Visual Setting for Specific Laptop

@Liudmila-tian  You should be able to play on ultra graphics settings, no compromises, on that laptop.  Seriously.  If you see slowdowns, it's the game being difficult, not your hardware.  (The game engine can slow down for all sorts of reasons, including when it has to render a lot of custom content, but the issue is not the load on the graphics card.)  I'm not sure why anyone would think you'd need to dial down the settings at all.

It would be a good idea for you to manually limit fps to 144, which you can do in the built-in Nvidia Control Panel if the game doesn't offer the option.  Let me know if you'd like some help with this.

@puzzlezaddictoh, that's interesting! I remember you mentioned ultra graphics settings in my other post about CCs and how they affect the game. It would be lovely if I could use them and not destroy my laptop, tbh. I'll try limiting the FPS now - I checked this option just this morning when I was following some guides from YouTube. If I'm not mistaken, I need to follow this path: Nvidia Control Panel - 3D Settings - Program Settings - (Choose The Sims 4 from the list) - Max fps. Is it right?

Oh, I have almost forgotten: could the lagging be caused by conflicts between my gameplay mods or just their total number, for example? I use quite a lot of them to enhance relationships (Lumpinou mods, different LittleMissSam's things, PERSEA's traits and family stuff, etc.).

@Liudmila-tian  There are two paths in the Control Panel: Manage 3D Settings > Program Settings > Vertical Sync (On/Adaptive/Half refresh rate, whichever makes the game run best), which only works in fullscreen mode; and Manage 3D Settings > Global Settings > Max Frame Rate (144, or 72 if you want), which works in any mode.

Yes, conflicting mods can cause lag, as can poorly made mods, or even well made ones that are doing too much for the game engine to handle.  That's a big reason why, when people come to us reporting performance issues, one of the first things we do is ask them to test in a clean Sims 4 user folder.  It's incredibly helpful to set a baseline for performance with no added content, no long-running saves, nothing that would slow the game down.

Once you have that baseline, you can compare it to how the game runs with existing content and decide how to proceed.  You might notice that adding a mod causes a significant slowdown, and then you might reconsider whether you want that mod, or you might test it without your other mods to see whether the issue is a conflict or just the new mod itself.  Similarly, you might find that certain high poly custom content is too much for the game to handle, even with your powerful graphics card, and decide you'd rather use a different item that doesn't take quite so many resources to render.

And of course having a lot of cc in the first place will slow down loading times, even on a solid state drive.  But just having the cc in your user folder shouldn't affect performance once the game is loaded; it only really matters if the content is on-screen at the moment.

If you'd like more specific help sorting through your content, let me know.  But really, I'd expect your laptop to generally run the game at the screen's limit of 144 fps with no content at all, probably with some room to spare.

@Liudmila-tian  The lower fps is likely related to the lag, but it can be difficult to tease out the cause.  Is there anything these episodes have in common, for example do they take place in the same world, or even on the same lot, or is the same event happening, or are there are a lot of sims in the area?  It can even be related to the time of day, for example when the NAP votes are being tallied, and the game has to apply or remove the associated buffs to sims in the neighborhood.  And of course if a mod is doing a lot of work at a specific time, that can also cause a slowdown.

The fps dropping when the game is running is fairly normal, although the size of the drop seems larger than it should be.  But rendering animations on sims wearing a lot of custom content could be mroe demanding than usual.  I'm not totally sure because I don't use cc unless it's to test something, so my own observations about fps are mostly limited to the vanilla game.

For the speed question, are you trying to use ultra speed or perhaps something even faster?  If so, I wouldn't know what mods are available and work properly.  The game itself should speed up time when your sims are sleeping, although time often slows again when the game has to do a lot of calculations.  It can help to just leave the camera in one place while your sims are sleeping, especially if you point the camera outside the house at a patch of mostly unoccupied terrain.

Really though, this can take a bit of experimenting to figure out, or just paying close attention while you play.  For Sims 3, I could list out a bunch of lots, certain events, etc. that cause fps drops because I remember how things go, but I don't have nearly as intricate an understanding of how Sims 4 works, other than general ideas and a few observations.  So you'll need to play around with it yourself to some extent.

I do want to say again though that most if not all of this is about Sims 4 and its game engine, not your computer.  A cooling pad or fan can help for sure, but your hardware should still be able to handle ultra settings without any trouble.  It's the game itself that doesn't always cooperate.  And because it's not really a question of what your hardware can do in theory, lowering settings isn't going to help the way you might expect.  If the game engine can only handle a certain process at a certain speed, that's the limiting factor, not your laptop.