Sims 2 Benchmarking

[RalphTheCow]

First of all, how many people follow the somewhat ridiculous directions to stop all user tasks except for explorer.exe and taskmgr.exe before playing? If so, do you use EndItAll, Task Manager, or something else?

Are there any benchmarks out there? As an informal one, how quickly does your system minimize and restore the Sims 2 Window? On a system I will probably return, it takes several minutes!

Is anyone running it on a fairly new Dell 4700?

 

[episodic]

Athlon XP 1500 256 megs SDR RAM GEforce 3 Ti200

Plays ok

 

[sswingle]

Lots of program say to close all other running programs. I never do, and I bet the majority of other people do not also. Next, many games don't like it when you Alt-Tab out of them. Although several minutes is extremely long.

After seeing it run on a few different systems, I would say the most important thing to running the game is RAM. I noticed a huge improvement when going from 256 up to 512. Second is video. It doesn't run too well on a GeForce 2.

 

[Zap Brannigan]

It likes DirectX 9 video cards as well being a DirectX 9 game.

 

[JohnAn2112]

P4 2.8@ 3.22, 1024 MB RAM, ATI Radeon 9700 Pro here. Sims 2 plays fine. It takes a few minutes to load, but once I'm in the game, the gameplay is smooth.

 

[rise]

ralph, i know youre pissed at fell for the lame lack of agp slot on your new comp, but seriously, you need a dx9 capable vid card, integrated won't ct it.
i found out the hard way too, had to get a fx5900 to run it, basically costing me 4 times the price of the game itself. i didn't mind so much because my system was older and needed the upgrade anyway, but it kinda stunned me at how much power the sims2 takes compared to sims1.
in answer to your question, i don't bother turning off any processes, it used to load in a couple minutes on the 5900 and ran smooth. when i had it on the old tnt 64 pro, it would take like 10 minutes and was basically unplayable.
i think you should try to return that system if the other pci slot options people have advised you about in other threads isn't practical.
good luck.

 

[RalphTheCow]

Originally posted by: ZePHyRaNTHeS
P4 2.8@ 3.22, 1024 MB RAM, ATI Radeon 9700 Pro here. Sims 2 plays fine. It takes a few minutes to load, but once I'm in the game, the gameplay is smooth.

Wow, that's discouraging. It takes minutes to load, even with 1 GB of memory? How about if you minimize or restore its window? Is that minutes also?

 

[techwanabe]

Ralph,

Didn't this topic get discussed at length in the HW section? I think the answers were there for you - it's time to take action and return/exchange that Dimension 3000. Those are for mom and dad who don't play games but just surf the net and do email, like my folks. If you do any kind of gaming, especially with recent games, you need something with a decent video card in it (either AGP or PCI express).

Time to get crack'n!

 

[jrphoenix]

My wife plays SIMS 2 ever day for about 2 hours. Besides the game have quite a few bugs the game looks and runs smooth at 1600 x 1200 with everything maxed. (see system in signature)

 

[BlueWeasel]

Originally posted by: jrphoenix
(see system in signature)....

AMD 3800+ @ 2.5 (could go higher, no need)
EVGA 6800 Ultra 425/1100 (could go 445/1200)
Gigabyte K8NSNXP NF3-250
2 Gb OCZ Performance Series DDR PC-3200 Rev 3
200 Gb Seagate 7200.7

Wow, looks like you need to upgrade. :roll:

 

[bamacre]

The Dell 4700 systems have a PCI Express slot. The Dell 3000 systems have integ video, no agp, nor PCIe.
If you have the 4700 model, you should be able to find a PCIe card that will run the game.

 

[RalphTheCow]

Originally posted by: techwanabe
Ralph,

Didn't this topic get discussed at length in the HW section? I think the answers were there for you - it's time to take action and return/exchange that Dimension 3000. Those are for mom and dad who don't play games but just surf the net and do email, like my folks. If you do any kind of gaming, especially with recent games, you need something with a decent video card in it (either AGP or PCI express).

Time to get crack'n!

Well, I have to agree I'm still flogging the horse, but it's not quite dead yet! I guess I should make my return request tonight, but I still have a few nagging questions.

Check my reply to ZePHyRaNTHeS - a good AGP card, 1 GB memory, P4, and Sims still loads slowly! Why? That is my biggest problem, and it sounds no different on a powerful machine in that case. It can only be bad coding where only a little bit of data is loaded at a time or something. That was my purpose here - to see what kind of variations there are in perfomance on different machines.

There must be someone here who familiar with what is going on when I minimize the screen and it takes minutes to minimize. It's not transferring anything to disc is it?

 

[sswingle]

Didn't take minutes to load on my AXP 3000, haven't even tried it on my new A64 3500

 

[bamacre]

Well, this game is horribly coded to begin with. I've bought and installed a lot of games, never had a problem. That is until I tried running this game. The game crashed when I started it, I was only able to get it to work when I used the illegal no-cd patch. Even then, it had problems. Anyone need a copy of Sims 2, cheap

 

[techwanabe]

Originally posted by: RalphTheCow

Well, I have to agree I'm still flogging the horse, but it's not quite dead yet! I guess I should make my return request tonight, but I still have a few nagging questions.

Sounds like Money Python: Holy Grail - "not quite dead yet! Might pull through"!

Check my reply to ZePHyRaNTHeS - a good AGP card, 1 GB memory, P4, and Sims still loads slowly! Why? That is my biggest problem, and it sounds no different on a powerful machine in that case. It can only be bad coding where only a little bit of data is loaded at a time or something. That was my purpose here - to see what kind of variations there are in perfomance on different machines.

There must be someone here who familiar with what is going on when I minimize the screen and it takes minutes to minimize. It's not transferring anything to disc is it?

Well, it is generally good advice for you to exchange your 3000 for a 4700, I think you will be glad you did for the long haul - if not for this game, then for the next. Even if you want to minimize your cost now, switch to the 4700 and just use the integrated video for now. At least you have the PCI express slot available for when you want a better video solution, and you probably will.

As others have noted, SIMS II maybe badly coded - better hardware can probably make up for that to some degree but not totally.

Other performance things to look at are your virtual memory/swap file (though default usually works fine), make sure all your drivers are up to date etc. Make sure your computer is free of spyware by running Adaware and Spybot S&D regularly etc. Sometimes any of the above can rob your computer of performance, even drastically as I've seen demonstrated in my jobs as a PC support tech.

 

[Gurck]

I can't play sims 2 in 10x7 with full eye candy & 4aa/8af, a setting which I can play demanding games, even Far Cry & Doom3 in, on my main rig - a p4b 2.67 w/ gb ram (stock speed) & slightly OCed 9800pro 128/256. Loading time is a function of the hard drive, not the ram - the game actually doesn't seem to eat up much ram; when I quit I get back to my desktop in a few seconds. Gameplay though is very choppy, I have to lower my settings or reso if I want to use a big furnished house with a full family (though the above mentioned settings will work for my poor bachelor, with his tiny house, 3 pieces of furniture & lack of family ). EA may do console sports games well, but they code PC games almost as badly as Sony.

 

[techwanabe]

Originally posted by: Gurck
I can't play sims 2 in 10x7 with full eye candy & 4aa/8af, a setting which I can play demanding games, even Far Cry & Doom3 in, on my main rig - a p4b 2.67 w/ gb ram (stock speed) & slightly OCed 9800pro 128/256. Loading time is a function of the hard drive, not the ram - the game actually doesn't seem to eat up much ram; when I quit I get back to my desktop in a few seconds. Gameplay though is very choppy, I have to lower my settings or reso if I want to use a big furnished house with a full family (though the above mentioned settings will work for my poor bachelor, with his tiny house, 3 pieces of furniture & lack of family ). EA may do console sports games well, but they code PC games almost as badly as Sony.

Yes, the 4700 has a SATA hard drive IIRC, so that might help some. Between the PCI express slot and the SATA HD, the 4700 would be a better long term PC than the 3000. Nuff said.

 

[Gurck]

Originally posted by: techwanabe
Yes, the 4700 has a SATA hard drive IIRC, so that might help some. Between the PCI express slot and the SATA HD, the 4700 would be a better long term PC than the 3000. Nuff said.

According to Anand's article, SATA is at most about 10% faster than IDE. Sims 2 is just coded like crap.

 

[bamacre]

Just get a refurbished 8400 system and get a better system. I have seen 8400's with 1GB of DDR2 and a 6800 GTO for as low as $731, and usually between $850 and $1000.

Look HERE.