Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

Performance issue in Sims 3 with 2011 27" iMac with 2GB graphics card

S

sgfernandez

macrumors member
Original poster
Feb 4, 2011
32
0
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_2_8 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8E401 Safari/6533.18.5)

Edit: here is the link to a video I uploaded from within the game which shows the problems I am having: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1fsFBTyauQs

Hey everyone. I have the new 27" iMac with the 3.4GHz i7 processor, 1TB hard drive, 12GB Of RAM and 2GB AMD graphics card. The only real game I play on the computer is the sims 3. Whenever I zoom in to my house in the game from far away, it almost always takes a few seconds for all of the objects to show up, and sometimes blurry gray outlines of each object show up before all of the colors and textures eventually appear a couple seconds later. Now I have the graphics currently set on the highest settings, but I've even tried lowering some of them and this still happens. I figured that with the 2GB graphics card that I would have no problem with the game. Everything else runs pretty smoothly in the game other than the slow rendering of objects/polygons/whatever it may be. Has anyone else experienced this problem? This is my first Mac so any help would be greatly appreciated! I love my new computer and this is honestly the only real issue I've had so far! I used to play the sims 3 on a windows pc with a 1gb nvidia graphics card with OC and didn't experience this issue.
 
Last edited:
sgfernandez said:
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_2_8 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8E401 Safari/6533.18.5)

Hey everyone. I have the new 27" iMac with the 3.4GHz i7 processor, 1TB hard drive, 12GB Of RAM and 2GB AMD graphics card. The only real game I play on the computer is the sims 3. Whenever I zoom in to my house in the game from far away, it almost always takes a few seconds for all of the objects to show up, and sometimes blurry gray outlines of each object show up before all of the colors and textures eventually appear a couple seconds later. Now I have the graphics currently set on the highest settings, but I've even tried lowering some of them and this still happens. I figured that with the 2GB graphics card that I would have no problem with the game. Everything else runs pretty smoothly in the game other than the slow rendering of objects/polygons/whatever it may be. Has anyone else experienced this problem? This is my first Mac so any help would be greatly appreciated! I love my new computer and this is honestly the only real issue I've had so far! I used to play the sims 3 on a windows pc with a 1gb nvidia graphics card with OC and didn't experience this issue.
Click to expand...

There is no use comparing your Windows experience to your iMac given that there are a number of variables at play - it could be a horrible port by the company who makes Sims, it could be an OpenGL bug, a driver bug etc.

Have you also installed the latest patches for the game?

http://www.thesims3.com/game/patches/
 
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_2_8 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8E401 Safari/6533.18.5)

I do have the latest patches and updates, and have a number of expansion packs installed, including Generationa which just came out. From what I understand, EA (the maker) did not port the game to the Mac, apparently the Mac version is OS X native. Not sure about that though. And I have seen videos on YouTube of the Sims 3 being played on macs and those people don't appear to have the same problem.
 
sgfernandez said:
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_2_8 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8E401 Safari/6533.18.5)

I do have the latest patches and updates, and have a number of expansion packs installed, including Generationa which just came out. From what I understand, EA (the maker) did not port the game to the Mac, apparently the Mac version is OS X native. Not sure about that though. And I have seen videos on YouTube of the Sims 3 being played on macs and those people don't appear to have the same problem.
Click to expand...

It was written for Windows first then it was ported to Mac OS X - of course it is OS X native, it doesn't run under emulation but it doesn't change the fact that it was written firstly for Windows and Mac OS X was an after thought.

All I can suggest is maybe remove Sims 3 along with the expansion packs, then install Sims 3 and see if the bug re-appears when running without the expansion packs - if that is ok then gradually install the expansion packs bit by bit till you see the bug appear.
 
Ok, I can understand that. My iMac is completely updated and so is the game, so I guess I will take your advice and uninstall it and reinstall the base game to see. The only other thing I can think of that might be causing the problem is the fact that one of the expansion packs I installed was illegal (I downloaded a torrent of it). Long story short, the reason I did that was because I had purchased a download of that particular expansion pack for Windows, and had a valid registration key, but it turns out that it wasn't compatible with OS X. I would of had to buy it again just for OS X. All of the other expansion packs I own are physical copies, which support both operating systems, so there was no problem with those. I am praying that the problem doesn't persist after this!
 
I can't remember what the setting is called but there's an option that lets you choose how many neighbouring lots render in high detail. Try turning that down to 4 or even none, it's pretty useless if you ask me but can really slow the game down, especially when zooming in or out as you mentioned.

This may or may not be the problem but, for me, it was the difference between running horribly and perfectly. I've also got the same iMac as you, albeit with only 4GB RAM.
 
sgfernandez said:
Ok, I just reinstalled the game and am still having the same problem. I have only installed the base game and patched it so far. I uploaded a video that I recorded in-game just now to show you exactly what the problem is..

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1fsFBTyauQs
Click to expand...

Have you tried getting in contact with the creator of Sim's - do they have a forum specifically for Mac users? from what it appears it sounds like an error at their end. I've had a quick search via Bing and it appears to be an issue related to the Mac version although there are complaints by Windows users about choppy graphics those complaints might have to do more with video card drivers or low end hardware more than anything else.
 
Thanks for the responses guys! It looks like unless I have Edge smoothing turned COMPLETELY off, objects take forever to show up. And yes, I looked more into it, and it must be a Mac-specific problem. I am sure if I were to install windows on my Mac that I would be able to play the game without the graphic problem. I don't mind playing with edge smoothing turned off, but it does make the game look a lot prettier :(.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back