Sims 4 Massive FPS Drops
I have had issues with the game randomly dropping to 15-20 fps for extended periods of time, sometimes nearly 30 minutes which makes playing difficult. I have lowered resolution and graphics settings...
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@puzzlezaddict I did the first step with a clean user folder. However, it will be difficult to tell really if that will cause it because like I mentioned previously, the drops are entirely random and can occur with seemingly no set specific reason.
I have my computer set to run games in high performance by default but went ahead and did it manually just in case.
Playing on ultra settings at 3840x2160, my monitor's native resolution, in the tutorial with V-sync off I was averaging 165-170 fps but with bad screen tearing as you'd likely expect from such a drastic difference in monitor capability. It would occasionally dip down to 120 randomly and back up. When it did this, there were no noticeable changes on screen. My camera angle and zoom remained the same and sims were still in conversation on the couch.
I did a clean boot on my pc and for good measure did a clean install of the game (I have tried a clean install before with no success but it never hurts to try again) Something worth noting is that the issue does seem to occur more often the longer I play on a save and I understand that likely has an effect but would make playing saves with more than 15 hours tedious.
Edit: Just for giggles, I decided to change the resolution to 1920x1080 and settings to low and my fps remained the same at 170 fps. Not sure if that is noteworthy
@Gameshark144 Sims 4 has a max fps setting, although last I checked, it was 200. It's interesting you say that your max is 170 though, because I've seen the same limit with a (much slower) graphics card that also doesn't get maxed out running Sims 4. I don't know whether this is a game engine limitation or something else, but it's certainly not a limitation of your graphics card.
I'm not surprised you'd get screen tearing; the question was whether you'd get higher framerates, which you do. Just because I'm curious, try setting vertical sync to Adaptive rather than on, and try Fast as well, both in the Nvidia Control Panel, and let me know what you see. (Leave the in-game v-sync setting off.) Fast should sync framerates to double the refresh rate of your monitor; Adaptive sets the upper limit but doesn't affect fps lower than the refresh rate.
@puzzlezaddict I changed the sync option to fast but I didn't see an option for adaptive. Maybe because my monitor isn't G-sync compatible? It is Adaptive Sync/AMD FreeSync compatible though but given that I no longer have any AMD products in my computer, I'm unsure if they are helpful or even usable with my current build. I used this monitor on my old computer build which had an AMD GPU and CPU.
@Gameshark144 Are you looking for options within your monitor settings or within the Nvidia Control Panel? You don't need to use any of the monitor's vertical sync settings. Last I checked, Adaptive was one of the available v-sync settings in the Control Panel, but it's always possible the newest Nvidia driver doesn't have it.
Anyway, how did the game perform with v-sync on Fast? If you saw the same fps drops, try playing while your computer is offline. You can sign into Origin and put it in offline mode, then disable wifi and/or disconnect the ethernet cable before launching the game.
@puzzlezaddict I was looking within Nvidia Control Panel. The options I had for Vertical Sync were On, Off, Fast, and Use the 3D application setting. There was an update to the Nvidia drivers only a few days ago.
The game seems to run mostly the same. I will be playing for about 20 or so minutes fine at 60 before the drop occurs and lingers. It will clear up on its own sometimes or it remains until I close the game and wait for the drop to occur again. I have also tried to play in offline mode and from what I had noticed, it does seem to delay the drop or at the very least it felt like it did but the drop does still occur within an hour of playtime.
The attached image is what I am seeing within Nvidia Control Panel for Vertical Sync options.
I have the same issue.
Unchecking VSYNC option in game settings works, however, the game completely ignores any setting I choose in my NVIDIA Control Panel. Thus FPS is constantly around 100 and as my monitor only supports 60 - massive tearing constantly occurs.
Any solutions?
@rostsit This is not uncommon if you have a laptop (or an all-in-one desktop) with dual GPUs: the Nvidia Control Panel setting doesn't actually affect the framerates. You'd instead need to use a third-party tool like Rivatuner Statistics Server to manually impose an fps limit. I don't know whether this would help with the screen tearing, but it's easy to try.
It should also be noted that vertical sync doesn't work in windowed mode regardless of the hardware configuration.
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