Have a question about the frame rate at the sims 3

It's not the TS3 program that is the deciding factor on where to cap frame rates, it's your monitor. If you have a 60 Hz monitor/screen, than any frames per second above 60 fps your monitor cannot interpret and they are the equivalent of digital noise being generated for no useful purpose. If you have a 120 Hz or higher monitor, then the frame rate can be safely capped at such a higher rate.

Most flat screen monitors sold in the US are 60 Hz, even the high end Apple ones (or whatever brand they are selling today) for high precision video editing. Game enthusiasts will seek out those with higher refresh rates and the markets in some countries seem to have settled on 75 Hz as the standard for casual use for whatever reason, hence some differences.

The issue with TS3 in particular is that like other games of its development era it has no functional built-in fps limiter and the higher end video cards being sold today can run wild on it, generating fps in the many hundreds or thousands. Besides being horrible for game performance and leading to graphics glitches, lag, screen tears, and crashes, this is potentially harmful to the system and can burn its components out if left unfixed.

Depends on your monitor. If the native refresh rate of your monitor is 120, then having the game's FPS capped at 120 is fine. However, if your monitor's refresh rate is 60, there's no benefit at all to capping your frame rate higher than 60.

The danger is that if uncapped, the frame rate will run in the hundreds and needlessly tax your graphics card. The advice to limit frame rate to 60 is due to the fact that in the past most LCD monitors had a refresh rate of 60. But that's changing as newer monitors might have a higher refresh rate.

The human eye cannot "see" refresh rates that high, meaning you might not really be missing much. There can be a difficult to define difference in quality between let's say 30 Hz and 60, but not to the extent that it's really obvious. Where 144 Hz and higher monitors come in would be for games like first person shooters where split-second accuracy can be helpful for the player to succeed. But sims games don't work that way, time management in the game is much more relaxed than that. As I like to keep saying, your sim was going to burn those waffles and be late for work anyway.

The reason I asked if you had an iMac is that I am pretty sure none of them have monitors above 60 Hz and it's not like we can swap them out even if we wanted to. Even the super fancy iMac Pro beginning at $5,000 (USD) has a 60 Hz monitor (actually made by LG), I don't believe there is any such thing as a 5k monitor that can run at higher refresh rates.

"Indieblue;c-17359618" wrote:
There was weird sound coming from my gpu so i checked afterburner and the frame rate was 3000 o.0

Hopefully you will not be playing TS3 any longer until you get those fps rates capped. Let us know if you need help with that. High pitched whining noises coming from the GPU are definitely a symptom of an overworked card on its way to burning out.

"Indieblue;c-17359681" wrote:
Btw, do you have any idea on the optimized game setting for 1060gtx super, i5 9400f, 16 ram? i havent played it yet(planning to play on the next weekend! :) i finally bought a new computer lol) but i am already too scared to play it especially on high setting lol!

If you mean the game's built-in options, on that hardware you should be able to play on all of the highest settings. We do usually recommend that Reflection Quality (Water & Mirrors) be set to a medium setting and High Detail Lots be set no higher than 2 at least to begin with as both settings use up a lot of game resources for relatively little benefit compared to the others. As ongoing games progress they tend to use more and more RAM, so anything we can do to relieve stress on the game while preserving gameplay becomes important due to the game's 32-bit resource limitations.

If you mean your Nvidia card's settings, that would take more of a GPU expert to advise on but in the end I expect much of that will come down to trial, error, and player preferences.

> @igazor said:
> (Quote)
> If you mean the game's built-in options, on that hardware you should be able to play on all of the highest settings. We do usually recommend that Reflection Quality (Water & Mirrors) be set to a medium setting and High Detail Lots be set no higher than 2 at least to begin with as both settings use up a lot of game resources for relatively little benefit compared to the others. As ongoing games progress they tend to use more and more RAM, so anything we can do to relieve stress on the game while preserving gameplay becomes important due to the game's 32-bit resource limitations.
>
> If you mean your Nvidia card's settings, that would take more of a GPU expert to advise on but in the end I expect much of that will come down to trial, error, and player preferences.



Thank you so much! A little bit late but happy new year ;)

"ingridmf;c-17360928" wrote:
I checked the rate when playing and it's around 100-150, and my monitor Hz is 60. How can i cape it accordingly? I have an AMD Radeon graphic card btw, I tried looking around but only found outdated solutions.

Use the AMD control panel that came with your card to arrange for vertical refresh (Always On) and Triple Buffering. Which control panel it is depends on which card you have, some will be called Radeon Pro others might still have Crimson or Catalyst. Usually you can get to it from a right-click on the desktop or in the system tray.

If that's not enough to lock things in, and it often isn't, or if gameplay in windowed mod is required, then the next tool we add is RivaTuner Stats Server (RTSS).

https://www.guru3d.com/files-details/rtss-rivatuner-statistics-server-download.html
(the real downloads are 2/3 down the page, ignore any in the upper right corner as those would be rogue ads if you have no ad blocker)

Set up a profile for TS3.exe (for Patch 1.69) or TS3W.exe (with the "W" for 1.67) and set the frame limit to 60 explicitly. Note that unlike other tools we discuss here, RTSS must be running in order to have any effect. It can be set to start up with Windows, but be sure to minimize it (the "-" button) and not "x" it out when finished looking at or adjusting its settings as then it won't be running anymore. If you set it to display the fps rates, then you will always have a visual cue as to whether it is indeed running; the value that it displays is the same as the cheats console fps command except in prettier colors.

"igazor;c-17361015" wrote:

"ingridmf;c-17360928" wrote:
I checked the rate when playing and it's around 100-150, and my monitor Hz is 60. How can i cape it accordingly? I have an AMD Radeon graphic card btw, I tried looking around but only found outdated solutions.

Use the AMD control panel that came with your card to arrange for vertical refresh (Always On) and Triple Buffering. Which control panel it is depends on which card you have, some will be called Radeon Pro others might still have Crimson or Catalyst. Usually you can get to it from a right-click on the desktop or in the system tray.

If that's not enough to lock things in, and it often isn't, or if gameplay in windowed mod is required, then the next tool we add is RivaTuner Stats Server (RTSS).

https://www.guru3d.com/files-details/rtss-rivatuner-statistics-server-download.html
(the real downloads are 2/3 down the page, ignore any in the upper right corner as those would be rogue ads if you have no ad blocker)

Set up a profile for TS3.exe (for Patch 1.69) or TS3W.exe (with the "W" for 1.67) and set the frame limit to 60 explicitly. Note that unlike other tools we discuss here, RTSS must be running in order to have any effect. It can be set to start up with Windows, but be sure to minimize it (the "-" button) and not "x" it out when finished looking at or adjusting its settings as then it won't be running anymore. If you set it to display the fps rates, then you will always have a visual cue as to whether it is indeed running; the value that it displays is the same as the cheats console fps command except in prettier colors.

This is incredible. All lagging and graphic white colored objects issue have nearly gone after using this. :)

"igazor;c-17361015" wrote:

"ingridmf;c-17360928" wrote:
I checked the rate when playing and it's around 100-150, and my monitor Hz is 60. How can i cape it accordingly? I have an AMD Radeon graphic card btw, I tried looking around but only found outdated solutions.

Use the AMD control panel that came with your card to arrange for vertical refresh (Always On) and Triple Buffering. Which control panel it is depends on which card you have, some will be called Radeon Pro others might still have Crimson or Catalyst. Usually you can get to it from a right-click on the desktop or in the system tray.

If that's not enough to lock things in, and it often isn't, or if gameplay in windowed mod is required, then the next tool we add is RivaTuner Stats Server (RTSS).

https://www.guru3d.com/files-details/rtss-rivatuner-statistics-server-download.html
(the real downloads are 2/3 down the page, ignore any in the upper right corner as those would be rogue ads if you have no ad blocker)

Set up a profile for TS3.exe (for Patch 1.69) or TS3W.exe (with the "W" for 1.67) and set the frame limit to 60 explicitly. Note that unlike other tools we discuss here, RTSS must be running in order to have any effect. It can be set to start up with Windows, but be sure to minimize it (the "-" button) and not "x" it out when finished looking at or adjusting its settings as then it won't be running anymore. If you set it to display the fps rates, then you will always have a visual cue as to whether it is indeed running; the value that it displays is the same as the cheats console fps command except in prettier colors.

Thank you so much for this @igazor !

So I've been trying to find the options you mentioned in the AMD control panel :
- Vertical refresh : is it this one higlighted in yellow?
https://i.ibb.co/4Fg1cF6/Capture.png

- Triple buffering : I found it just below in "Advanced"
https://i.ibb.co/HDRJ0K0/Capture-2.png

Hey @ingridmf, thanks for visualizing this question and the process to go about setting the refresh settings, am considering getting a AMD Radeon RX 5700XT dedicated graphics card, cheaper in cost than Intel. The 1060Ti is cheaper but it’s old tech whereas for $100 or so more I can get an AMD graphics card that’s the latest. Something for me to think about when finances stabilize to the point of being able to consider building a gaming rig.

When it happens I’ll have to consider dropping frame-rate on the graphics card so it doesn’t burn out the card.

Lots of fun things to think about.