Sims 3 Slow and Choppy on a high end PC

I can run games like crysis bioshock far cry 2 etc with great framerates but the sims 3 is just terrible textures take forver to load and every time i move the camera the game lags. Ive updated everything from chipset driver to the graphics drivers ive called EA ATI and nobody has been able to fix this problem for me and its driving me crazy i even tried an FPS limiter that limits the frame rates to 30 which is the maximum for the game so ive heard. I also installed xp on another hard drive and ran the game on xp with barley any processes running since that game was pretty much the only app installed on there. I have tested each of my 4870's individually and with crossfire and get the same horrible performance. Anyway ive got to get to the bottom of this so please give me some advice as to what i should do here are my specs which exceed the requirments for this game.

Motherboard: Asus Maximus Formula X38
RAM: corsair xms2 ddr2 4gb
CPU: Intel Core 2 Quad 3.0 Ghz 12mb of cache Q9650
PSU: Zalman 850 watt ZM850-HP
Graphics Card: 2 Sapphire ATI HD 4870 1gb toxic edition in crossfire mode

Faster HDD would help the textures.

@ dash, not from my expierence (atleast not much noticible speed) i have a WD caviar black, while the crossfire rig where i also tested this game has a cheap 250 gig maxtor disk. And the results where pretty much the same.

Game prolly loaded a sec of 2 faster but thats it rly, ingame pretty much the same

^ of course they think that, it's a sims game.

SSD is the best way to load textures fast.

You obviously havent a clue what you are talking about.

You stated that two 4870 in crossfire is less than a single GTX 280. This is ABSOLUTELY incorrect. Read more reviews before telling idiocies. Two 4870 are faster than a single 4870X2 and this last whipe the floor with a single GTX 280, period.

As for the processor you can be right, but not for what the TC is saying. The bottleneck of a Quad 2 Quad @ 3.2 GHZ has high frame rates (above 60) so they don't produce any lag whatsoever. Sure there's a difference between running an i7 with two 4870s and a Core 2 Quad @ 3.2 GHZ but the frames are ovewhere high enough to don't cause any stutter problem.

So, as you see he was not a troll and you are wrong. The only thing a bit right you said is the thing about SSD, and yet neither this last is fully true. The latest SSDs from Intel have a good random access I/O and are far superior to a normal HDD in any application. So, as you see, it depends.

As for the TC, I never played SIMS 3 so I don't know the usual FPS of the game so others knows about it better than me to help.

Woah what are you talkin about dude? crossfire 4870's dont equal one GTX 280?! thats just crazy talk. You abviously dont know ****. And you also said my processor is slow?! are you kidding?! you have to be......Q9650 core 2 QUAD 3.0 ghz. I am at a loss for words lol

Please post some, I'm curious what you are looking at.

One example:
http://www.tomshardware.com/review [...] 107-2.html

You wil clearly see that you are totally wrong with just this simple one. I can give you many more others. You probably base what you say on some high OC 280 GTX on liquid cooling (watch the article on top of the tops GPU here on TH).

Please before say something and pass yourself as an idiot, do more research.

As for the SSD I already proved you wrong. Reading the article on the Intel X25 it's enough to do that. Do it then shut up.

After reading this thread, I ran my wife's install of sims3 to see how it plays (On the computer in my Sig @ 1920x1080). Fraps shows a rocksteady 30fps with all the shiny stuff turned on. I get a bit of stutter the first time I turned around and zoomed out, but after initial texture load, the game is smooth. Well, smooth enough for a 30fps limit, i guess. My graphics card barely works at it, too. GPU usage on the single 4870 512mb didn't break %60, and the temps only went about 10c above 48c idle, to 58c. It is just a poorly coded game.

This topic has been closed by Mousemonkey