Not happy with support
I've got an issue with Supernatural (below). The suggested solution didn't work. I can't now get back to the live chat advice because of "Technical Problems" which seem not to end. It won't let me re...
Forum Discussion
First that catches my eye is that you both have a 32 bit operating system.
A 32 bit system can only allocate 2 GB of RAM to a program at the most. The Sims 3 is very inefficiently programed and needs a lot of RAM. That is a problem but usually it shouldn't crash the game in CAS. Crashes after 2-4 hours and save error 12 are much more likely to be a RAM issue.
The Sims 3 is an absolute graphic hog and the more EPs you add, the more strain it puts on the cards. The open neighborhood needs a lot of rendering so despite popular believe, the Sims 3 is not a simple game that doesn't have high specs. Also, the game is inefficiently programed, there's no denying that. CAS is also very heavy on the graphic that is why many are seeing crashing issues on lower-end cards.
Now your daugthers graphic canrd has an whole other issue: The card does not handle heat very well (see this: http://simswiki.info/wiki.php?title=Game_Help:TS3_System_Requirements). Now with all the issues this game has, that might be the problem she's running into. It might be worth to run a program that monitors the heat to see if it goes to far up.
Your card should be ok with just Supernatural installed but your drivers are from June last year. Are you certain there aren't any newer ones ?
Also are you also seeing crashing while playing the game or is it just in CAS ?
My suggestions for the moment:
- Monitor the heat, especially on your daughters computer. If the temperature indeed does get high, it might be time for a new graphic card (suggestion can be derived from the link I gave above)
- Turn off mirror reflections in the game options
- Turn down the graphic options in the game options
- Check on the fps (to do so, open the cheat console with ctl-shift-c and type fps on. Check the number in the upper right corner - I think it's that corner). Shouldn't be higher than 100
I hope that any of these suggestions help you out a bit, if not, feel free to post back.
This is extremely helpful.
I had used the Steam graphic driver update system, had updated just prior to the DXdiag and assumed it knew what it was doing. The control panel check seemed to confirm that the drivers were up to date. I'm going through the AMD route to re-update anyway.
It seems Supernatural only scores "Maybe" on the 4800 series. Given the minimum spec is 128Mb, and my card is running at 512Mb, there shouldn't have been an issue, but obviously there is!
We've never got as far as running the game- only got as far as CAS.
I won't run it on my daughter's computer- if mine won't run it, it probably will fry hers.
I'll give the testing a run in the next couple of days (life just got busy) with the suggestions you make, and get back to you. What would be a safe maximum for the GPU?
I especially like the suggestion about the new GPU. Whether the wife will...could the "old" GPU be put in the other computer?
Many many thanks!!!
I'm really not a hardware specialist and can't tell you what will work together and what will not.
If you just have SN and the base game, it shouldn't be a problem on your computer. It's more if you have all of them. Pets and Seasons are more heavy on the graphics but SN shouldn't be.
Try picking a pre-made family to see how it works in game without going through CAS.
OK, I've run some tests. I turned the graphics right down/ off and tried it in windowed mode for better monitoring.
The thing that jumps out is the fps- regularly over 200, often hitting 260+. Is there a solution?
Temperature stays mostly at about 75 deg C/ 170F with occasional peaks to 81 C / 180F; Skyrim runs at 81 C without problem.
The game itself seems to run OK with a created family, but I wouldn't know if there could be situations I haven't tried yet which could give problems. FPS drops when the SIM is doing something, and rests around 220.
The game always crashes during the second SIM in CAS, and I'm not sure why that should be. Surely doing the second one isn't more power hungry than the first? The fps seemed higher during the second SIM; it varied wildly, and crashed at fps=237 for reasons that seemed unclear.
Thanks again.
Try limiting the fps. You can do that on the Nvidia card you can turn on an option called vsync which syncs the frame rate with your screen rate. You can do this for an individual program. I'm not sure how to do it on AMD cards. I think there you can only do it for all programs together.
Here's a thread on the issue: http://forum.thesims3.com/jforum/posts/list/450859.page
As for your temperature. I find that rather high. This can damage your computer. Did you clean out the fans ? Make sure you have enough cooling.
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