some Nraas mods - Overwatch and Errortrap

That stutter is very common when for instance routing issues happen - game tries to recalculate the route continually but it can't so it tries over and over again. Overwatch will find errors like this and reset those sims. It will also clean up your world every sim night. There are also some world fixes at MTS that get rid of the holes in routing layer, you can check those out as well. I personally don't use them, I just use Nraas mods.

I already tried running it without patches. And I've been using Overwatch, ErrorTrap and the others for years.

Anarchy wrote:I already tried running it without patches. And I've been using Overwatch, ErrorTrap and the others for years.

Well I don't know then, there's not much else you can do except get better hardware. I fixed my lag with new CPU and it's much better than it was before.

Though what I did when I could barely play is I'd download smaller custom worlds, Fharhond Glacier on MTS for example. They worked fairly well and I even played that one with Nraas story progression

urmom wrote:

Anarchy wrote:I already tried running it without patches. And I've been using Overwatch, ErrorTrap and the others for years.

Well I don't know then, there's not much else you can do except get better hardware. I fixed my lag with new CPU and it's much better than it was before.

Though what I did when I could barely play is I'd download smaller custom worlds, Fharhond Glacier on MTS for example. They worked fairly well and I even played that one with Nraas story progression

Upgrading the hardware is hardly a solution. More like a compromise, and one that might not even work since my current PC should be more than enough for The Sims 3 yet the game runs like crap. I could get an i7-4790 and run into the same problem.

This PC is nearly identical to mine, only difference is the CPU, which is comparable performance wise (probably worse since it's an AMD):



I've tried running the game with and without expansions, which AFAIK impact performance a lot. There wasn't the slightest difference for me, which leads me to believe that The Sims 3 is hardly pushing the hardware to it's limits. My old PC didn't have this problem, and I don't think it even met the minimum system requirements:

Pentium 4 3.0 Ghz
768 Mb RAM (later 256 Mb after I flooded one of the cards running GTA IV, oops)
GeForce 9400 GT 512 Mb
Windows XP 32bit

Anarchy wrote:(...)
I've tried running the game with and without expansions, which AFAIK impact performance a lot. There wasn't the slightest difference for me, which leads me to believe that The Sims 3 is hardly pushing the hardware to it's limits. My old PC didn't have this problem, and I don't think it even met the minimum system requirements:

Pentium 4 3.0 Ghz
768 Mb RAM (later 256 Mb after I flooded one of the cards running GTA IV, oops)
GeForce 9400 GT 512 Mb
Windows XP 32bit

Sorry for the belated reply,


See the underlined part in the quote: that is indeed absolutely essential in many cases - even though it may be not, in your particular case. Other than that, have you given the TS3 "savefile cleaner" a try ? I myself used it a few times, to overcome a few in-game woes (not stuttering, but to avoid game crashes that came up whenever one of my sims attempted to shower or bath). See this link here:

http://www.simlogical.com/ContentUploadsRemote/uploads/1532/



Using the savefile cleaner should be straightforward. Just make sure to backup your savefiles, before applying that tool. Also, have you tried cleaning the cache files in My Documents/Electronic Arts/The Sims 3 ?

-CASPartCache.package
-compositorCache.package
-scriptCache.package
-simCompositorCache.package
-socialCache.package
-plus the contents of the folders "WorldCaches" & "Thumbnails"


Deleting those can help too sometimes. Beyond that I'm unsure too. The only instance where I ever experienced really heavy stuttering was shortly before my old hard-drive died. I am also getting some problems when playing in those really gigantic custom worlds ("Union Cove", if you heard from it). 

But in the end, I myself don't experience these issues, and my current machine (which I am planning to replace soon and which is by today's standards almost ancient) is everything but good - that old machine has an Intel i3 CPU @2.93Ghz and just 4GB of RAM.

I've been having this problem for years, I've already tried everything, I was simply hoping I'd run into another 1% that had this problem and managed to fix it.

Hello,

Since you're familiar with Nraas... Have you ever considered using Porter to move everyone in your neighbourhood to a new town and thus, a new save? All relationships will remain intact, but other than that, it's like a brand new town.
I've moved population of over 150 sims. It takes some time, but it works 9 out of 10 times. Just in case yours is the proverbial 10th, don't delete your old save game until you make sure your "porterfamily" loads correctly

Lady ElDi wrote:Hello,

Since you're familiar with Nraas... Have you ever considered using Porter to move everyone in your neighbourhood to a new town and thus, a new save? All relationships will remain intact, but other than that, it's like a brand new town.
I've moved population of over 150 sims. It takes some time, but it works 9 out of 10 times. Just in case yours is the proverbial 10th, don't delete your old save game until you make sure your "porterfamily" loads correctly

What saves? Game becomes unplayable after 1 - 2 hours. I have no saves.

Hello,

I'm sorry, I seem to have skimmed past some of your posts. 
Your pc should indeed run the game with at least a few expansions. With the exception of your RAM. That is just, not enough RAM. 
I was running TS3 on a pc that was worse that yours, except for RAM. I started out with 1GB RAM and that allowed me a handful of expansions. Eventually, I upgraded to 3 GB RAM and that allowed me to use all EP's (I didn't have stuff packs installed though).

Upgrading your hardware may feel like a compromise, but in your case, a small change just might be the solution. And if you're going to make 1 change, upgrade to more RAM, as the rest of your hardware should be fair enough for some acceptable simming.

Lady ElDi wrote:Hello,

I'm sorry, I seem to have skimmed past some of your posts. 
Your pc should indeed run the game with at least a few expansions. With the exception of your RAM. That is just, not enough RAM. 
I was running TS3 on a pc that was worse that yours, except for RAM. I started out with 1GB RAM and that allowed me a handful of expansions. Eventually, I upgraded to 3 GB RAM and that allowed me to use all EP's (I didn't have stuff packs installed though).

Upgrading your hardware may feel like a compromise, but in your case, a small change just might be the solution. And if you're going to make 1 change, upgrade to more RAM, as the rest of your hardware should be fair enough for some acceptable simming.

That doesn't really make any sense. Firstly because I've tried running the game several times with and without expansions, there wasn't a single difference as far as performance goes between the game with no additional content, and the game with every single official add-on (expansions, stuff, store).Secondly, because I've tried running the game with 769 MB of RAM, and while it did run pretty badly, it was playable and I didn't have this problem. And thirdly, The Sims 3 with all it's extra add-ons doesn't even use 4GB of RAM. It can't even use more than 4GB of RAM by default.

The PC overall is more than up to the task, that includes RAM. I'm pretty sure whatever is causing this won't be fixed by getting more RAM.

Nevermind.

Hello,

If you look at the minimum requirements for TS3, you'll notice that, 1 GB RAM is the absolute minimum. I'm not saying that your pc's hardware is bad, not at all. It should be a decent enough machine to run the game. Except for RAM. You don't have 1 GB of RAM. You have roughly 3/4 of the minimum RAM requirements. 
I also didn't say you need 4 or more, but you should see some change if you upgraded to 2 GB RAM, even 1 would make a difference.

Maybe my message is unclear because I was rambling a little (sorry about that), but the facts remain.

Lady ElDi wrote:You don't have 1 GB of RAM.

wat

Lock this please.