Forum Discussion

RaisinsGirlELou's avatar
RaisinsGirlELou
8 years ago

How to lower fps? TRIED EVERYTHING - NOTHING WORKS :(

Hopefully someone can help me?

I desperately NEED to lower the fps when I play sims 3. It hits about 170fps max. and maybe 60 fps min.
I have tried pretty much everything. My laptop has a NVIDIA GeForce MX130 graphics card and an integrated graphics card.

 - I've changed the vertical sync setting for the integrated GC and my NVIDIA GC and enabled triple buffering ( I don't know how that's supposed to help but I kept reading that it should be on with vertical sync).
- I've gone into every setting possible to tell sims 3 to use the Nvidia GC instead of the integrated one.
- I've installed nvidia inspector and capped the fps, tried 60 fps/ 40 fps got desperate and tried 20 fps and nothing helped.
- I've made sure to have my refresh rate on my monitor and in the sims 3 setting match or be close to the fps cap number. 
- I made sure GeForce Experience wasn't forcing my graphics card to run optimal (high) settings for sims 3
- I added the little GeForce icon to my icons to check sims 3 is actually using the nvidia GC

They're just the things I can remember doing but I spent hours trying to fix it so have problem done more things I can't recall.

No matter what I do I cant get the fps to stay between 30-60 (which is what I'd like). My laptop overheats like crazy within minutes of playing, I was able to play for 30-60 mins previously before it got too hot and too loud to play but now it's almost instant. Also the fps is constantly going up and down between 50-170 really quickly, not sure if that's also a problem?

PLEASE help ☹️ I don't know what else to do.

Here's the info I imagine I'll be asked to post - 

=== Application info ===
Name: Sims3
Version:
Build: Release
=== Rating info ===
GPU: 5 GPU Memory: 1 CPU: 1 RAM: 4 CPU Speed: 1992 Threading: 3
Adjusted CPU: 2256 RAM: 8108 Adjusted RAM: 7596 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) i7-8550U CPU @ 1.80GHz
Family: 6
Model: 14
Cores: 4
HT: 1
x64: 0
Memory: 8108MB
Free memory: 4873MB
User: Ella-
Computer: LAPTOP-2V4QFS1V
=== Graphics device info ===
Number: 0
Name (driver): NVIDIA GeForce MX130
Name (database): NVIDIA GeForce MX130 [Found: 0, Matched: 0]
Vendor: NVIDIA
Chipset: Vendor: 10de, Device: 174d, Board: 83ce103c, Chipset: 00a2
Driver: nvldumd.dll, Version: 23.21.13.8912, GUID: D7B71E3E-540D-11CF-5C51-C3A318C2DA35
Driver version: 8912
Monitor: \\.\DISPLAY1
Texture memory: 32MB <<OVERRIDE>>
Vertex program: 3.0
Pixel program: 3.0
Hardware TnL: 1

pc
technical issues

7 Replies

  • puzzlezaddict's avatar
    puzzlezaddict
    Hero+
    8 years ago

    @RaisinsGirlELou  I believe I just read an identical post over on the forums?  There are several people there who are around regularly and have had a lot of success helping simmers cap their frame rates.  If you give them a few hours, I'm sure they'll have some great advice for you.

    I'm no expert on the subject, so I'm not going to pretend that I know how to help you, but the one thing you didn't mention doing was setting up a profile specifically for TS3 to Nvidia Inspector.  On patch 1.67, I think the file is TS3w.exe; for patch 1.69, it might be TS3.exe, although I'm not sure about that.  It's not necessary to do so on my computer, but I have an AMD card and have to use a different tool.

    One other thing: each time you update your drivers, you should check that your settings haven't been reset, as can often happen.  If you haven't done so already, you should update now, before you try anything else to fix the fps issue.

  • RaisinsGirlELou's avatar
    RaisinsGirlELou
    8 years ago
    I've done both of those things - I frequently check my settings haven't been reset.
    Which forums are you referring to? is this not where I should post this? I think I'm a bit confused..
  • RaisinsGirlELou's avatar
    RaisinsGirlELou
    8 years ago

    Oh right that is me, when I posted on here I wasn't able to post on the sims forum for some reason but now I can. I thought it best then to leave the post here and make a new one there to make sure I get enough responses.
    I've already done what's been suggested in the link you posted. I'm unable to cap the fps in both windowed and fullscreen mode unlike the OP in that link so I can't really use their post to help me ☹️
    But thank you for trying to help 🙂

  • puzzlezaddict's avatar
    puzzlezaddict
    Hero+
    8 years ago

    The reason I recommended that particular post was so that you could make sure you'd gone through every step listed, and to include the links phoebe provided at the end.  But now I see that igazor has replied to your forum post, so I'll let him handle this.  I'd trust whatever he has to say on the matter, as he's the one I'd ask if I were having fps problems.

  • roberta591's avatar
    roberta591
    Hero (Retired)
    8 years ago

    @RaisinsGirlELou  Many people have reported the Nvidia fps limiter is broken. Many people with ATI (AMD) have used MSI Afterburner. As this is a third party program it should work with Nvidia chips also.

  • puzzlezaddict's avatar
    puzzlezaddict
    Hero+
    8 years ago

    Hey @roberta591  I thought you should know that the OP got a lot of help this afternoon over at the forums (as in, way more than I could have provided).  It turns out to be as much as hardware issue as anything, as in, neither the processor nor the graphics card is good enough to run TS3.  Given the consensus from the experts over there, the OP is understandably disappointed and may not be back here looking for any more help.

    Here's the thread, if you're interested:

    https://forums.thesims.com/en_US/discussion/940101/how-to-lower-fps

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