Some facts about my game + computer:- I have the NRAAS mods installed that're meant to reduce lag.- I don't have a lot of free space on my hard drive -- can't move.- Have CAS CC -- folder ~2GB.- Computer has 16GB memory; manufactured 2016; NVIDIA GTX970M.Thanks.

You can't run the game (or most anything, including web browsers really) with only 1 GB of free drive space. I'm afraid there really isn't much point in discussing other ways to reduce lag until this is taken care of first as with or without the lag the game, other games and programs, and Windows itself are just going to keep malfunctioning that way.How large is your hard drive to begin with and do you only have the one? The goal, if this is the drive also running Windows, should be 10-15% free space or if that can't be managed then at least 20 GB free; some seem to be able to get by with as little as 15 GB.

"thesimmer14;d-980292" wrote:Some facts about my game + computer:- I have the NRAAS mods installed that're meant to reduce lag.- I don't have a lot of free space on my hard drive -- can't move.- Have CAS CC -- folder ~2GB.- Computer has 16GB memory; manufactured 2016; NVIDIA GTX970M.Thanks.I don't know if this is a joke or not, but if not... filling your hard drive to the brim is a BIG no-no in the computer world. Must be taken care of immediately.

You can certainly move the Electronic Arts folder to D, but you'll need to take at least one additional step to tell the games where to look for the user data folders. The simplest is to redirect Documents in its entirety to D, which is easy and supported by Windows:https://www.tenforums.com/tutorials/74952-move-location-documents-folder-windows-10-a.htmlIf you have other reasons to keep Documents on D and only want to move the Electronic Arts folder, you could use a symbolic link instead. This guide was written with an external drive in mind, but it works equally well with an internal drive. Just be sure to get the punctuation exactly right, and of course substitute "Electronic Arts" for "The Sims 4" wherever it appears.https://crinrict.com/blog/2020/02/moving-windows-documents-folder-to-external-drive-via-symbolic-link.htmlIf you happen to have Sims 4 installed on C though, it might be easier to move its program files to D instead of the user data. The game would load more slowly, but unlike with Sims 3, the difference would be relatively small. And if you have a lot of TS3 custom content, you might prefer to keep it on C so it loads faster. But any of these approaches should work, as long the end result is at least 20 GB free on C.

If you use Origin, you can easily move games from one drive to another from within the app. Just click the game in your library, click the settings icon, click "Move Game," then select a destination folder on your other drive and Origin will move the game for you and know where to look. I've found that The Sims 4's load times aren't terrible on my external hard drive (where I exiled it).Some other ideas:* If you happen to have a ton of files in your Screenshots or Recorded Videos folders (for either game), you could store those on a separate drive to free up some space.* You can use Microsoft's Disk Cleanup tool to clear off other unnecessary files (like leftover installation files from Windows updates or leftover previous installations of Windows, if you're comfortable with that). Some of those folders can be up to 30+ GB large and are literally only sitting there in case you want to roll back to a previous version of Windows.* Non-space related: if you play with all settings at max, bringing your Lot Detail down to 3 or 4 can help reduce lag even on very high-end PCs.

I'm kind of surprised that no one suggests that the OP look into the possibility of getting and installing a larger SSD in their laptop. They've actually come down in price quite nicely the last couple of years or so, and 128GB/117GB is really way too small to be tolerable in the long run. I have 2 laptops with SSD's that are 256GB in size, and it's enough trouble managing them. Anything smaller than that, a 128GB SSD for example, would drive me bonkers in no time.

Ways to reduce lag..? | EA Forums

17 Replies

igazor
5 years ago
It's called a symlink (symbolic link). But if the entire Windows user Documents library has been shifted to D by way of the operating system, then the game folder is already in the proper place. The game doesn't care where Documents is located, it just needs to know to look in Documents, wherever Windows tells it that it is, to find the TS3 user game folder.

The reason that very small C drives (SSD) on the order of 128 GB are combined with much larger D drives (HDD) as a common system configuration is that SSDs are much more expensive than HDDs. So the idea is to provide the home user with an SSD for Windows and a slower regular drive for just about everything else to lower the cost of the entire system.
carlystur
New Spectator
5 years ago
@igazor Thank you! That's what I had done for one installation of my games several years ago. I didn't realize that you could just move the Documents library using the operating system. How does one do that?
EDIT: Feel free to just point me to a URL for that if you'd prefer. :smile:
igazor
5 years ago
"carlystur03;c-17639148" wrote:
@igazor Thank you! That's what I had done for one installation of my games several years ago. I didn't realize that you could just move the Documents library using the operating system. How does one do that?
EDIT: Feel free to just point me to a URL for that if you'd prefer. :smile:

I couldn't really do a better job than the illustrated instructions that @puzzlezaddict linked to earlier on this thread. :)

https://www.tenforums.com/tutorials/74952-move-location-documents-folder-windows-10-a.html
(that's for Win 10, it's not been that different for other versions of Windows along the way)
carlystur
New Spectator
5 years ago
@igazor Oops! Thanks again!
tomanynote
5 years ago
All of the folders in my Documents folder spread onto D; not in one single folder. It boots, but all of my saves and CC are gone. I put them back in a new Documents folder. The file path is D:\Documents\The Sims 3. Should it be D:\Users\Documents\The Sims 3 instead?
igazor
5 years ago
@thesimmer14 - Are you following the instructions we keep mentioning and linking to so that Windows understands where/which one is your official user Documents folder? You can't just create a new folder called Documents on any drive, even back on C, and expect Windows and your programs to know where to place and then look for the data they need, in case this was a misunderstanding.
tomanynote
5 years ago
I was following this one: https://www.tenforums.com/tutorials/74952-move-location-documents-folder-windows-10-a.html

..Ah, oh no, seems as though I skipped step two. :/

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Ways to reduce lag..?

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