Sims 4 uses more than half to all of my RAM

I had my game running on DX9 so I unchecked that and enabled the memory boost.

I followed some of your advice and most of the bullets on this article and it seems to be running much more smoothly from my short time playing today. I'll have to test it for longer to be sure though I think it's going better than it was at least. Instead of running at 60% RAM by default, it's now at 50% RAM which still seems like a lot but I haven't noticed any problems for now.

Thanks!

KillerRaven125​  Sims 4 is definitely not using all your RAM in the sense that I meant it, since the OS would use some and so would background services.  I was asking whether the Task Manager was reporting the game's memory usage, not overall committed memory, as over 16 GB or close to 32 or whatever you happen to see in a given session.

Memory Boost should be available in general, but it's been rolling out in stages and perhaps you don't have the option currently.  The executable for the Memory Boost version of Sims 4 is TS4_x64_fpb, as opposed to TS4_x64 for the standard version or TS4_DX9_x64 for the DirectX 9 version.  So you can see what you're running in the Task Manager.

My other thought was if you've been playing in DX9 mode, maybe that's why the option isn't present.

The game has had memory leaks over the years, but again, not all the time and not as dramatic as yours unless there's an identified bug.  Having said that, it would be interesting to know which mods seem to help.

It's also worth trying to play in a clean boot, in case some other service on your PC is interfering.

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.  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.  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.

If this helps, you can selectively reenable services until you find the culprit, then either leave that disabled or (if it belongs to an app you want to keep using) let me know what it is so we can try to fix the underlying issue.

I've never needed to use all of my RAM playing other games, even ones that should be more strenuous on my PC's system than this game like Baldur's Gate 3, various MMOs, Assassin's Creed Shadows, etc so it's definitely TS4 using all of my RAM

This happened on a new save in which I only played a couple of families. I made sure that save hadn't even been affected by mods at all to see if it was my mods doing it however it seemed to happen even quicker without my mods than it did with them. I don't think the saves matter since it happens on every save with or without mods. If anything, mods seemed to somehow prevent it happening for a time. I can't figure out if it's a hidden setting on my PC or if it's EA doing it.

I can't find Memory Boost in my settings so if that's the issue, it's a hidden setting that's killing it for me. It seems like Sims 4 has a memory leak somewhere from reading similar problems people have had over the years

KillerRaven125​  Is the game itself using more than 16 GB RAM, or is that what's in use overall while you're playing?  I've heard of Sims 4 using that much memory, but only in the context of certain bugs that eat resources until they cause a crash, not anything that's by design.

Since this can be a sign of a corrupted save, please test a new save as well, and if only the main saves are affected, let me know how large they are (in Documents > Electronic Arts > The Sims 4 > saves).

If you want to try something that might help, enable Memory Boost and check RAM use again.

Memory Boost - Step-by-Step Guide | EA Forums - 12559448