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danilo29oliveira's avatar
danilo29oliveira
Seasoned Rookie
4 days ago

Experiencing FPS drops and poor performance

I'm having performance issues with The Sims 4; my FPS drops a lot, which I found very strange because I play on an Acer Nitro 5 with an i5 12450H, RTX 3050, and 24GB of RAM, so The Sims 4 should have excellent performance. Then I started noticing a few things: my laptop screen is 144Hz, and the game can't maintain a stable 144 FPS. When the game is at 144 FPS, it's fluid, but it can't stay at 144 FPS all the time; it drops below 100 FPS and starts to stutter. So I tried locking it at 60 FPS, and the performance got even worse. I found this strange because I play Resident Evil 3 Remake at 60 FPS, and the game runs wonderfully. So I concluded that The Sims 4 isn't optimized for 60 FPS on high refresh rate screens like my 144Hz screen, even when I set it to 60 FPS in the settings. Besides that... My laptop is experiencing low performance and slow gameplay, which causes it to overheat, something that doesn't happen with other games. I'm reporting this because The Sims Direct posted that they are working to optimize the performance of The Sims 4, so I'm using this report to try and help with my observations. Since most modern computer screens are 144Hz or higher, I believe that if they optimize the game to deliver 60fps like the Resident Evil 3 remake on 144Hz or higher screens, it will greatly improve the performance of The Sims 4.

Edit By crinrict: Adjusted Title 

6 Replies

  • Could you post your Computer's DxDiag in the meantime

    • Press Windows-Key + R
    • Type: DxDiag
    • Click on Save all Information.
    • Attach the Text File to your post
  • 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.

  • danilo29oliveira's avatar
    danilo29oliveira
    Seasoned Rookie
    2 hours ago

    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.

  • danilo29oliveira's avatar
    danilo29oliveira
    Seasoned Rookie
    1 hour ago

    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.

  • danilo29oliveira's avatar
    danilo29oliveira
    Seasoned Rookie
    1 hour ago

    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.