Experiencing FPS drops and poor performance

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crinrict​ Hello, here is the DXdiag file you requested.

danilo29oliveira​  Sorry for the late reply; your thread was moved to the PC tech forum for further troubleshooting.

How do you lock the game to 144 or 60 fps?  If you're using Vertical Sync in the Nvidia Control Panel, does it help to set it to Adaptive rather than On?  If you're using a different method, one that works in windowed mode as well as fullscreen, does the game run better in one of these modes rather than the other?

Please also let me know whether you see the same behavior with post processing off; when the camera is still, or only when it's moving; and on all lots, including on a blank lot in one of the base game worlds, or only on a few.  The question is whether this is inherent game behavior or is dependent on context.  If you notice any other patterns to the fps drops, please share them as well.

puzzlezaddict​  So I've already tried several ways. I've set the refresh rate to the default in The Sims 4 settings, then to 60, then to 144, then I went to the Windows display settings and switched from 144Hz to 60Hz, then I went to the Nvidia control panel and limited the FPS to 60 and turned vertical sync on and off, all without success. I've tested it in DirectX 9 and 11 and observed that when the game is running at 144 FPS it's fluid, but during gameplay the FPS drops, especially when I visit community lots and there are many Sims; it starts dropping to 100, 90, 70 FPS, and then the game starts to stutter and the camera becomes very slow. Adding to this, the laptop overheats, reaching 94 degrees Celsius. When I tested the game at 60 FPS, the laptop didn't overheat, but the game stuttered a lot. So I thought... It must be because my screen is 144Hz, but I recently bought GTA 5 and Resident Evil 3 Remake and tested them at 60 fps, and both GTA 5 and Resident Evil 3 Remake ran smoothly and perfectly at 60 fps. So I came to the conclusion that The Sims 4 isn't optimized for 144Hz or higher screens, and I even tried the new memory boost setting. I believe that if The Sims 4 were optimized to deliver 60 fps like Resident Evil 3 Remake and GTA 5, it would improve performance. It's as if it can't utilize my hardware, and I don't have problems with other games. I play with all the graphics settings on low to try and keep The Sims 4 at 144 fps, and even then, I experience slowdowns and stuttering at times. I don't use mods or custom content. I hope that, as The Sims Direct posted, they can fix the performance of The Sims 4 for modern computers and laptops because it's very frustrating to have this problem. An i5 12450H, RTX 3050, and 24GB of RAM, putting the game on minimum graphics settings, still results in the game not being smooth.

puzzlezaddict​  I've already tested all the settings in the Nvidia control panel. I play in fullscreen mode, and I've also tested windowed mode. This happens whether the camera is stationary or when I move the camera. This happens in all worlds. I can't even play on Ondarion because it's the worst of all. If I'm on a blank lot with just one Sim, the game runs at 144fps and is super fast, but if I build a house and have a family of 5 Sims, the FPS starts dropping below 100 and this happens. It feels like the game is running at 10 FPS. This is always the case, even if I have the graphics on low, and it gets worse each time. Not to mention that my Sims cancel everything I ask them to do. Sometimes I have to repeat it five times or more for them to perform the action. But the part that bothers me the most is this slowness. Sometimes I have the camera stationary and the Sim is walking, and suddenly it stutters and starts to slow down. I type Ctrl + Shift + C and check the FPS, and it's 70 or 60. Then I go back to a lot where there's nothing, and it goes back to 144 FPS, and the game runs smoothly again. This happens if there are more than 5 Sims on a community lot, especially if the community lot is heavily decorated like those in Ondarion.

Sorry for writing so much; I'm trying to be as detailed as possible.

puzzlezaddict​  What I find strange is that on my old laptop, which had an i5 8250U and an MX150, The Sims 4 ran smoothly at 60 fps, but its screen was also natively 60Hz. This is one of the things that helped me understand that it seems The Sims 4 has some incompatibility with 144Hz screens.

danilo29oliveira​  There are a few details here that I think are making this seem different or more complicated than it actually is.  One is that the refresh rate of your monitor doesn't matter here.  The monitor has no bearing on what the graphics card is doing—the GPU renders the frames and sends them on to be displayed however the screen is set to do so.  Changing the monitor's refresh rate only changes what vertical sync means to the GPU.

The reason I mentioned the Adaptive v-sync setting is because it works in a different way.  On means the GPU tries to match the refresh rate of the monitor, and if it can't, it drops down to the next-highest factor of that number.  So at 144 Hz, the GPU would aim for 144, then 72 if 144 isn't possible, then 48, and so on.  Adaptive means v-sync only applies over the monitor's refresh rate.  So it caps framerates at 144, in this case, but has no effect on the fps below that.  You could imagine how using On would make fps bounce all over the place in certain circumstances when the framerates are already dropping a bit.

The idea that the game is not optimized for 144 Hz screens (or similar) isn't really a valid concept in the way that it used to be.  In older games, animations and the game clock could be tied to fps, giving weird effects at higher framerates.  With new games, devs can have an fps target and adjust settings to try to hit it, but this mostly happens on consoles where the hardware is set.  The optimizations for PC these days are more about balancing quality and performance but not typically about a specific framerate target.

Sims 4 clearly has issues with large lots and large numbers of sims on them, sometimes at lower thresholds than seems reasonable.  One cause we've identified is that switching to a different LOD for an object or sim is enough work for the game engine that doing so for many objects at once can be a significant drag on performance.  Increasing the maximum distance where the highest LOD can still be used means less switching and can therefore improve performance.  Please see this thread if you want more information:

Camera movements very choppy since BH patch | EA Forums - 12185589

What doesn't help, necessarily, is lowering the graphics settings.  Some delays appear to come from the game engine doing tasks behind the scenes, not from graphics rendering.  So making graphics rendering easier doesn't touch the underlying issue.  Simulation-related issues do appear to be on the devs' radar, but I don't have any details about that.

What I would suggest, however, is testing a new save with fresh sims and a default lot that are NOT from the Gallery or your own library.  Many older creations are broken now, and even some newer ones don't work the way they should.  The only way to be sure that this is entirely a game issue is to remove any complicating factors like a potentially broken sim or lot.

puzzlezaddict​  So, in order to even minimally play The Sims 4, I have to play with low graphics settings, and even then it's bad. If I put it on ultra or high graphics, which I have more than enough hardware for, the game becomes terrible, and that's when I get drastic FPS drops. The problem is definitely not my laptop because I play current games; it's undoubtedly The Sims 4's game engine that's problematic. I'm just reporting my experience. As I said, in parts where the game is showing 144 FPS, it's fluid; during gameplay, those FPS drops below 100, and the game freezes and stutters. Regarding testing on a new save, I've already done that. I've turned The Sims 4 inside out, trying every possible option. I don't even download lots from the gallery because I find them too cluttered with items. I build my own lots to make sure I use the minimum to see if I can get an acceptable FPS to play. I think the big problem is that I bought all the expansions. Because when my game was empty, I didn't have so many problems; it was easier to work around. I really hope the developers can do something about the game engine, because I bought this laptop just to be able to play The Sims 4 with high (ultra) graphics, and I'm totally disappointed because, in theory, my hardware is very good, but in practice, the game's performance is terrible.