Re: [CURRENT ISSUE] Incredibly Low FPS when connected to Internet

Try to disable Origin in game and see if it works. also if you have the discord app try shutting that down.

Do you have Geforce Experience installed? There is an issue with this sometimes causing this issue.

Very strange indeed.

just wondering if you have figured out a fix to this, trying to fix it for the last 2 weeks

@AlfieSkytower   Try disabling steamwebhelper.exe from running when you don't use it. You'll have to search Steam on how to configure it. I don't think you need it. Seems to be a fps killer.

@roberta591 Hey, im having the same issue this did not resolve the problem

@Fizzyvimto21 Still having the issue and been looking on and off for a fix for a some months now. I'm guessing it's some strange interaction between Windows 10, Nvidia, and some game's background process.

@roberta591Disabling the program and steam all together has no effect. 

@AlfieSkytower Its a pain, i have a feeling it has something to do with the anti-piracy, reason being is i think it is a constant connection. That is being encroached by windows 10 some how. I have disabled every program to no avail. I am currently in talks with ea customer services to come to a solution they are patching me through to a "technitian" who may be able to help. I don't think it is driver related. As i have reinstalled these, i have done a Full DNS flush as well. It is defiantly a connection issue. But that is as far as i can think. To be honest i've lost most will to play the game itself i find trying to fix this issue more enjoyable than the game! 

PS i have also contacted and supplied data files to the sims QA team. Still awaiting any form of contact back from them from 2 weeks ago.

@Fizzyvimto21  There are many things that can cause low fps. The DRM for this game has always been Origin. Origin is a Steam like system where you activate your games. It could be Origin is downloading an update. Windows update is a system resource hog which could (and does) affect the video system. Is your computer a pc (not mac)? If a pc please post your computer's dxdiag how to post your computer's dxdiag and attach the txt file to the paper clip in the lower right of the response window. These are forums for users by users and don't have direct access to EA technicians.

@AlfieSkytower Looking over your dxdiag I see you have a 240Gb ssb for a system drive. Have you tried a larger system drive? Some games create large temp files along with the operating system creating temp files. The price of ssds is really coming down so higher capacities are cheaper now. If your looking to save some money buy 2 1Tb drives and install them in a raid. This will give you 2Tb of storage with an increase in performance. Did you install the game to the data drive? There is a point where performance is affected with a small system device due to limited resources. Example - when Windows is installed the page file is created based on the size of the system drive. Therefore the size of the page file for a 240Gb ssd is going to be different then a 1Tb drive. As free space decreases on the system device performance could be affected and increasing the size of the page file may not help the issue and could actually may make it worse. There are other reasons that could affect performance. System resources are finite. 3D games use a computer hard and TS4 is no different. While a 240Gb system drive may work very well in a student/business computer I would not recommend one for a gaming rig. An example of common issues is say you download a large file (movie say). If the movie is 90Gb a temp file is created on the system device until the download is complete. The file is then copied (not moved) to the target destination. At this point you have consumed 180Gb of storage on the system device. The original temp file may or may not get deleted after the copy (if it gets deleted at all). This would exhaust the resources of 144Gb free space. Again if the game runs with out issues on a larger system device Then the issue is resolved. Another thing you may check is the PSU. The GTX 1080 Ti requires 21A on the 12V rail. All power supplies are not created equal. This should be checked.

@roberta591 Hit and a miss. You raise some strange points. My games run perfectly fine hitting around 60FPS lets not forget TS4 has a "laptop mode" and this still happens on the lowest settings. It's clear to see that the issue is due to a connection to the internet, a referal to check my PSU and not having a 2tb SSD is something i would expect from the indian customer service support from their scripts. Just for a reference here is an extract from one of my recent chats with them. 

@roberta591  Thanks for the insight but the SSD has >130 GB worth of free space with TS4 (and Dragons Dogma) running, so it's not the amount of space, and it seems a little odd to me for the problem to be caused by it accessing data on the drive as (as @Fizzyvimto21 has said) the majority of other games work perfectly - FFXIV, Neverwinter Nights, Pillars of Eternity, Heroes of the Storm, Total War: Warhammer, etc. to name a few - each one with varying amounts of resource requirement that surpass what TS4 needs and uses.

My Graphics card is installed and powered correctly.

There are a couple of other threads I've found regarding the same issue but for Dragon's Dogma rather than TS4:

Steam Discussion #1

Steam Discussion #2

Unfortunately the only workaround that's actually worked is to disable the internet connection.

If you get any other ideas please do suggest them. 🙂

Some of my old googling strongly suggested that these sorts of issues started with an old Creator's Update for W10.

As @Fizzyvimto21 also said, it has sucked the fun out of the game(s); there's no way to play and enjoy the online content and functionality at the same time, and I've given up trying to play them until it's resolved, sadly.

One possible 'solution' for you Fizzy may be to uninstall the Windows 10 Creators Update that seems to have caused this issue, but that's not an option for me as my PC's W10 installation was done long after the update went live. It might be same case for you unfortunately as the update was back in 2017 I think. Alternatively a fresh installation of W10 might be viable, though it's a lot of hassle to go through just to try and repair one or two games that really shouldn't have this problem. We might have to natter on about this at Nvidia's support and possibly Microsoft's.

@AlfieSkytower Thanks for the insight, i still stand by it being a DRM issue. Or an intergration within windows 10, bottom line it is an optimization problem not a user problem, this should be fixed by the devs. Even if it lands on the table of the user to correct this with the horrendous customer support by EA it makes it unbearable. I would of been happy to buy DLC's as i have done for sims 3 and sims 2. But the lack of care, lies and lack of being able to go off script ruins the support they even offer. Im not sure why they even have a customer services perhaps a legal requirement. I have heard of horror stories of their support but first hand is really really bad. 

Again with a clean boot is just not ideal for one game. 

I will check again in the future to see if it has been resolved but for now... i guess ill play something else.

@Fizzyvimto21 The reference to 2Tb would be for two 1Tb drive in a raid configuration which would give you a performance boost at a cheaper cost then a large ssd device. An under rated or flaky power supply sometimes give miss leading symptoms and should be checked and eliminated as a cause. Right now you have 144.1Gb free space on the ssd. This free space is parsed out by the memory management part of the operating system. This is very complicated and I doubt even the authors don't know how it works anymore. Without anything else you have 21.151Gb for a page file. 144.1Gb minus 21.151 equals 123.249Gb left free. I don't think the page file is big enough. But increasing the page file will decrease the amount of free space on the system device which I think is also to small. You also have to consider the game does some post video device video processing which is done in software. High cpu usage can affect performance. As more and more data is pushed to virtual memory (page file) performance will take a hit. I do not build any gaming machine with less then a 500Gb drive. I usually put a 1Tb drive (WD black) in my gaming rigs. If memory serves me right the page file has to be contigous. This isn't going to matter anymore as a ssd does not have head settling time. I think I mentioned Windows update that downloads updates in the background. I noticed a performance hit during those downloads. Another thing i notice is your using Windows 10 version 1809. There are many thoughts about this version and Microsoft doesn't even have a definitive answer yet. Microsoft doesn't know if to skip 1809 or make users get 1809 however briefly. I don't have the Windows 1809 update and I don't have a small ssd and my game runs without issues.

Here's what I just found - KB4482887 for Windows 10 1809 causes game performance issues. This issue was resolved by KB4489889. My response hmmmm = I'll wait and see.

@roberta591 "There are many thoughts about this version and Microsoft doesn't even have a definitive answer yet. Microsoft doesn't know if to skip 1809 or make users get 1809 however briefly. I don't have the Windows 1809 update and I don't have a small ssd and my game runs without issues." - good for you however it is not the cause of the problem. if it i was i would experience this problem in other games which i do not.

"The reference to 2Tb would be for two 1Tb drive in a raid configuration which would give you a performance boost at a cheaper cost then a large ssd device." - off topic however 

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Crucial-MX500-CT2000MX500SSD1-Internal-NAND/dp/B078C515QL/ref=sr_1_3?keywords=ssd+2tb&qid=1556657089&s=gateway&sr=8-3

1TB £115.30

2TB £193.98 /2 =  96.99 for 1TB.

"This is very complicated and I doubt even the authors don't know how it works anymore." - The person who made it does not know how it operates... sure, got a source or is this a trust me bro quote?

"An under rated or flaky power supply sometimes give miss leading symptoms and should be checked and eliminated as a cause." - This would make sense if it affected every game not just one.

your whole point makes sense if it was affecting more than one title. The fact the game runs fine at 60FPS on ultra negates your whole point. The problem is the connection to the internet that is causing the issue. Making this a networking issue not a hardware issue. I'm fine with my hardware and have no intention of updating it yet.

Again. This is NOT a hard ware Issue.

There's similar thread here that's moniotored by the gurus: https://answers.ea.com/t5/Technical-Issues-PC/sims-4-incredibly-low-fps/td-p/7605094

Maybe you could post the information asked by QA there in that thread.

This has by all rights died, i have supplied the infomation to QA however any follow up has died. By the sounds of it there is no way for them to replicate the fault. 

I got sims 4 not too long ago, I've had some good fun with the game.

However ever since I've installed the game I've had a consist issue.

If my PC is connected to the internet in ANY way the game lags to the point it becomes unplayable

This includes if the game or origin are offline

The issues is solved if i disconnect my PC entirely from the internet however it reoccurs the second i connect

Can anyone tell me why this is happening and how to fix it?

@ChairmanCody 

I merged your post with the thread @kreatora mentioned.

Could you provide the info asked by the QA ?

This has been an on going issue since april (from my experience) the QA team are collecting data however they are still yet unable to recreate the issue. 

So, while trying to fix this myself, I noticed an odd thing about this issue. I tried to block Sims 4 via the Windows Firewall Inbound and Outbound rules, oddly enough, even when TS4 is completely disconnected from the internet by this method, it still lagged while my PC had an internet connection, and ran at over a 100 FPS when I was properly offline (by pulling out my ethernet cord). I attached my dxdiag down below, and have been having this issue since the July patch. I did all this on a clean install and no save with no mods or DLC.