how i make the sims 3 more lag free, prevent it from crashing and make it look pretty
in this guide i will tell you guys all the things i did to make my game really smooth, crisp and clean. i also don’t suffer from game crash in bigger worlds, so i will tell you how i did it.
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there are already many guides out there on how to fix the game and also how to make sims 3 more smooth, this guide is just the way i personally did it and maybe it’s useful for someone.
tutorial under the cut! ☄︎. *. ⋆
step one:
make the game more smooth and lag free by making the game recognise your graphics card.
for that part of the tutorial i used @acottonsock guide on youtube -> link
i basically used all the steps, so the game recognises your graphics card & the game uses more of your cpu. so i would recommend to follow her tutorial for that since it’s a bit complicated!
step two:
using dxvk so the game won’t crash when it gets over 4gb of ram.
dxvk allows the game to go over 4gb of ram and stops it from crashing (at least mostly does). with dxvk i’am able to play without random crashing in big worlds like st. claire, storybrook county, or even worlds which are using a lot of cc like boroughsburg. my game needs 3 minutes to load into my save where i play in st. claire and i’am also in sim week 3, so dxvk helps a lot with that!
first you install the dxvk file. for that you need to download this and copy the d3d9.dll file from the x32 folder into your bin folder which is located under user/the sims 3/game/bin or wherever you have your game installed, not your electronic arts folder where you install mods!!
so you drag and drop the d3d9.dll file into your bin folder and then you also need to download the dxvk.conf file which you can download here. open up the dxvk.conf file and delete everything. after that you copy this into the blank file:
d3d9.textureMemory = 1 d3d9.presentInterval = 1 d3d9.maxFrameRate = 60
the lines need to be sorted like this and then you click save and you drag and drop your edited dxvk.conf file into your bin folder where you also just added the d3d9.dll file.
when you did that, you locate to your graphicrules.sgr file in your bin folder where you just installed dxvk. you open up the graphicrules.sgr file and then you need to find seti MemCacheBudgetValue.
here you see two numbers, 209715200 & 167772160 which represents 200mb & 160mb. you need to change the first number to 2147483648 and the second to 1073741824 so the game uses 2gb & 1gb of vram
after that, you finished installing dxvk to your game
one thing left, after installing dxvk open up your game and see if a TSW3.dxvk-cache file got generated into your bin folder. if yes, dxvk is installed. note that your settings in game will be reseted, so you need to apply your settings again. don’t delete the TSW3.dxvk-cache file unless you want to deinstall dxvk. for that you simply delete the cache file, the d3d9.dll file & the dxvk.conf file.
when you’re using reshade/gshade, you may need to install them again after installing dxvk. if you do so, make sure that u select vulkan mode for reshade & dxvk mode for gshade, i personally just tried it with reshade and it works fine!
step three:
mod fixes and smoothness patch.
the smoothness patch from lazydutchess is really known in the sims 3 community and i highly recommend using it. so go ahead and install smoothness patch here.
simply drag and drop the files into your bin folder and drag and drop the files from the packages folder into your mods folder which should be located like this: electronic arts/ the sims 3/ mods/ packages. after that open up the TS3Patch.txt file and here you can make some changes. i personally changed my TPS to 1000, FPS Limit to 60, Borderless to 1 and debug to 1 so the mod gives you a small message if it’s working. then save the file and your game should run much smoother.
next i use a bunch of mod fixes in my game like core mods, route fixes etc. for that i simply downloaded all mods from here. i also highly recommend to download the mono patcher from there as well. the guide also describes how to make the game recognise your graphic cards etc, so check it out, really!
step four:
nraas mods are highly recommended to keep your game structured and also clean and smooth. for that i recommend these mods:
nraas error trap = prevents the game from crashing when a sim gets a routing issue.
nraas master controller = gives u a bunch of options for the town, sim and households.
nraas overwatch = gives you options to clean vehicles, deaths etc at a certain time, set the alarm to 5 if you use the core mod, otherwise the mod won’t work.
nraas register = gives you the option to set the amount of pets and tourists in your game because stray pets are a reason of lagging in your game and also animals like raccoons and all, i personally don’t need them so i alsways change all options to 0
nraas saver = an automatic saving mod where the game asks you to save after a certain time, i use the 30mins option so my game asks me every 30mins to save my game.
nraas story progression = disables the ea story progression and replaces it with a more realistic version. you can change some things like the speed of how fast things happen in your save like relationships, pregnancy, careers etc.
nraas traffic = lets you disable ice cream trucks, food trucks and you can also set the delta for traffic, i always change it to -1000.
these are the main mods i recommend from nraas, there are a bunch more of them and also additions for story progression & master controller. so check them all out yourself to see which one you like.
step five:
visual things i did so my game looks really good and crisp
i changed my sim render texture in the graphicrules.sgr so your sims are more hd in game. for that locate to your graphicrules.sgr file in your bin folder and open the file with notepad. find the option SimQuality line and scroll down to setting $Very High. under that change the numbers like that:
RenderSimLODDistance to “70, 70, 9999999, 9999999”
RenderSimTextureSizes to “3072, 3072, 1024, 512”
RenderSimUseSpecular to “1, 1, 1, 1”
CASLightMapWith to 2048
CASLightMapFilteringEnabled to true
CASSinglePassShaderEnabled to false
CASSimpleHairShaderEnabled to false
CASRenderTargetSize to 4096
make sure you leave the quotation marks!
with that, your sims will now look more hd or even 4k in game.
i use reshade in my game so go ahead and install the latest version of reshade, select the TS3 game file in your bin folder when it asks you to select a game and make sure to tick vulkan mode if you have dxvk installed. check all shaders and textures and let it install reshade to your game. the reshade presets i mostly use are pearl and soft from @florydaax.
if you want to use the pearl reshade you need to transfer gshade shader and texture files to your reshade folders, @johziii made a really good tutorial for that right here.
i also have a ui mod so my ui in game is grey which you can find here. simply download it and drag and drop the file into your mods/ packages folder.
that’s simply all i did and i love my game. its smooth, clean and hd and i would never change my settings and mods again. hopefully this guide helps anybody and i hope its understandable what i tried to explain. if you have any questions or need more tutorials, feel free to ask!! i know there are a lot of guides out there but i wanted to share you guys my settings, mods etc and also because @sofayya and i once talked about dxvk. so i hope it helps somehow.
xoxo marina 🤍
