Sims Medieval and Windows 10

I run into some trouble installing TS3 on my Windows 10 computer: a notification about not recognizing my graphic cards. So after some searching I found this YouTube film about how to edit certain files so the game would recognize my graphic card. This worked. I also made sure to limit the fps in the conf. settings of my NVIDIA card (another tip I read somewhere).

I already went digital with my Sims Medieval DVD when the game was not running after installing it from DVD. But also with this game I got the notification it was not recognizing my graphic card. Even though I can seem to play it, I'm not that comfortable doing so as long as I haven't address that notification.

So my question is, anyone else had this notification?
Did, and if so how, you resolve this?
Any idea if it's a good idea to apply the YouTube film I just referred to, to the Medieval files?

@SimLibby what graphics card do you have? TS3 has no fps limiter. If you have a good graphics card you need to use an fps limiter. @igazor can give you instructions depending on if you have Nvidia or Amd . What patch are you on for TS3? 1.67 or 1.69?

Same rules may apply to Medieval but I'm not sure. Maybe igazor knows

An unrecognized graphics card on these games doesn't mean that it isn't being detected and used. It means that the game doesn't know which default profile to assign to the card and so gives it a generic one. Sometimes this makes a small difference in the game's performance, sometimes none at all that the player can tell. In a small number of cases, players do see a definite improvement after editing their sgr files to account for the card and its default profile properly.

An undetected graphics card would prevent the game from starting up and display a Device 0 or some such error. That, of course, is different.

My sense is that if Medieval works and seems to be performing okay as is, it's probably not worth worrying about. But yes, most definitely on capping those fps rates.

Hi @phoebebebe13

It's a small world ;)

I got an NVIDIA Geforce GTX 750 Ti and already changed the fps limit in the conf. settings of NVIDIA (right clicking the desktop). I applied it to TS3W.exe and tsm.exe (I even applied it to the launchers) and set the vertical synchronization to adaptive.

I can see how this works for TS3 since I have changed certain files (I followed the instructions from that YouTube film) so the game recognizes my card. But Medieval doesn't recognizes my card and therefore is not using it, I think/assume, so any fps settings can't be applied in relation to the game/card.

"SimLibby;c-16471757" wrote:
Hi @phoebebebe13

It's a small world ;)

I got an NVIDIA Geforce GTX 750 Ti and already changed the fps limit in the conf. settings of NVIDIA (right clicking the desktop). I applied it to TS3W.exe and tsm.exe (I even applied it to the launchers) and set the vertical synchronization to adaptive.

I can see how this works for TS3 since I have changed certain files (I followed the instructions from that YouTube film) so the game recognizes my card. But Medieval doesn't recognizes my card and therefore is not using it, I think/assume, so any fps settings can't be applied in relation to the game/card.

Oops, our posts just crossed each other. Unless you have a setup specifically with dual graphics (do you also have an Intel integrated graphics chip?), this is actually impossible. If you only have one graphics card, as most of us on desktops do for example, the game has to use it formally recognized or not, or else there would be no graphics at all -- it won't run that way.

"igazor;c-16471762" wrote:

"SimLibby;c-16471757" wrote:
Hi @phoebebebe13

It's a small world ;)

I got an NVIDIA Geforce GTX 750 Ti and already changed the fps limit in the conf. settings of NVIDIA (right clicking the desktop). I applied it to TS3W.exe and tsm.exe (I even applied it to the launchers) and set the vertical synchronization to adaptive.

I can see how this works for TS3 since I have changed certain files (I followed the instructions from that YouTube film) so the game recognizes my card. But Medieval doesn't recognizes my card and therefore is not using it, I think/assume, so any fps settings can't be applied in relation to the game/card.

Oops, our posts just crossed each other. Unless you have a setup specifically with dual graphics (do you also have an Intel integrated graphics chip?), this is actually impossible. If you only have one graphics card, the game has to use it formally recognized or not, or else there would be no graphics at all -- it won't run that way.

@SimLibby agree with @igazor the 750 ti is a desktop card. It is newer than the game. When you first start the game it will tell you your card is unrecognized . That notice will go away after you start playing a save. You may get that notice every time you start a new save. Just ignore it as long as your game plays fine and your fps is capped. The game is using your card.

this game sometimes has issues with windows 10 one drive and some other update. igazor may know what the other issue is. Make sure you have one drive disabled for all sims games.

Hi @igazor,

You talk some logic ;) I have no integrated graphic cards. I thought maybe Windows/Microsoft had some backup/basic card or something that the game would use if it doesn't know my card. I just checked my dxdiag and device management and found no evidence to support that idea (don't know where I got it from).

I do wonder: the files I edited with TS3 was basically adding my card to the list of cards TS3 knows. Medieval has a similar config file with cards it knows. So where does Medieval gets it's instructions from if there is no configuration that tells it about my card?

Hi @phoebebebe13

The notification did went away and it seems I could play.

"phoebebebe13;c-16471781" wrote:
this game sometimes has issues with windows 10 one drive and some other update. igazor may know what the other issue is. Make sure you have one drive disabled for all sims games.

I'm not sure if I understand/interpreted this right. What drive do you mean? (are you referring to dual cards).


Both your posts do re-assure me. Thank you both very much for your help.

@SimLibby I don't have windows 10. One drive is a program that comes with windows 10 . If I'm not mistaken if you have one drive enabled it will send your sims files to the wrong place . @igazor may be able to explain this better than I can :p

Oh, OneDrive. If you would spell it without spaces, I would have recognized it. :p Yeah, I know about this. I have limited space in my OneDrive so no automatic synchronization. I decide what goes in my OneDrive, not Microsoft ;) and what to back-up and on which device. I have re-directed all My Documents to D, since my SSD has limited space as well.

Okay yes, you were correct in that Windows does provide for a minimal amount of display ability should the graphics card be deemed non-functional. You can see this if you ever start up in Safe Mode. But the games can't run and won't really try to using that kind of minimal display ability, it's not very pretty to see and is more for emergency use and troubleshooting purposes only; most of us can barely read the blurry text names of files on our screens when having to startup that way.

In the TS3 user game folder in Documents, there will be a file called DeviceConfig.log. This one tells us which graphics card the game is actually using and which profile it is assigning to it. Again in TS3, if the card is reported as unrecognized (Found 0, Matched 0 or something like that), the game will grant it a lower-level set of defaults. But that doesn't (usually) impact the performance very much. It might throttle the number of sims pushed to visit community lots if the game "thinks" it is running on less than spiffy hardware even if it really isn't. That's part of what the sgr file hocus pocus tries to address.

I don't play TSM but will have to assume that it has the same kind of structure and DeviceConfig.log provided and updated on each startup within its own user game folder.

On the OneDrive thing, where that takes Win 10 users by surprise is that TS3 sometimes finds a Documents folder in there and decides that's where the user game folder should go, so the player ends up with two of them but only one is really read from and written to. If you have OneDrive deactivated or if the games aren't even noticing it and are using the proper user Documents folder, wherever it has been re-directed to, then you're of course fine there.