Flickering screen after CC
Hello there, I experienced something VERY wierd and confusing yesterday: I was looking forward to playing the Sims 3 for a long time, and did a test run of it. Everything went fine. There was no pr...
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@drkatrine It might be an issue with the graphics card itself, or it might be the load that the card has to carry when running Sims 3. It's still a good idea to confirm that the frame rates are stable when you're playing though. A drop below 60 isn't really a problem, but if you're getting higher numbers, then you'll want to try another tool to limit fps for the protection of your card.
If you're interested, I can recommend some hardware monitoring apps so you can see how hard your 940MX is working. It may be that some features of the game, like rain and snow or long-haired animals, puts excessive stress on the card, and you might need to adjust your settings accordingly. This is all speculation though until you see how hard the card is working, and whether the flickering is related to the overall load.
I'm very glad I have you because or else I wouldn't know what this even means, so thank you, haha.
I will say again that I haven't even reinstalled Sims 3 after our first discussion as my life was hectic. It's not installed now either as I simply haven't dared to. Even though the game isn't installed sometimes the screen flickers and blinks. Long time happens in between, but it still happens, and it all started after I tried to install that custom town Storybrook County, which I don't understand. It happened the moment I double clicked the file to get it installed in the launcher. I have talked to others and they don't know how that's possible either.
You might be right. I have to find a way to check frame rates while playing once I install it again. It could very well be the graphics card itself as Sims 3 isn't installed right now and it still happened, I really have no idea. I have contacted support for this laptop and they told me there are some updates for my graphics drivers, so will look into that. But I'm beginning to think it's actually the graphics card there is something wrong with. Still don't get how double cliking a custom town file to install in the launcher could trigger it though. I'm so lost. Glad to have your help though!
Sure, please recommend me some and I will look into it 🙂
@drkatrine If your laptop's support recommended graphics card driver updates, then that's the first thing you should do. Once you update, if the blinking doesn't go away, please run a dxdiag and attach it to a post here.
https://help.ea.com/en-us/help/pc/how-to-gather-dxdiag-information/
The apps I use to monitor my hardware are hwinfo and GPU-Z. The first shows info about all hardware, from the motherboard to the case fans, and the second is just for graphics cards. But both will show the overall load on your card as well as a number of more in-depth stats. You can also log a session with either app, so you can see how the stats change over time as you're playing. Both are free.
https://www.hwinfo.com/download/
https://www.techpowerup.com/download/techpowerup-gpu-z/
But there's not much point in running them unless you're actually playing a game. Otherwise, your card won't be working particularly hard, and the data probably wouldn't be useful unless there was some glaring error. More helpful would be the dxdiag, which might list certain hardware and software errors directly. Then once you've addressed those, you could install the game and see what happened.
And I agree, it's very strange that the flickering started after installing a custom world. I tend to think it's more likely a coincidence, or at most that running the Sims 3 launcher revealed a new issue that you hadn't seen up to that point. But it's just a guess without more information.
Thank you so much for your help!
The thing is that I will now get a new laptop - the situation is complicated but I'm in a situation where I can get a new laptop of the exact same kind - since the wierd screen stuff are still there after graphics updates.
I might do a dxdiag on the new laptop and throw in here just in case to make sure nothing is wrong, but I just made one of this laptop, so here you go, I hope the file works.
As you know my first language isn't English but Danish, which means stuff are probably written in Danish. I hope it's still understandable.
Let me know what you think and again, thank you so much for your help. 🙂
@drkatrine I think a new laptop might be a good call here. Screen flickering can have plenty of different causes, including problems with drivers or running apps that are more demanding than the graphics card can handle. But it can also be caused by hardware problems: everything from the card itself to the connection to the screen. And while the problems, hardware- or software-related, can be fixable, hardware issues are sometimes difficult to repair in a laptop. And there's nothing obvious in your dxdiag that would explain the flickering, making a hardware issue more likely. So if you can just get a replacement, it's probably the easier way to go.
As far as the new one is concerned, you'll still want to manually cap in-game framerates and make sure the laptop is using the dedicated card to run Sims 3. (The fps limiters should take care of this too.) Some flickering while you play wouldn't be surprising on a 940 MX. It's not the strongest card, and running the game on ultra graphics settings might be too much. But you should definitely be able to play with a mix of medium and high settings, depending on which packs you have installed. (It also helps to reduce the in-game resolution.) Sometimes it takes a bit of experimenting to get the right settings, but it's certainly doable.
Anyway, when you do get that new laptop, if you run into any issues with Sims 3, feel free to post back asking for more help. And I'd be happy to look over a dxdiag on the new system for you whether or not there any problems. The dxdiag itself is easy to read by the way—all the important info is either in English or computerspeak.
