I was just having a PM chat with another simmer about Sims 3 game performance, and I thought maybe it would be worth posting this stuff publicly. There are other game performance guides around the Internet, but this is mine.
Sims 3 is an old game. It’s enormously ambitious, and I wish they’d built a better data management engine in the beginning when they knew they were going to try to simulate basic behavior for an entire town over generations. When it runs like crap, it’s natural to assume that the problem is the computer, but the truth is that in 2021, the major reason that the game gets laggy is the GAME. It’s almost never the computer.
Sims 3 is a 32-bit game. That means that it has huge limitations on how much memory it can access. If you have the long-address patch (which if you have your game patched up to 1.67+ you will have), then the total memory the game can use is 4G. Before long addressing, the max usable memory was 2G, and the game stopped being able to function in that amount after about the 4th expansion I think.
It doesn’t matter if you have a 64-bit operating system, which you probably do. Sims 3 has to run in 32-bit backward compatibility.
There’s a lot of advice on how to improve performance. Some of it worked in the past but doesn’t now. Some of it never worked. Here are the things I know of that actually do make Sims 3 run better:
1. NRaas mods ErrorTrap and Overwatch: Even if you hate mods, you want these. They don’t change the behavior of the game. They fix bugs that bloat the game and corrupt save files. I honestly don’t know how anyone plays generational games without these. I’ve spoken to a lot of players over the years who don’t mod because they consider it dangerous to their game. I can see that reasoning, but not for these two mods.
2. An FPS (frames-per-second) limiter. This gets really technical, but the jist of it is that Sims 3 was written at a time when computers didn’t have nearly the graphics resources they have today. Because of this, it’s written to use ALL the resources it can get to generate the maximum number of visual frames it can. On a modern computer it’s likely to generate hundreds of frames per second when you only need 30 fps, and no matter how studly a computer you give it, it’s likely to chew up those extra resources generating more frames you’ll never see. When I added FPS limiting, suddenly the fan on my computer went quiet. It was stunning. I don’t see this issue discussed nearly as much as other ones, probably because of the confusing technical reasons, but it might be the biggest thing you can do for your game performance.
For certain graphics cards, you can limit the frames generated in the graphics config. I used Bandicam for years. You need to run it before you launch Sims and set FPS to 30 on the video tab. HOWEVER, I stopped using Bandicam when Smooth Patch (below) came out. You want maximum FPS of 30. That’s the maximum number that’s useful to the eye except arguably for first person shooters and virtual reality.
[Note: Other simmers are telling me that they think somewhat higher frame rates can be a big visual improvement for their games. I think I’ll try 60 for a while myself and see. A lot of games target 30, so it’s worth trying out some limits to see what you think. When you’re talking about modern hardware, 60fps is almost the same for performance as 30. Whatever the case, don’t set it higher than the refresh rate on your monitor. Anything over that literally can’t be displayed.]
3. Smooth Patch by LazyDuchess. This is some kind of runtime injection magic that updates the way some threading is done in the game. the biggest thing it affects is loading the catalogues in CAS and build/buy, but it can make games load faster tool. As an afterthought, the config file includes frame rate limiting, so you can just forget about #2 above and set FPSlimit=30 after installing Smooth Patch.
4. CC Magic. This is a cc organizer, which is very nice to have in its own right. The big performance deal is that it merges your cc into big packages for you. Merged packages are better for performance but a living hell to do manually.
So that’s it! I’ve done a lot of fiddlier stuff, but I think these things are the most bang for your buck.
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