So I maxed out my computer's hardware capabilites, but is still having problems...
Yesterday, I maxed out my RAM for my seven year old computer, which much to my surprise can support 3GB of RAM. I also installed the highest graphics card I could buy for that computer, again surprising me that I could find a 1GB card that would run on a 300w system.
All my TTGs now look pretty. Monkey Island has glow effects with some minor shuddering; The Devil's Playhouse has real-time shadows and better lighting effects despite the occational breaks in the self-shadowing process; Spore is just beautiful to look at.
My problem is with my Sims 3 game. I was told that upping my RAM and my Video Card would help it load faster, but when I was testing everything out yesterday, my game still takes an hour to load.:(
So if it isn't the RAM that's the problem, what could it be?
Thanks in advance!
All my TTGs now look pretty. Monkey Island has glow effects with some minor shuddering; The Devil's Playhouse has real-time shadows and better lighting effects despite the occational breaks in the self-shadowing process; Spore is just beautiful to look at.
My problem is with my Sims 3 game. I was told that upping my RAM and my Video Card would help it load faster, but when I was testing everything out yesterday, my game still takes an hour to load.:(
So if it isn't the RAM that's the problem, what could it be?
Thanks in advance!
Sign in to comment in this discussion.
Comments
Last week. Everything came back fine.
If he has a slow hard drive (5400RPM or less) the ram wouldn't matter so much, also 1333mhz vs 800mhz makes a negligible difference with most tasks (1%). Advantages are only had when you are using triple channel memory opposed to dual channel and with lower latencies.
As for me - upping my RAM from 2GB to 6GB (while running Win 7 x64) on my last machine made loading savegames in X³: Terran Conflict a lot faster, but(!) of course only those after the initial load after running the game; it's only faster if what would be loaded from disk is in the system's drive cache...
Can't really tell a difference on my new (that is, upgraded) machine with 8GB, though.
np: Dominik Eulberg - Ambivalent (Trapez 100)
Windows will only access around 2GB-2.5GB since it has to map the Video RAM (Virtually every device uses memory and the system maps the memory to its address space, so you'll end with less memory that the installed memory if have 3GB or more)
Also for Video cards you need to check the core(s) speed and memory access speed (including memory addressing width - 64bit, 128bit and so on)
For instance a VC with 500 Mhz Memory and 64 bit addressing is slower than a 333 Mhz Memory and 128 bit addressing VC for almost all the memory operations involved in loading (mostly texture storage)
Also a 7 year old PC is probably a single core computer and even if it is dual-core or multi-core, it is probably limited to SSE3 and HT, and PCIe will also be limited (probably) to PCIe x1.
And because everyone requested it...
Try to get help from someone and update to SP3 or get a new computer with a newer OS (and with newer hardware your games will probably run better)
[Public Service]
Tomorrow (July 13th, 2010) Microsoft ends support for Windows XP SP2.
See this page for more info.
So no support or security updates after tomorrow.
[/Public Service]
I'm only using 25% of a 500GB hard drive, so I think I have space.
Hmm, is it only The Sims 3 giving you trouble? It might be worth trying to patch that.
Strangely enough, I discovered from another player that EA didn't program a population cap or an auto-delete command for games that had too many NPC Sims in it for a specific computer to handle. The player suggested that I "delete the dead." Upon doing that, the load time for the game dropped from 1 hour to 20 minutes.:eek: And all i had to get rid of was 40 tombstones!
... Wow. Major oversight indeed.
My program of choice for this is MyDefrag - it's free and works a lot faster (and more thorough) than the built-in defragmenter of Windows...
EDIT: Of course reading the whole thread might help...
By the way - when did you take that DxDiag output? If it was after booting up I'm surprised that 662MB of your page file are already in use.
If MyDefrag reports that your pagefile is fragmented here's how to fix it...
np: ISAN - Merman Sound (Glow In The Dark Safari Set)
My computer's remaining space seems to fluctuate. I normally have 6 out of 70 GB left,(5 years of iTunes can really add up) but it has recently been randomly fluctuating from around 2GB to 7GB. Should I put some of my iTunes stuff on an external drive, or is their a reason for this.
Some facts:
-I have 3 different anti-virus/spyware programs, 4 if you count Windows Defender(Spybot Search and Destroy, Avanquest Double AntiSpy, and Webroot AntiVirus with Spy Sweeper).
-I NEVER turn my computer off.
- Right now, it is at 6.94 GB.
Do you have a dynamic page file using virtual memory? If so then yes. You should only run one of your anti-spyware programs at a time to prevent conflicts.
How do I check if I have a dynamic page file? Also, I never run my antivirus programs all at once.
Click on advanced tab
In the performance section click on settings
Again click on Advanced > click on Change in the Virtual Memory section
Change the virtual memory [pagefile size]
Click custom size then set initial size to The current size (lower on the window) then The maximum to the next gigabyte up (~1000mb). Do this when you have ~7gb free space.
I would put your music on a separate Hard drive either way it is likely to be less prone to wipes/complete system failures than your main disk.
Also leaving your computer on all the time will cause a lot of memory to be lost, simply from programs not closing properly/running in the background.