@pinkdipi That is a very strange outcome, especially considering that applying a compatibility mode to Sims 3 generally doesn't accomplish anything at all. But it's almost always better to have a fix without an explanation than the other way around.
Good luck with the Steam issue. If I knew anything about that error, I'd try to help, but I don't think I've even heard of it before.
Hey!
Sorry to bother you again. Since you're knowledgable about system and stuff, could you kindly give your recommendations for what to look for in a PC to play Sims 3 with as little outside help as possible, meaning patches, mods and stuff? Would just adding RAM be sufficient, or do I need a better everything? You see, I think I enjoy growing and developing my city the most. I want to have a graveyard full of stories and ancestors, a town with lots and lots of houses and inhabitats in several generations and lots to do. I want to see the city being full with Sims going about they day. I was intirgued by a mod some one had made to make sims go out more. It was called something like Go outside? The idea of it was to push sims to go places as much as possible. You can imagine my computer didn't aggree with that ^^;;;
I'd be thankful for recommendations of RAM, video cards, proseccors and if there's anything else. A computer model? Laptops? I'm on a tight budget, so I prbably won't be able to afford much anything, but I'd like to understand more what the game REALLY needs to run smoothly and beautifully. I've seen some videos where they just say "I have that computer", but that doens't help me to understand what is necessary for it to work like butter.
Have a fun weekend! ^^/
@pinkdipi How tight is your budget? What you're looking for would only be possible with a whole new computer. I'm not saying that adding RAM would make no difference, because it would help with everyday use, as would installing a larger SSD, big enough to hold Sims 3's program files and user data. But there's only so much this laptops processor and graphics card can do, and neither one is upgradable.
The other part of this is that Sims 3 itself has some limitations due to the way it's built: both the game engine's faults and the fact that it's a 32-bit program mean you can't really have the overpopulated, well-developed save you're imagining. There just isn't a way to handle that much data at once, no matter how powerful your machine.
Ah, that's so sad to hear ☹️ I enjoy that the most about the game. A person has suggested some things to look into when considering a new computer, but I think they don't quite understand how heavy the Sims 3 is. I asked about one computer and they said the graphics card is basically non existant and suggested not settling for anything less than NVIDIA RTX 4070. But I don't understand why: my GTX 950M is on 20-30% anyway. The processor on the other hand is somewhere from 75-100% and the game is lagging - at all times. It seems my game does recognize the GPU: it has found it at least... The GPU obviously doesn't help much? I was wondering, if I do budget for a computer, would having 32 GB RAM make a very big difference in how much I could populate a city, or will the game not be able to even use all that RAM? Or do I need more?? o_0
Also I'm looking out for Paralives now. When it comes out, I'll be definitely looking trough reviews on the game and what kind of machine it requires. It looks so nice with all the details: reminds me of Sims 2 ^_^
@pinkdipi Sims 3 can only use about 3.7 GB memory, 4 minus some overhead. This is the mathematical limit for any 32-bit app and cannot be overcome without rewriting the game to be 64-bit. So while the system will use memory for other tasks, including running the OS, any amount of RAM over 8 GB is unnecessary and unhelpful, for Sims 3 at least, unless you plan on multitasking while playing.
This limit means that you can't really have more than a certain number of sims in any given world; how many depends in part on the world itself and in part on how long you've played it, and how many sims have been active. There's no good rule, and no hard limit. But those of us who've played for a long time sometimes develop a sense of when a save is dragging and might need to be cleaned up somewhat.
There are multiple factors that make a faster graphics card useful even when the current GPU isn't running anywhere near capacity. One of them is that Sims 3 can only use 800 MB of video memory (separate from RAM), but there is often more data that would theoretically be in VRAM. So the graphcis card ends up swapping data in and out a lot, and the speed of the GPU and its VRAM affects how quickly and efficiently this swapping happens.
I would say however that anything above a laptop RTX 3060 or 4050 isn't going to help Sims 3 much if at all. The power of an RTX 4070 would be wasted on the game on any settnigs.
Thank you so much for sharing your knowlegde with me!
