Hello! So, this time I'm kinda looking for opinions on one theory I have about "fixing" something. So, if you have any other idea apart from my theory, everything is welcome.
I am basically having this problem where my game keeps crashing and I could always fix it. But this time I'm trying everything I can and there's no way. I mean, there's one way left but it's basically taking out some CC, sorting it out. But that's already not an option for me cause I had already done that before installing. The thing is, I had about the same amount of CC as you (30gb) sims3pack + packages. Recently, I installed some new CC (clothes and objects as simspack and 3-5 new mods from MTS) and now everything has gone up to 35gb. (28gb being on DCcache, sims3pack basically). So my game up until now has runned fine, with it's lags and crashes here and there but everything normal. Y'know, after a while of playing it crashes. Sure, that's okay. But now I'm trying to play in the save file I'm always playing. With it's Nraas register, overwatch, master controller settings, and other mods to make it run better. The only thing is that I'm not able to play for maybe more than 5 minutes on my main household. I also have other households on the same savefile. That's because I like to play rotationally and have my own sims as townies so my savefiles get big and heavy just because of that and not generations. And so here comes the problem. The crashing always ocurs in less than five minutes in any household living in a house the same size or bigger than a medium sized lot. I'm aware that even though this didn't happend before at all and I could perfectly play on them for hours, I have installed new CC on my game.
This is where my theory comes in, and where I could really use some opinions couse I'm really lost. I admit that what's causing this is well... Me, pushing my game to load more content. But bear with me, I had been wanting to buy a better graphics card for my PC. Mainly for sims 3, but I'm scared it's gonna do nothing. I have a laptop which, I have brought up before in this Tumblr, and in this laptop it doesn't matter how many cc and mods the game has,(maybe nothing at all) it's always gonna crash eventually. With vanilla sims, it crashes after 3 hours of playing. BUT, the game runs super smooth and waaay better than in the PC even with 35gb of CC. This is because it's basically a MSI gamer latptop from last year. i7, with 32gb of ram and a very good graphics card which I don't remember right now. But it's basically 75 times better than the PC's Nvidia GeForce 1050 ti In a 0-100% scale. (PC is an i3 and has 16gb RAM, which is a really good but,✨ sims 3✨ xd) I'm not gonna buy one like the laptop cause is really expensive but I was thinking about something in between if my game could run as close as good as in the laptop. The thing is I'm really confused because I'm really scared that even if I buy a new one, the PC could still crash at this problem I have just like the laptop crashes in seconds, that's why I brought it up. I don't want a smooth game if it's still gonna crash :')
I know my PC well, it doesn't crash inadvertently like the laptop, if I play vanilla sims no way it's crashing in 3hours. With CC it's very possible, but not vanilla. I have checked how much memory utilisizes and it's 7-8 gb of memory. out of 16, that's good, it's not bad. But again, it crashes at this houses outta nowhere. I now a solution is to avoid playing in these, but there's no way now I gotta make smaller ones when I have been playing in these for so many years. So there ya go. I could really use some advice as to what should I do about the graphics card thing, if it's better for me to get a CPU or what. Not both, that's a lot of money,I know both are important for gaming, but I can't afford it. Sorting out my CC it's not an option I already do that all the time, I clean my save to 36-40 mb with save cleaner and I convert everything I can to sims3pack because Packages make my game impossible to play. But I'm definitely not getting rid of my downloads folder 😅
Okay so, my advice:
1. Your save file is probably massive by now and its just too much for the game, I would check if its a memory issue (aka watch your memory as you play as sims can only go up to 3.6GB). I would also check other saves as if they work this is likely it
2. Definitely stop installing things as sims3pack, those things are awful. Just for shits and giggles remove your DCCache folder and see if it works then.
3. I am guessing you used save cleaner, s3mo/cc magic and all that jazz
4. No GPU or CPU is going to save you here sadly. I7 is a good CPU already. And laptop is never going to be as good as PC (my opinion) as it can never pull as much power as a PC.
5. Really all you can do is play a smaller world, less sims, kill off townies, and less decorated houses. Wish I could help but sims just is a 32bit program and nothing we do is going to fix that sadly!