Forum Discussion

Hero+

5 months ago

Lagging and stuttering game performance when using screens in-game

This thread is specifically for players using a Mac with M4 chip who have noticed a significant drop in game performance since patching in September 2025 as there has been a small increase in users reporting this recently.

Edit 13.01.2026 - This appears to be the lagging caused by using in-game screens, merged and edited title and description. Relevant to all Macs, not just M4.

If you are experiencing laggy gameplay, stuttering, freezing, low fps when using any type of screen in-game test a clean game first before posting here to discount existing user data interference.

Please post your symptoms and your Mac hardware and operating system. Click on the Apple in the top left corner of your Desktop then About This Mac. Then, click on More Info... which will open System Settings. Scroll down to the bottom and click on System Report. We need the hardware overview and the Graphics/Display overview. All the info required is shown using a red arrow in the below screenshots.

are you using an external display? If so what is the size and resolution?
does this happen in windowed and fullscreen mode or just one?

updates

41 Replies

dashisims
Seasoned Rookie
6 days ago
Bluebellflora
I actually had decent frame rate on the lot before the stutters and the FPS drops started. For comparison, here's a screenshot at 9:55am in game time, you can see sims using the computer without the FPS being affected (it's at 50fps which is fine for a community lot). This is why I said the issue doesn't seem related to screens in my case.
But after a while, the FPS drops and the stutters start (as seen in the screenshot I posted in my previous post, 11:11am in game time).