Graphics Quality Help?

[tragedymcneil]

So I recently got this brand new computer, installed all my sims games, and then i tried to play, game works fine

except the graphics quality is so low, I have already tinkered with all the graphic options available and still cannot get the quality to be any better

They appear to be blurred or stretched or squished, it looks almost like sims 1 quality instead of sims 2.

My graphics card is a Nvidia geforce 9800 GT (maybe GTX not sure)
I have 6 gbs of ram and a 3.0ghz processor

So I don't think its a memory or speed issue..
and Yes..the graphics card is installed and I have tinkered with its settings too and cannot get it right.

Please help as I cannot play the sims 2 with sims 1 quality >.>

[Tenshii~Akari]

How much shared memory (video RAM) does the graphics card have?  That plays a factor also in graphics performance.  :angel:

[tragedymcneil]

http://www.nvidia.com/object/product_geforce_9800gt_us.html

look under specifications

[tragedymcneil]

The games not the least bit slow and it dosent jitter its absolutely everything i could ever want, except the graphics suck. Its odd because the graphics look great for every other game or program, its frakin wonderful everywhere else, amazing quality everywhere else, but in the sims 2...its not as grand as my last computer which only had 0.5 gbs of ram a 2.0 ghz processor and a basic ati radeon graphics card.

[Tenshii~Akari]

The specifications on the site and how much you have on your computer can be completely different.  Trust me, at one point I was thinking I had a 256MB card when the whole time I had a 128MB one.  Check the size of your card on your actual computer to be absolutely sure.  

(Easiest way: Go to Start => Run, type in dxdiag in the "Open" box and click OK, then the DirectX Diagnostics box will pop up.  Click on the third tab labeled Display, and check the upper left-hand box in the window for your graphics card specs.)  :angel:

One more question:  What OS are you currently on?  XP or Vista?  If you have the latter, it's definitely going to affect how much allotted memory there is available to run the game (as it's been said that it requires 1GB of memory alone just to run it), and if there's not enough free memory, graphics problems will most likely occur while playing Sims 2.  

The best suggestion I can offer is to make sure your graphics drivers and DirectX are up-to-date, and that you've disabled any running background tasks through the Task Manager's "Processes" list that have your user name in them (with the exception of "explorer.exe" and "taskmgr.exe", then exit out of the task manager)  to free up available virtual memory for your system.  

[tragedymcneil]

yes its the same as the specs on the site. and yes its vista, i have 6 gbs of ram, that should be enough to run vista, all drivers are up to date and nothing running in the background

[rwills]

Strictly a stab-in-the-dark guess, but you might check as to whether you have the newest version of DirectX and if not, install the newest version.

Info here:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/179113

[tragedymcneil]

yes i have direct x 9, and 10. my screen is 20 inch so i have a 1600x700 or something screen res and i cant have that res in the sims 2 game window, could that be causing the blurry squished/stretchedness? how can i get the sims 2 to have the 20 inch screen res? i gotta have it at that res a normal res looks weird on a larger screen.

[rwills]

Try this (only needs to be done once):

Right-click on the icon you click on to launch the game.

Then left-click Properties from the menu.

There will be an entry box with the address the shortcut icon points to.

Add this to the very end of what is already there:

 -rwidthxheight

Change width and height to the actual numbers of your screen resolution.

The end of the line will then look like this example (only use your actual numbers, of course):

.exe" -r1600x1200

Don't forget the space after the existing closing quote mark.

Click OK and try launching the game.

[tragedymcneil]

nope thats not it either, sigh. i just dont know what it could be

[EKozski]

Have you tried Tech Support through NVidia?

I had graphics problems with my card, a different one than yours, and I was up and running in less than 24 hours.

My next question would be, is this a single core or dual or quad core? The Sims 2 only recognizes a single core. You'd have to set the game up to recognize the one core.

[Tenshii~Akari]

You mentioned that your sims look "stretched" at the beginning, right?  Have you tried enabling the "use square pixels" option in your in-game Graphics Options menu?  :dontknow:

[tragedymcneil]

the computer core? its duo, is that what you mean? i have no idea how to configure the sms 2 for that O.o and yea square is on, i think it may be fixed now, not sure

[Tenshii~Akari]

He's saying that Sims 2 is made to work for one processor (core = processor).    You can change it to run on one processor by using this method.  :angel:

And even though your card seems to be a dedicated video card rather than an onboard/integrated version, you might want to check this point out.  It may actually help in some way.  

[Jasumi]

First things first, the 9800gt is an awesome graphics card that can beat the pants off the Sims 2. You are definitely above range for this game.

What exactly did you change in game? Did you change the settings to high and turned up smooth edges? Did you change the resolution (in-game) to 1600x1200?

I have an ATI card, but I think if you click on the desktop a window should pop-up that has the Nvidia drivers display. Did you change anything in here?

Have you played other PC games? If so, do they run fine?