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Magnezones's avatar
5 years ago

So I edited my .ini file and graphicsrules and...

The difference in performance is HUGE. The game actually runs well with minimal issues now, as it's making full use of my PC's specs. I wondered for ages how, when my PC is so above the games recommended specs, why I was having performance issues, and tweaking some numbers as recommended fixed every problem I had.

Why is the game like this by default, exactly?

9 Replies

  • I'll have to answer your questions with another question. This game was designed in 2008-09 and completed its development cycle just after the end of 2013. Were your computer and its components made back then (this is rhetorical, I assume not). :)

    There are no .ini file edits concerning memory usage that have any positive impacts on the game if you have edited what I think you have, but maybe you have a secret there that we don't know about. TS3 is 32-bit only and that is the largest factor that is holding it back, second only to its over-extended game engine. The graphic card recognition thing maybe, especially if your card was being under-ranked for no real reason or you were getting the 32 MB texture memory override unnecessarily because your hardware is newer than the game files could recognize.
  • "igazor;c-17451605" wrote:
    I'll have to answer your questions with another question. This game was designed in 2008-09 and completed its development cycle just after the end of 2013. Were your computer and its components made back then (this is rhetorical, I assume not). :)

    There are no .ini file edits concerning memory usage that have any positive impacts on the game if you have edited what I think you have, but maybe you have a secret there that we don't know about. TS3 is 32-bit only and that is the largest factor that is holding it back, second only to its over-extended game engine. The graphic card recognition thing maybe, especially if your card was being under-ranked for no real reason or you were getting the 32 MB texture memory override unnecessarily because your hardware is newer than the game files could recognize.


    Maybe it's a placebo then, but it does genuinely feel like it's running much smoother.
  • It's not placebo. I edited those things as well as the ram and something else I can't remember. Maybe opening up all the cores or something. I'm not computer savvy I just followed direct instructions a while ago. It definitely stopped the lag and crashing. ?
  • I'm glad you guys are enjoying the game and that it's running well for you, or better than it once did. :)

    But there are some hard limitations to this game we love so much above the other iterations that are available to play and there are no ways to overcome these things. The game cannot make use of more than two cores, 4 GB of RAM (the actual upper limit is ~3.7 GB on Windows, 2 GB for the Mac version), and 800 MB of vRAM although modern computers have and can use much more than these limits in total to service other things running alongside of the game including those that are system related. Under most circumstances, the game will reach for these resources provided they are available, but no more than these, on its own when it needs to without any settings help (again plus or minus the graphics card being unnecessarily under-ranked thing).

    The game exceeding these limits would be a violation of the laws of physics and mathematics, for which one may be severely punished...if real life were a cartoon anyway, but really now. These limits cannot be overcome until EA produces a more than 32-bit version of the game for us to work with and that just doesn't seem very likely given the passage of time.

    What we can do and many of us have done along the way is give the game the best environment possible in which to run, take some steps to overcome its less than optimized and downright sloppy programming, and keep its resource requirements for ongoing game saves below that which will cause it to falter or downright fail.
    http://www.nraas.net/community/TIPS-FOR-BETTER-GAME-PERFORMANCE
  • "igazor;c-17451866" wrote:
    But there are some hard limitations to this game we love so much above the other iterations that are available to play and there are no ways to overcome these things. The game cannot make use of more than two cores, 4 GB of RAM (the actual upper limit is ~3.7 GB on Windows, 2 GB for the Mac version)

    You see, I have a Windows PC, and my upper limits for RAM usage was set as 2 GB by default, not 4, so I changed it to 4, and if this is meant to be the upper limit anyway I'm not sure why this was the case?
  • "Magnezone;c-17452319" wrote:
    "igazor;c-17451866" wrote:
    But there are some hard limitations to this game we love so much above the other iterations that are available to play and there are no ways to overcome these things. The game cannot make use of more than two cores, 4 GB of RAM (the actual upper limit is ~3.7 GB on Windows, 2 GB for the Mac version)

    You see, I have a Windows PC, and my upper limits for RAM usage was set as 2 GB by default, not 4, so I changed it to 4, and if this is meant to be the upper limit anyway I'm not sure why this was the case?

    Are we talking about the ini file setting that says


    MemoryUsageLimit = 20000000

    We all have that and it doesn't mean what it looks like. This has become an urban legend of sorts over the years with players who should have known better (or who were trying to be trolls) talking about changing that one on blogs and help sites.

    This is a measure of the theoretical upper limit on the script heap, not RAM usage, and it is by default set to 20 GB (not 2 GB). Changing it to 40 GB (the "2" to a "4") would be neutral to the game at best or it might cause harm and is not to be recommended. The developers had this set to 20 GB for a reason, it can't have been a random number, although only they knew why it was chosen.

    The game is Large Address Aware and will reach for up to ~3.7 GB of RAM usage all on its own as of Patch 1.17, when it "thinks" it needs to.

  • "igazor;c-17452344" wrote:
    "Magnezone;c-17452319" wrote:
    "igazor;c-17451866" wrote:
    But there are some hard limitations to this game we love so much above the other iterations that are available to play and there are no ways to overcome these things. The game cannot make use of more than two cores, 4 GB of RAM (the actual upper limit is ~3.7 GB on Windows, 2 GB for the Mac version)

    You see, I have a Windows PC, and my upper limits for RAM usage was set as 2 GB by default, not 4, so I changed it to 4, and if this is meant to be the upper limit anyway I'm not sure why this was the case?

    Are we talking about is the ini file setting that says


    MemoryUsageLimit = 20000000

    We all have that and it doesn't mean what it looks like. This has become an urban legend of sorts over the years with players who should have known better (or who were trying to be trolls) talking about changing that one on blogs and help sites.


    Ah. I see. I assumed that value was kilobits rather than kilobytes, making it 2.5GB by default rather than 20GB. I did say this to my partner at the time when editing files based on guides I was reading online - that the files seemed to arbitrarily switch between units.

    The wording makes it seem like it's referring to RAM usage though, and that's what the guide I was using said the setting changed.

    I guess this is a case of weird forum telephone. I changed files because someone in the feedback forums for The Sims 4 said it was recommended and basically necessary to play The Sims 3 well. One person starts something and then it spreads like wildfire whether or not the information is actually correct.

    I'm pretty much convinced it was placebo now after this explanation though at least.

    Do you instead have recommendations to get the game to run better? It runs fine on my machine, even with all expansions. But it could run better, for sure.
  • Aside from the placebo effect, I have to believe that many players have made that adjustment at the same time as something else (or other things) that were indeed helpful to their game's performance and may have been attributing the results to the wrong factor. And I can understand why players were so taken in by that setting, we really want our games to work better and will try (almost) anything to reach that goal.

    As for recommendations, perhaps this got lost in the discussion above someplace? Or did you mean above and beyond these?
    https://www.nraas.net/community/TIPS-FOR-BETTER-GAME-PERFORMANCE
  • "igazor;c-17452952" wrote:
    As for recommendations, perhaps this got lost in the discussion above someplace? Or did you mean above and beyond these?
    https://www.nraas.net/community/TIPS-FOR-BETTER-GAME-PERFORMANCE

    Ah sorry, I missed that link the first time around. I'll check it out!

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