[CURRENT ISSUE] Freezing, possible system lockup on Macs with AMD Vega GPUs

Nothing mentioned in the patch notes about a fix for this issue.

Will wait and see what everyone’s report is over the next few days I guess.

It would be nice after over 2 months that someone from EA could acknowledge and update us. This is very frustrating at this point.

Any post-patch updates? I’m too frustrated and pessimistic to put energy into this again, but I’d love to hear if anyone has seen improvements!

Surprisingly no issues last night or today so far!

I will keep everyone posted... but so far a couple of hours without any problems.

Not holding my breath though.

Edit: Spoke too soon. Literally right after I posted this my game froze. Ughhhhh.

Wanted to post an update.

Had my game in build mode from around 10:00 AM yesterday after the patch update to about 5:00 PM, so pretty much all day, without issue. Granted, most of the time, I just left Sims 4 running rather than actually building but I had to have been actively playing Sims 4 in build mode for at least two hours of that time. Build mode did not freeze once. I had custom content enabled and installed in the game but no build mode custom content. I continuously saved throughout my build in anticipation but nothing happened. Was slightly laggier than normal but that could have been me being overly cautious and doing small movements.

Have noticed something new but it was the day prior to patch. Didn't notice it before this past Monday. I'll add it here in images so you can see what I am talking about. My Sims 4 character is wearing CC so it could be the result of this but as you'll see in the attachment, my Sim has some strange bright white lines spreading out from the body of the character into the ether.

Not sure what is causing this but I thought I would bring it in to the mix of issues.

Will update everyone if I have any future freezing problems.

OK, another update. I updated to the most recent version of Big Sur earlier today (I've been on beta, I think it officially comes out tomorrow) and was off today so had several hours of playtime on high graphics settings!

Aside from one mini-freeze that self resolved, the game worked great. I played in live mode and build mode without issue. I hope this continues.

Does anyone have confirmation that the issue was resolved in this patch or is this just luck? I noticed another thread with multiple Mac issues, fortunately things have been ok thus far on my end though.

Will keep everyone updated. 

@aftksimsUgh I really hope EA doesn't just say "update to Big Sur" and call this solved. Most universities are warning students and faculty that they must not update to Big Sur no matter what because you won't be able to connect to VPNs, connect to Box, run the antivirus software necessary to access university resources like Zoom for remote teaching/learning...
And there's currently no way (according to my University?) to revert to Catalina.

Edit to add: This makes me wonder if the issue is between the post-Sep patch Sims and the Pro Vega graphics card or the post-Sep Sims and Mac OS running Pro Vega. In other words, would running the Sims 4 with BootCamp have the same problems? I can't test this out because I'm constantly near monthly data caps (thanks Comcast) and Sims is enormous, but if anyone else is willing to give it a go that might be very informative about what the kernel issue is.

I have been playing yesterday and Tuesday after updating the game in a few different save files and I haven't had any freezing whatsoever. I even have the impression that my game runs very smooth and spinning the camera and zooming in and out goes really fast. I'm still on Catalina, so I don't think Big Sur has got anything to do with it. 

I haven't put all my mods and cc in my game yet, playing kind of vanilla (a few mods that are already updated), so I'm cautiously optimistic...

I can also report that I was just able to play for about 3 hours without any issues for most of it. Near the end I was getting a couple of mini-freezes, but these resolved themselves after a few seconds, and were nothing like what I used to get. Having had my fill, I closed the game because I wanted to, not because I was forced to - first proper session I've had in months!

Can't confirm that the issue is 100% guaranteed resolved, but certainly seems to be better than before for now!

Hi all,

Is this now fixed? Do you think I can mark it as solved and take it off the compiled list of Mac specific issues? It seems like you are happily playing again 🙂

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@Bluebellflora wrote:

Hi all,

Is this now fixed? Do you think I can mark it as solved and take it off the compiled list of Mac specific issues? It seems like you are happily playing again 🙂

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Personally I would like to play for a few more days and hear from others in this thread before making a call! Also is there anyway EA can acknowledge they fixed this? We haven’t heard anything so it’s either a fluke, or they did fix it...

I'll be testing this weekend. My crashes seemed very reproducible, so hopefully I will be able to report back fairly quickly either way. 

I'm on an iMac Pro. 

hey fellow simmers 

wanted to give a good test play before I gave an update 

my game seems to be back to normal for the most part. besides some minor glitches and occasional crashing but actual crashing with reports, its pretty much back to normal thankfully.

not 100% perfect but at least playable. hopefully some other things can still be done to help in the future 

Another confirmation that it seems to be fixed. I've had 4-5 hours of gameplay in and out of build mode. No computer freeze. 

-iMac Pro