what does really matter?

[XPTL297]

I finished yesterday my base hood and some details were noticed.
I know now that I can place as many Sims I want in a hood (placed almost 1000 before). My present computer is powerful enough to very much, but I noticed that what is affecting performance, is not the nr. of Sims, not the nr. of downloads but the nr. of lots and houses or decorations.
The finished hood has 300 inhabitants, I have 1.7GB downloads and by now, is full with small houses. The hood size is 4MB.
It is starting to affect performance and becoming heavier.
As I have a 7000 series PCI express GC and the comp is a 64 bits 3,4Ghz, it would be ridiculous to have to reduce graphic performance to increase speed.
So, I suppose that something else has to be adjusted.
Would appreciate correct info.
Thanks.
Attached pic of the hood. As I know that most use much bigger houses than I do, there must be something wrong.

*attached image removed*

[BeosBoxBoy]

XPTL: the game has a serious resource management problem at a number of levels.  The way the game utilises video memory for instance has always been remarkably sloppy.  I am using Windows XP Professional SP 2 with all updates
dual 3.2 GHz CPUs
16 GB 3200 DDR RAM
3DLabs Wildcat Realizm 800 - 640MB GDDR3
2 @ Maxtor (ATA/133) DiamondMax 10 200 GB
2 @ Maxtor (SATA) DiamondMax 20 250GB hard drives
Plextor PlexWriter PX-230A CD-RW (ATA)
Plextor PX-755SA DVD±R/RW CD-R/RW (SATA)

Yet regardless of what setting, once I cross a certain (unknown) number of houses, sims, and downloads, it begins to get a bit crappy on performance.

The video memory runs at max load the whole time the game is running, even though the VPU is barely doing much work.

The inefficient method the game uses for cataloguing the custom content is a problem across all EPs.

Then there are the layers.... The base game has layers on a Sim's face like this: skin tone, blush, eyebrows, eyes, eyeliner, eyeshadow, full-face makeup, lipstick, stubble, glasses & accessories (these can be stacked), and facial hair (beards & moustaches) - so you have 11 layers in use even when nothing is present.  Clothing currently consists of at least two layers - the skin tone and the clothing texture (more if there are alphas), Pets EP adds more layers - and Seasons will add even more.

The overhead of the game is huge with only 1 or 2 EPs, but if you have all 5 and all 3 stuff packs, you are approaching 6 GB of just game installed files - then add custom content, default replacement packages, and mods/hacks....

When it comes down to it, Even with 16 GB of ram and a professional grade video card I find that installing the base game and just University EP is enough to get me all the things I want and doesn't have nearly the performance problems of a full install.  You may not be willing to play the game on such a slender install; so you have to expect that it will get slow.

[Micco]

Since I built my new machine (it's not done yet either - 2 more upgrades to go) I have few performance complaints with the game. I've made Woohoo U. much larger than the original and have no issues with it in neighborhood view. I get no slowdowns on all but the most extreme lots and even those run faster. The real slowdowns come when I make a sim change its appearance or when working in CAS or bodyshop and I can write that off to the massive number of downloads I have (more than 13,000, more than 5 GB.) Both systems will CTD if I place anything on the 18th level but I think that is an issue with the program and not hardware. It will be interesting to see the performance difference when I go to the RAID 0 in a couple of months. I don't think the Prescott to Conroe upgrade in 6 months will be as dramatic. I think I would get more of a performance increase by going to faster RAM but those PC6800 chips are still too expensive.

For comparison:
Old System
P4 2.66 GHz
Asus P4-800-V mb
1 GB PC 3200 RAM
XFX 7600 GS 512 MB AGP video
WD 250 GB ATA hd
(open case with 2 fans)

New system
P4D 3.2 GHz (Prescott) overclocked to 3.36 GHz
Asus P5N32-SLI Deluxe mb
2 GB PC 4200 RAM
2X XFX 7600 GS 512 MB PCI-E video in SLI mode
Seagate Barracuda 320 GB SATA hd
Closed case with 10 fans

[BeosBoxBoy]

I agree with much of what Micco explains in his post - but not all installs of the game seem to perform quite the same way even on this sytem.  It truly gets hairy after about six or seven months of consistent play.  the memories and dna and other remnant code of all the sims that have lived and died begins to take a toll on performance for the average user.

And before you ask XPTL, CTD = crash to desktop.

And I have been looking at that screen capture.  are you using Numenor's wall mod? or any building cheats?  because it is possible that a neighbourhood full of buildings with excessive use of wall segments and fencing might result in problems.  Maxis acknowledges this in a rather round-about manner by constantly decreasing the number of wall segements you can use in successive patches and Expansion Packs.

I have seen various non-authorative answers on that, so I am not sure what the exact number of wall segments is that causes the slow down and eventual death of a neighbourhood.

In all, it is the massive overhead of the game save files that seem to cause the issue more so than number of downloads.

I can play other games and run multimedia editing software with huge installs and save files without these sort of performance problems, so I know that my system isn't the issue.  I mean come-on when I can edit a 20 GB raw video file on the fly without a dropped frame, but the game gets slow and weird, there is a clear indication that a flaw in resource management in the game is at play.