Why must these files re-load all the time?

The game runs from RAM mostly, which is why it takes so long (all things being relative) to load up and do saves. Things like CC catalogs and other thumbnails run from hard drive access. Textures might be a different story, when it comes to leaving a scene and returning to it and in that case it's going to depend on your hardware set, how strong your graphics card is in particular, and how much texture memory is being assigned to it. Let's deal with that one separately if we could since it's likely a different issue.

Some things you can do to improve CAS, Build/Buy, Pattern catalogs and other thumbnails:

-- Have the game installed and the user game folder (in Documents) run from an SSD rather than a standard HDD; of course this is easier said than done if you don't actually have an SSD

-- Don't overload your game with more content than it and your hardware can handle

-- For heavens' sake, don't download sims from the Exchange unless you know the designer well enough to know they aren't going to include bad content and nonsense that you don't want clogging up your game, or have the patience (and it does admittedly take some) to use tools to dissect what is being offered so as to remove the unwanted content from the downloads or avoid putting them in your game entirely if you don't like what you find inside. Anyway, there are other sources of CC and sims that are arguably "safer" than the Exchange, there is no attempt at quality control there at all.

You can't just delete content that stays attached to a sim or lot that is staying in your game or in the Edit Town bins because it will just keep coming back.

-- If not averse to using mods, NRaas MasterController has an option to display CAS parts (clothes, hair, accessories) in Compact View that collapses the three pre-made styles onto one square each and tends to speed up catalog load times remarkably.

Now, on the texture loads we would need to know what you have for a graphics card and what kind of texture memory you are seeing in the DeviceConfig.log in the TS3 user game folder in Documents somewhere near the Found/Matched section but before the long lists of game options. Perhaps you could copy/paste the first 40 lines or so of the log for us, but without the lists of game options I mean the just the parts near the beginning so we can see to an extent what you are working with and how the game is trying to use it.

Sorry for leaving you hanging like that, I haven't been entirely "all here" myself for the past couple of weeks. :/

First of all, your system only has 6 GB of RAM. Or at least that is all it has available for general usage. Is this expected? That's actually usually fine for TS3 if you are running no other processes or programs at all alongside of the game, not even web browsers. But at the time you started up your game for that session, Windows and other processes were using over half of it already so only 2.7 GB was left to service the game. Again, still fine (the game can't use more than just short of 4 GB anyway) but what happens as the game reaches for more and more RAM through loading and gameplay is that you end up running too low on physical RAM to use and Windows starts paging the program out, also called using what is called virtual memory. The game will run really slowly and not be stable if that much virtual memory is called upon.

Is 6 GB total the best we can do (consult with bf as necessary)? You're always going to have a balancing act playing memory hungry games like TS3 or TS4 when things are that tight.

Next, by all means please reduce High Detail Lots to somewhere around 2 in Game Options (it's currently at 8?), and Water/Reflections to one of the lower settings. Even on the highest-end systems, these options cause much more resource usage than benefits and can easily get in the way of troubleshooting other performance issues.

Your graphics card is older but still pretty powerful and is not recognized by the game. More important than that though, is that it has the capability of throwing too high frame rates and that is REALLY bad for performance and health of the system. Cards can burn out if this is not taken care of. Have you taken the steps required to cap the fps rates for TS3 and checked in-game to make sure they are staying below a reasonable level? Not going to take you through all that if you have already done it, but unlike more modern games TS3 does not have a functional fps limiter and needs some help with the medium to more powerful graphics cards. This and the High Detail Lots setting above are really the most important things to tend to first.

I will send you a PM explaining how to get your card formally recognized (it won't help much). You already do not have the 32 MB texture memory override so that we don't have to worry about. We tend to do this by PMs because the instructions are different for every model of card and we don't want to confuse other players on different hardware sets. But we should also keep in mind that your graphics card is now around 10 years old and computer components do not improve with age. There may be an additional limit to how much better we can make things work, depending on its overall condition and how heavily it's been used over the years, the state of your computer's cooling system, and other such factors.

That was a lot of information to go through, I think I'll have to reread your answer a few times.
I changed something with the RAM a while ago to prevent my processor from lifting off into space. Or at least it made sounds like that. I'm not sure what it was, my boyfriend did it!!!!11

It's all on ssd, the whole sims map in documents.

I thought the exchange was pretty good, had some really nice sims downloaded but yes, thanks to the exchange I'm also stuck with those weirdo items. This one made me laugh so hard:


For the DeviceConfig.log info:
Name: Sims3
Version:
Build: Release
=== Rating info ===
GPU: 5 GPU Memory: 4 CPU: 3 RAM: 4 CPU Speed: 2673 Threading: 3
Adjusted CPU: 3164 RAM: 6134 Adjusted RAM: 5622 Cores: 4
=== Machine info ===
OS version: Windows 8 6.2.9200
OS prod type: 0
OS major ver: 6
OS minor ver: 2
OS SP major ver: 0
OS SP minor ver: 0
OS is 64Bit: 1
CPU: GenuineIntel
Brand: Intel(R) Core(TM) i7 CPU 920 @ 2.67GHz
Family: 6
Model: 10
Cores: 4
HT: 1
x64: 0
Memory: 6134MB
Free memory: 2760MB
User: 1
Computer: 2
=== Graphics device info ===
Number: 0
Name (driver): NVIDIA GeForce GTX 560 Ti
Name (database): NVIDIA GeForce GTX 560 Ti
Vendor: NVIDIA
Chipset: Vendor: 10de, Device: 1200, Board: 26001462, Chipset: 00a1
Driver: nvldumd.dll, Version: 23.21.13.9135, GUID: D7B71E3E-5140-11CF-7D54-0D061BC2DA35
Driver version: 9135
Monitor: \\.\DISPLAY1
Texture memory: 4040MB
Vertex program: 3.0
Pixel program: 3.0
Hardware TnL: 1
=== Options ===
AnimationSmoothing 1
LightingQuality 3
GeneralReflections 3
TextureQuality 3
VisualEffects 3
TerrainQuality 2
EdgeSmoothing 3
ObjectHiding 0
AspectRatio 0
ForceSquarePixels 1
SimQuality 4
TreeQuality 4
DrawDistance 3
MaxActiveLots 8
NumMaxActiveLotOptions 6
AdvancedRendering 1
AudioQuality 3
AudioOutputMode 1
VoiceLevel 255
SoundFXLevel 255
MusicLevel 255
AmbientLevel 255
FocusMute 1
VoiceMute 0
SoundFXMute 0
MusicMute 1
AmbientMute 0
EdgeScrolling 0
EdgeScrollingWarning 0
SupressOpportunityDialogs 0
SuppressOpportunityDialogsWarningProducts 32929
SimWhileMinimized 0
TwelveHourClock 1
ShowPlacementGrid 0
AutonomyLevel 2
DisableAutonomyForSelectedSim 0
PetAutonomyLevel 2
AgingInterval 4
EnableAging 1
EnableTutorial 1
EnableIntroTutorial 0
EnableTombResets 1
EnableInGameStore 0
EnableTelemetry 0
EnableMemories 3

Sorry, it's been a week now, no reply. If anyone could still help me? posted the devicecovig in previous post.
If not, thanks anyway.

Thank you for your reply, no worries about not responding :) I'm not around everyday either ^^

- Changed the High Detail Lots and Water/Reflections game options.
Something already feels faster... Cannot put my finger on it though. textures still have to load of course, didn't expect it to solve the problem right away lol.
- My partner already took some steps to keep the fps rate under 60, cause this computer sort of started to make sounds as if it was going to travel to space.
- I'll respond on your pm about the graphics card.