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

Hmm, you all have last generation 2019 15" MacBook Pros with AMD Vega GPUs. iMac Pros with similar GPUs are experiencing complete system lockup after the September patch with similar GPUs - https://answers.ea.com/t5/Technical-Issues-Mac/CPU-max-usage-and-system-crashing-on-IMac-Pro/m-p/9468479#M37516 although they are getting complete system lockup which I don't think you guys are?

Could you see if disabling Origin in-game helps at  all? https://bluebellflora.com/2017/12/23/disable-origin-in-game/

And if any of you get any lastCrash reports please can you attach them to a post here 🙂 

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@Bluebellflora wrote:

Hmm, you all have last generation 2019 15" MacBook Pros with AMD Vega GPUs. iMac Pros with similar GPUs are experiencing complete system lockup after the September patch with similar GPUs - https://answers.ea.com/t5/Technical-Issues-Mac/CPU-max-usage-and-system-crashing-on-IMac-Pro/m-p/9468479#M37516 although they are getting complete system lockup which I don't think you guys are?

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The mouse still moves normally during a freeze glitch for me, so I guess it's not a total system freeze. I occasionally get the beachball spinner as well. Never gotten any system alert like in their first screenshot, but the blocky artefacts from the second screenshot are exactly what I get when I let the spiral of glitches get bad enough.

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@Bluebellflora wrote:

And if any of you get any lastCrash reports please can you attach them to a post here 🙂 

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I haven't got any lastCrash reports, as the game doesn't technically crash - though maybe it might if I leave it for long enough?

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@Bluebellflora wrote:

Could you see if disabling Origin in-game helps at  all? https://bluebellflora.com/2017/12/23/disable-origin-in-game/

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I'll try that next, thanks!

@Bluebellflora 

It's definitely not a full system crash for me. The closest I got to that was the Origin glitch if it froze in windowed mode instead of fullscreen; the game would close itself and the client would claim that it was logged in on another computer (it was not). The only thing I could do to fix it was restart the computer, but there was no LastCrash file. It doesn't really seem to be a "crash." About half the time, I can actually mouse through the exit menu by watching the cursor change shape, and if I'm in build mode and click on a menu item, I can hear the sound effect for selecting an item, for example. The game is responding, according to macOS; but the graphics are wrong.

I did disable Origin in-game, especially because of that weird Origin glitch, and it didn't help the overall game freeze. So far, the only thing that seems to have made a serious improvement was disabling f.lux.

I tend to be able to move the mouse even when the screen goes completely frozen, and still with the ingame pointer rather than the system one.

Yesterday I managed to play for several hours on a new save. Regular gameplay, on one of the premade lots. Made some minor build changes to it and added new furniture with no issue. I then made a new save for building, created a tester family, exited to manage worlds and went into a lot to build. Within twenty minutes it started freezing again.

Tonight I tested the linked fixes. iCloud is disabled already, I disabled retina display ingame, toggled laptop mode, enabled vertical sync, and reset my NVRAM. No change. The build lot now starts acting up within less than five minutes of opening it, some times less than a minute. 

Have the same configuration and the same issue reported in the latest patch update.

I tested by running just Origin and the game with all other apps closed and still the same issue.

Tried everything listed in this thread and the Macbook 16" thread, nothing is working as of now. The game gets stuck every 15 minutes.

Even Big Sur update didn't help.

Disabling Origin had no effect.

Given that the issue seems to be triggered by rotating the camera, I tried playing with the Sims 3 camera. I had very occasional rainbow wheels and framerate drops (on a fairly simple lot) when zooming and changing stories, but overall I was able to play normally for 46 minutes.

Around the 30 minute mark I switched to the TS4 camera, and 15 minutes later while dragging to resize a room, the cascade of freezes began and I had to save the lot and quit the game one painfully slow click at a time.

I don't know if the TS3 camera was significant, but anecdotally I was able to play for a lot longer than before until needing to shut it down.

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@groenroos wrote:

Disabling Origin had no effect.

Given that the issue seems to be triggered by rotating the camera, I tried playing with the Sims 3 camera. I had very occasional rainbow wheels and framerate drops (on a fairly simple lot) when zooming and changing stories, but overall I was able to play normally for 46 minutes.

Around the 30 minute mark I switched to the TS4 camera, and 15 minutes later while dragging to resize a room, the cascade of freezes began and I had to save the lot and quit the game one painfully slow click at a time.

I don't know if the TS3 camera was significant, but anecdotally I was able to play for a lot longer than before until needing to shut it down.

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I play almost exclusively with the Sims 3 camera and tbh am not surprised the Sims 4 camera was worse. After trashing my Options file, the game defaulted me back to the Sims 4 camera and it was a catastrophe—almost instant freeze on loading a lot. I had to close and reopen my game before I could change the camera setting.

I now find that if I have all other apps on my computer closed, I can just barely manage to stream or record the game with OBS if I am gentle with my camera movements and don't try to place large/full rooms from my library onto a lot. For example, I placed a room full of harvestable plants on a lot while streaming and almost crashed my entire computer. I dropped 0.1% of my frames (I normally drop 0), my bitrate tanked, and of course I had to close the game to fix it.

As an additional datapoint;

My MacBook Pro had to go for rather extensive repairs, where they replaced the logic board and the GPU, and totally wiped the hard drive.

After re-installing The Sims 4 on the now-fresh machine, the same glitch started happening maybe 30 seconds into loading a lot, again triggered by dragging the mouse to rotate the TS4 camera.

Didn't bother to try with the TS3 camera again, as it's been a long day of restoring backups and re-installing everything...