Lag/fps drops making the game unplayable

Question

For months now I have a weird issue that my game randomly starts lagging, basically my fps instantly drop from the usual 60 down to 15, making the game unplayable. Most often this happens when opening anything on the UI, doesn't seem to matter which panel in particular, though inventory (even when I have barely any items in it) and career panel seem to be especially susceptible to this. It can also happen just randomly like when I move the camera around, load onto another lot or I click on stuff. Sometimes opening the menu fixes it, but even then fps usually instantly drop again after a few seconds, so this isn't really a fix either.

The weirdest thing is that this issue sometimes just disappears for weeks and the game runs smooth again, but then it randomly returns after some time has passed. Things I've tried so far is creating a fresh game folder (which used to be my go-to fix but doesn't work anymore unfortunately), repairing the game, removing all mods and CC (of which I don't have many to begin with), reinstalling the game, starting the game while offline, reducing graphics settings (once again, just fixed it temporarily), updating my graphics drivers, reinstalling windows, and deleting the localthumbcache file, all to no avail. I'm kinda at a loss right now because I literally tried everything and nothing seems to work in the long run. I have the suspicion that it's a RAM issue since my computer only has 7.9 GB and my computer uses up to 7.7 GB while running the game. It's just weird that I used to be able to play the game smoothly on ultra settings and now it's even laggy on medium settings, my computer should be able to handle way more.

I attached my dxdiag below, maybe you guys can find out what's causing these immese fps drops. Something I noticed is that whenever my game starts lagging, my PC fans get really loud, making me further suspect some kind of hardware issue.

puzzlezaddict · Answer

@Huiiie_07&nbsp; Since your computer is using almost all of its installed memory, it's worth trying to play in a clean boot.&nbsp; The idea here is that you shut down everything other than Windows-related services to free up as much RAM as possible.&nbsp; Even if you don't want to play like this in general, find out whether it helps, and we can go from there.

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/topic/how-to-perform-a-clean-boot-in-windows-da2f9573-6eec-00ad-2f8a-a97a1807f3dd

The one service to leave enabled is the EABackgroundService, which the EA App needs in order to run.&nbsp; Disable the rest as described.

When you reboot your computer, go through the Task Manager's background processes list shutting down any service that doesn't absolutely need to be running, for example anything from MSI Afterburner to RGB software might still be enabled.&nbsp; If you accidentally kill a critical process and it doesn't restart on its own, just reboot your computer again.

Don't open anything other than Sims 4 and the EA App while testing, not even a browser window.

The fans getting loud does suggest that this might be a temperature issue though.&nbsp; If you want to find out, you'll need to do some hardware monitoring.&nbsp; Please download hwinfo (it's free) from here:

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

You don't need to install anything; just choose the Portable version, unzip it, and launch it from Downloads or wherever you like.&nbsp; If you do want the full installer, be sure to click the button for hwinfo itself, not for lansweeper.

Restart your computer, open hwinfo, choose Sensors Only, and click the button that's a sheet of paper with a + to start logging.&nbsp; Save the log file to your desktop for easy access.&nbsp; Wait five minutes, then open Sims 4 and play for at least 20 minutes.&nbsp; Don't alt-tab out of the game or run any other programs, aside from the EA App of course, while you're testing.&nbsp; When you're done, click the same button to stop the logging.

Please upload the log to the third-party filesharing site of your choice (Google Drive, Dropbox, etc.) and link it for me.&nbsp; Either leave it in .csv format or, if you're going to use OneDrive, create a .zip file, and don't open the log before uploading it, or else my log reader might not be able to interpret it.

huiiie_07 · Answer

@puzzlezaddict&nbsp;Thanks for your reply! First I tried the clean boot and while my computer's overall RAM use did decrease by atleast 1 GB, the game still started lagging only a few seconds after loading in, so no change here.I then tried your second suggestion of creating a log. Once again, the game's fps started dropping seconds after loading into my save and they consistently stayed at 10-16 fps for the first few minutes before suddenly going back to 60 fps for the remaining time.I uploaded my log to Dropbox as you suggested.Here's the link:&nbsp;https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/apss4yrzq47y03rwzr7ky/log.CSV?rlkey=uo8aancxt5ly4qp29h1qjizd5&amp;dl=0&nbsp;

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Lag/fps drops making the game unplayable

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