Game Suddenly Slowing Down In Larger Lots

[alamb1]

I was wondering if someone could tell me what would be causing my game to slow down on larger lots.  It happened suddenly, everything was working great and then all of a sudden I went to play a larger lot and it makes everything move very slow, my sims the time and so on.  I am playing on a 2.80 GHz petium 4 computer with 2.25 GB ramI have plenty of harddrive space on the drive I have the Sims loaded on (which is an external drive) I have 252 GB of free space.  On my main C drive I have 63 GB of free space.  I don't know if I should clean out my downloads folder or what?  I have a lot of downloads but most people do.  Also I didn't just get the downloads all of a sudden, they have been there for a long time.  I add each week of course. Though I haven't recently added tons or anything.  I have 12.2 GB in my download folder. It started acting like this after I loaded H&M, though I am not sure that it was right after.  Could it be a certain item that is very heavy, like with poly counts or something. I have tried playing in two larger houses one is the large Maxis family in Riverblossom.  Both larger houses play so slow it is no fun to play.  Any help would be appreciated.

[tylersada]

For me the larger the lot and more content on that lot, the slower my computer runs.  I have a new video card an 1 GB of RAM, and plenty of space on my hard drive.  I have less than 2 GB in the download folder.  My processor is only a 2.2GB.  I notice the problem arises more with me if there is a transistion of some type on the larger lots.  Normal play is usually not too slow but usually I will have about eight sims on a large lot.  If I ask them all to do something different at the same time (I micro-manage) the game will slow.

[CynaraBlade]

Unless your machine is a very high-performance, top of the range model, it's inevitable that larger lots will slow down the game, or so it seems. Especially if the lots are cluttered up with plenty of high-poly objects (some of the larger Maxis trees, for instance.) Personally, I don't think the size of your downloads folder has an impact on the game's performance, just its loading time.

[caffeinated.joy]

Cynara is right. Your downloads folder really only affects your game's loading time, and it can also slow down things a bit when you're in CAS or Bodyshop creating a sim (if it's particulary large). Larger lots with a lot of people and objects will slow down your game performance.