Forum Discussion

Evergreenium's avatar
4 years ago

The game won't use my GPU

Hi everyone.

So after a year of not playing, I've recently gotten back into it. I've updated the game and my GeForce Drivers, but no matter what I do, the game will not use my GPU! While playing, it's using around 25% of CPU, 5 GB of my 24 GB available RAM and 3% of my integrated Intel Graphics but no GPU.

I have a GeForce Nvidia 1050 4 GB, 24 GB RAM, Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-7700HQ CPU @ 2.80GHz 2.80 GHz processor

This is making the gameplay unplayable as the fps drops from 20fps (which is awful) to 3fps - I can't even play it on the lowest settings. I do have CC installed, but I did a full clean install of CC 2 days ago after I noticed the lag. I use TSR CC Manager, so everything is up-to-date with no bugs.

I have tried forcing the game to use the GPU in the 3D settings under Control Panel, I have set the game to High Perfomance under Graphic Settings in Display AND I have edited the config to recognize my card which it did. I have also tried running the game offline as I read somewhere that that could be the cause but nope.

I am out of options and I have no idea how to fix this. I attached my dxdiag.

4 Replies

  • @Evergreenium  Your dxdiag contains a few errors related to the Nvidia graphics driver, so the place to start is with a clean uninstall and reinstall of the driver.

    https://crinrict.com/blog/2019/02/clean-re-install-of-graphics-drivers-with-display-driver-uninstaller-ddu.html

    Grab a fresh copy of the newest Nvidia driver:

    https://www.nvidia.com/Download/driverResults.aspx/184717/en-us

    The Intel graphics driver is also quite old, so it's a good idea to update that too.  You can get the newest one here:

    https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/products/sku/97185/intel-core-i77700hq-processor-6m-cache-up-to-3-80-ghz/downloads.html

    The order of operations here is to download both drivers, take your computer offline, run DDU to remove the Nvidia driver, restart, install the new Intel driver, restart, and install the Nvidia driver, then restart before trying to play.  You'll also need to redo any settings in the Nvidia Control Panel.

  • Evergreenium's avatar
    Evergreenium
    4 years ago

    I followed all the steps but now it's even worse than before. For the first time in my life I got the error 'Cannot load game.' when loading up a household. It took extremely long for my game to start-up (normally takes 1min, now it was 5min). Still not using my GPU but now it's using 100% of my disk! My disk is running at 23MB/s and I've never EVER had sims using my disk. What is going on??

  • puzzlezaddict's avatar
    puzzlezaddict
    Hero+
    4 years ago

    @Evergreenium  The game should definitely not be maxing out your disk, except perhaps when it's loading.  Even then, 23 MB/s seems a bit low.  Are you sure Sims 4 is maxing out the disk all by itself?  If there's something else running in the background that's hitting the disk at the same time, that would explain at least part of the issue.

    Is your laptop plugged in while you play?  If not, please try that, and make sure it's actually showing the charging symbol: the laptop would likely throttle performance when running on battery, and it's easy for a cable to come loose or get bent the wrong way.

    If that's not the problem, it's a good idea to make sure your Nvidia card is actually working properly, which means running a benchmark.  Please download the free 3DMark demo from Steam (there's a Download button to the right of the price for the full version) and run Time Spy.  You'll see a button to view your results in a browser window; please link me that page.  It shows your hardware info and your Steam username but nothing else identifying.