My Game Keeps Flickering
Hi my name is Dre and I am having an issue with the Sims 3. Recently when I go to play my game in full screen mode, it does this uncontrollable flickering. I have already uninstalled and reinstalled t...
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Got it. I'm really sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but vertical sync is not the problem. I would strongly recommend not playing TS3 or TS4 on that laptop at all. These sims games are not what we would call highly demanding by 2018 standards, but they do have demands and they can be brutal if not met. This laptop is designed for light office/school related tasks and web surfing, maybe streaming video. Not for playing graphics intensive games. If you force it to run these games, you risk overheating and damaging the device beyond repair.
The processor (CPU) is not strong enough to run much more than the TS3 base game plus maybe two or three of the earliest EPs all on the lowest graphics options settings. For most players, LateNite and those that came after wouldn't even startup on that one, you were fortunate to get that far and further with it for a while. Not sure about TS4, possibly base game only? Others here can correct me on that. It is too tight on RAM at 4GB, as we already knew it does not have a dedicated graphics card, and I'm scratching my head over this to be honest, it has way too small a hard drive for much other than cloud based file access and you are already running out of space on C. There is a much higher capacity E drive showing up, which is great for other file related uses and storage, but it appears to be an external USB connected drive. You can't really run games like TS3/4 externally, so that doesn't help in this case.
As far as sims games go, I do think this one could handle TS2 very well if that's any consolation and if you can free up more space on the C drive to work with. It's of course a much older game but it still has a loyal following.
What I've described above is what we would expect this computer to handle. In many cases, players' experiences vary. But that you could run TS3 with all EPs for a while doesn't mean that you should or it would be expected to continue being able to do so at any level of acceptable playability.
I hope you can find a stronger computer on which to play, if one is within reach. Pricetags should never really be the total determining factor, but to do a comparison this looks like an under $350 (US Dollar) laptop if it were new. New ones that are strong enough to run the entire game would start at $900, much higher for high capacity Solid State Drives (SSDs). Desktops run cheaper and don't need as much power in their components to achieve the same performance.
The processor (CPU) is not strong enough to run much more than the TS3 base game plus maybe two or three of the earliest EPs all on the lowest graphics options settings. For most players, LateNite and those that came after wouldn't even startup on that one, you were fortunate to get that far and further with it for a while. Not sure about TS4, possibly base game only? Others here can correct me on that. It is too tight on RAM at 4GB, as we already knew it does not have a dedicated graphics card, and I'm scratching my head over this to be honest, it has way too small a hard drive for much other than cloud based file access and you are already running out of space on C. There is a much higher capacity E drive showing up, which is great for other file related uses and storage, but it appears to be an external USB connected drive. You can't really run games like TS3/4 externally, so that doesn't help in this case.
As far as sims games go, I do think this one could handle TS2 very well if that's any consolation and if you can free up more space on the C drive to work with. It's of course a much older game but it still has a loyal following.
"andrevivey92;c-16402214" wrote:
Weirdly though, I played TS3 plenty of times on this laptop and I played with all expansions with little issues other than occasional lag.
What I've described above is what we would expect this computer to handle. In many cases, players' experiences vary. But that you could run TS3 with all EPs for a while doesn't mean that you should or it would be expected to continue being able to do so at any level of acceptable playability.
I hope you can find a stronger computer on which to play, if one is within reach. Pricetags should never really be the total determining factor, but to do a comparison this looks like an under $350 (US Dollar) laptop if it were new. New ones that are strong enough to run the entire game would start at $900, much higher for high capacity Solid State Drives (SSDs). Desktops run cheaper and don't need as much power in their components to achieve the same performance.
