Computer acting slow

purpleband

Hello everone
My specs on my computer are:

Processor: AMD Phenom II X4 955 processor (4 CPUs), ~3.2GHz
Memory: 8192mb RAM
Graphics Card: NVIDIA GeForce GT 440

All the components are just under a year old and my computer used to run games at quite a good speed (mostly Sims 3). Now the last few days its really begun to slow down, the lag is getting annoying and the loading times have doubled.

I was wondering if anyone could recommend a upgrade for to to get the game running at its usual rate again.

I'm looking to spend around €150-250.

Thanks to everyone that can help

tuxy

If the game used to work fine and no longer does then most likely it is a software issue. Check for programs with unusually high CPU or memory usage.

purpleband

I've been buying alot of expansion packs recently so I really just want to know how to speed it up.

Thanks for replying though.

spix

Run an anti virus. Could be that the expansion packs have caused slower loading times as there's more to load?

purpleband

I've run the anti vuius and nothing was found. This sort of thing happened on my brothers laptop the more expansios I got the slower it loaded. Is it the processor?

Sorry, I really know nothing about this

ED E

Sims3 has a shíteload of DLC. Triples the size of the game AFAIK.

More assets could mean more ram usage but 8GB should be plenty so I'd say you're being CPU limited.

Is the HDD really chugging away as you play perhaps?

tuxy

Well it's a 32 bit app so will not use more than 2gb of ram anyway.

I can't see the sims being overly hard on cpu or gpu. I do know the expansions are huge so maybe it has to read from the hard drive constantly and your drive is slow.
What are the main problems, load time, frame rate or lock ups?
Or all of the above?

I think it's probably an issue specific to this game so we may not be able to help you unless someone on here has experience with the sims 3 and it's expansions.

You might get better help if you could find an active forum for sim 3 users.

BloodBath

It's probably not this but there's no harm crossing it off the list.

Go to windows search and type disk defragmenter.

Select the program from the list.

Click on the hard drive that the sims is stored on then click analyse disk.

See what the result is. If the fragmentation is above 5-10% defrag it.

If it's not this I have a feeling something in the backround may be running that is eating cpu cycles. Do you have any anti virus or spyware software? Are any other programs open?

Your pc is well above the recommended specs for even the latest expansion.