@EricSims04 This could absolutely be an overheating issue, and if you'd like, I can explain how to do some hardware monitoring, or how to generate a log to upload if you'd rather have me take a look. But I wanted to see the dxdiag first to rule out certain software errors that could account for the game running slowly and that wouldn't show up in hardware logging. So please do attach the entire dxdiag, as in, the text file that's generated when you click "Save all information."
If you'd like to monitor your hardware temps yourself, GPU-Z is an easy to use, lightweight tool that will show the basic stats and workload for your card. Hwinfo monitors everything, including a lot of stuff that you'd never need to look at, but it'll pick up the temperatures on any component that has a sensor. Both are free.
https://www.techpowerup.com/download/techpowerup-gpu-z/
https://www.hwinfo.com/download/
If you want me to look at an hwinfo log, download either the installer or the portable version, which doesn't require an install and can be launched from wherever you want. Restart your computer, and don't open any other apps. Launch hwinfo, choose "sensors only," and click the icon that's a sheet of paper with a + sign to start logging. Save the file to your desktop for easy access later.
Wait five minutes, then launch Sims 4 and play for at least 20 minutes. Click the same button to end logging. Then upload the log to a third-party free filehosting site and link it here. Please leave it in .csv format, or if you use OneDrive to share, please compress it in .zip format instead.
@EricSims04 Nope, a dxdiag is safe to post on an open forum. That's why we ask for it here (and EA explicitly supports users posting it), as opposed to something more detailed like an msinfo report, which does contain some info you might not want to publish.
Here you go!
@EricSims04 Your audio driver is crashing, over and over, which could explain the low fps in-game. It of course could still be something else, but Sims 4 needs a working audio driver, and repeated crashes could slow down the game or the whole system.
You already have a newer audio driver than Acer offers for your laptop, which is from 2018. So it's probably best, at least as a first step, to uninstall the driver and let Windows find a new one. Take your computer offline, as in, disable wifi and/or unplug the ethernet cable. Hit Windows key-X and select Device Manager. Expand the Audio section, click on anything with the name Realtek in it, and click the Uninstall icon at the top of the window. Repeat with the Sound category.
Restart your computer and go online, and Windows should find and download a new driver for you. If this doesn't happen automatically, you can look for updates manually. Hit Windows key-i, select Update & Security, and click the button to check for updates.
Restart again, and try to play. If fps is still low, please look for any errors in the Reliability Monitor. Hit Windows key-R and enter "perfmon /rel" without quotes. You'll see a list of errors and updates, with a column for each day. (Today is all the way on the right.)
For any errors from after you reinstall the audio driver, click "View technical details," then copy the information and paste it into a text document. (Notepad is fine.) You can attach the file to a post as you did with your dxdiag. Sometimes the Reliability Monitor doesn't update right away, so if you don't see any related errors, be sure to check back an hour or two. The timestamp on the initial chart can also be off by up to an hour, so that's not an entirely reliable metric, but the one within the technical details should be correct.
