Game becomes laggy in the middle of gameplay

@IceeyEra  Is there any pattern to when the framerates drop: a certain time of day, a certain lot that gets loaded, etc.?  For example, many people notice a slowdown when the weekly NAP voting period is closed.

Please also run a dxdiag and attach it to a post.

https://help.ea.com/en-us/help/pc/how-to-gather-dxdiag-information/

@puzzlezaddict as in certain times of day, no there doesn't seem to be a pattern, and atm I only play w one family in one lot. The save is about a week old, and like this 'lag' is like if smth has like 60fps in general, but then that drops to half. It also seems to fix itself after a while. Other than these 'lag' moments my gameplay is very smooth so yeah

Hi, I changed the graphics the game should always use to the dedicated card and I had a pretty long gameplay session with no "random lag" so maybe hopefully this should be fixed! And ye I only play with the laptop plugged in, since when not plugged I drop about 30fps even though I costumized my power plan so that shouldn't be the instance anymore. By the way, based on the specs I've posted, what settings should I be running the game on?

@IceeyEra  That's great to hear.  It's possible that Windows is assigning your integrated graphics chip to Sims 4 from time to time, and taking the option away helps.  This could be because the game's graphics or energy demands briefly drop, or for some other reason I'm not thinking of right now, but forcing high performance is simple and shouldn't cause problems for your laptop.

The Nvidia 1050 mobile is the lowest-level card that should be able to run all current Sims 4 packs on ultra settings.  But that's theoretical, not actual, performance.  If you install high-resolution custom content, that's more demanding than EA-made objects and may necessitate turning down a couple of settings; conversely, if you don't have all the expansion packs installed, you may have more of a buffer.

The nice thing is, you can use framerates as a stand-in for performance and adjust accordingly.  If it's routinely dropping past the point you'd like to see, not these random large drops but say consistently running at 40 fps on certain lots or in certain situations, turn down a setting and see how things go.  If you're happy with the framerates you get on ultra settings, keep using them.  Post processing is one setting you may want to disable though: it feels like excessive blurriness to me and it does often come with a noticeable fps drop.

In your position, I'd also manually cap fps, either with the vertical sync setting (if you play in fullscreen) or with an outside tool.  Let me know if you need help setting this up.  It will lower the workload on your graphics card, which even if not strictly necessary will lower the laptop's internal temperatures, and that's always a good thing.  You could also use a tool like GPU-Z to monitor the card's temperature, although above 80º it should significantly throttle on its own.  The same goes for CPU-Z and the processor, although the CPU usually wouldn't throttle until the mid-90s.

Point is, you should be fine on at least a mix of high and ultra settings, and feel free to play with the various options to see what you get.

ok hi, i was quick to judge. The game did the same thing, this time after a 5h gameplay session (kinda had a free day today xd). It's so weird because when I save, the ui is not laggy and I've had the game before and it's never done this. I play with all expansion packs with medium/high settings. That doesn't bother me. Playing in offline mode really wouldn't be convenient since I am a computer sciences student who does programming on the side so I kinda need to keep discord open for that. As soon as i quit and re-enter the game the issue is not there anymore. Just wish I knew what this was. And I've limited fps, I always do since my laptop is not the best of the best so the frames can be very not consistent in some games. I do monitor the temps. The GPU has never reached 80. I didn't think I'd ever enjoy this game enough to play it for hours, but with the help of mods, this game gets some life. I've checked the task manager tho and it seems to be fine with no un-needed processes. Could this be a VRAM issue?

@IceeyEra  Five hours of quality play in one session is impressive, and if that's how long it took for the game to slow down, a lot of people would accept needing to quit and restart at that point as an overall good outcome.  But if you're curious as to why this is happening, and maybe want to learn some interesting stuff, I have a suggestion:

https://www.hwinfo.com/download/

I often run hwinfo when I'm playing games, and always if it's a demanding game, just to see how my system is performing overall.  It takes hardly any resources and will track pretty much every value it can find.  So when you see a slowdown, you might indeed notice that your GPU's VRAM is maxed out and it's (presumably) borrowing from main memory.  Or you might see that the page file is being used, or used more than normal, suggesting that perhaps some game data is being swapped.  Or maybe there's a suspicious spike in some other value.

You can also log a play session if you want; the log file is in .csv format and can be opened in Excel or any similar program.  It's kind of fun to look at overall use and see what changed as you played.  For example, I can usually tell from the log not only when someone launched Sims 4 but when they were in CAS versus live play.  Even if you don't want to get too much into the details though, this should at least answer your question about VRAM.

Oh yeah. I used to have HWInfo but had to reset my laptop cause the system got messed up so I haven't installed many things I used to have back. I used to leave HWInfo open at all times while playing demanding games and the CPU temps in my laptop were going to 80 when plugged and I got everything out of the way and it ended up being "turbo core" (equivalent of intel's turbo boost). But tbf idk, I think it's just a game thing. At least this issue is less annoying than seeing my sims grab the dishes and put them back on the table and having to do it 3 times (I'd drag and drop but scout badges). Anyways thanks for your help!

Hello, I replied yesterday to this thread but apparently my message didn't go through...

I have this issue as well. I downloaded and installed Backyard Stuff for the first time a few days ago and since then I experience a lag in my game. By now I found out that switching between build and live mode causes a lag. To solve a lag, I need to click the main menu. As soon as that pops up, the lag disappears. Same in CAS, if there is a lag and I open the main menu, close it again, then CAS will be smooth.

Is there a fix for this, or can I -alternatively- remove only the Backyard Stuff pack? Although I quite like it...

Thanks in advance for your kind assistance. 🙂

@IrisuChan  I'm not sure what happened to your message, but sometimes posts can get flagged as spam if they're edited too many times.

Anyway, there are a few different causes we know about for this issue, and apparently at least one we haven't found yet.  So please start by running a dxdiag and attaching it to a post.

https://help.ea.com/en-us/help/pc/how-to-gather-dxdiag-information/