I installed Reshade to see what the hype is all about and my game crashed. The crash log analyzer said that my graphic card is the culprit.

My specs are:
Windows 10 64bit
Processor: Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-6600 CPU @ 3.30GHz (4 CPUs), ~3.3GHz
Memory: 32768MB RAM
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050 Ti (4GB VRAM)

I assume that the 4GB VRAM of the graphic card are not enough when trying to play the Sims 3 with Reshade. I do have graphic rules make use of more RAM.

From what I read Sims 3 can't use more than 4GB RAM. But VRAM of a graphic card is this the same?

Sims 3 can only use 800 MB of VRAM at any given time. And this is a real limit, not just a myth or rumor. I've benchmarked with the game open, running in build mode for an hour on ultra graphics at a 2560x1440 resolution. The VRAM usage immediately goes just over 800 MB (there's a bit extra in use by the system) and stays there indefinitely.

Anyway, I would guess that it's not your graphics card that's the problem so much as the limited graphics capabilities of Sims 3. When you use Reshade, the game takes more resources to render, sometimes a lot more, and perhaps enough more that it's hitting the 800 MB limit without being able to render everything you're asking of it.

So the logical next step, if you'd like to keep using Reshade, is turning down some settings. Keep water and high-detail lots at "mirrors only" and 2, respectively, if you're not already, and see how it goes. Remove all your custom content—you can test in a random new save if you want—and test again. Try different worlds, especially if the world you've been using has a lot of trees or some IP-related fog. And of course change the Reshade settings to lower its impact.

I don't know whether you'll be able to find a good balance here, but it's not going to do any harm to experiment a bit.

puzzlezaddict wrote: ↑

September 19th, 2023, 11:09 am

Sims 3 can only use 800 MB of VRAM at any given time. And this is a real limit, not just a myth or rumor. I've benchmarked with the game open, running in build mode for an hour on ultra graphics at a 2560x1440 resolution. The VRAM usage immediately goes just over 800 MB (there's a bit extra in use by the system) and stays there indefinitely.

With only 800MB available, I'm shocked that Sims3 can display at that high of a resolution.

Himawara, have you updated your graphics card drivers recently?

So this means that buying a better graphics card does not really make sense, right?

Thanks for the tips. I like to keep my custom content and settings on high. SweetFX works perfectly fine for me so I don't really need Reshade. I just wondered that my graphics card was not able to handle it.

@KevinL5275
No, I haven't updated recently. But it must be quite recent as I just installed Win 10 on my PC since 2 months.

himawara post_id=96829 time=1695148421 user_id=1870 wrote: So this means that buying a better graphics card does not really make sense, right?

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That depends on what you want out of your GPU. Sims 3 does run better on a faster graphics card, up to a point, even though the game doesn't usually even max out a 1050 ti. You wouldn't see the full effect of an upgrade—there are diminishing returns even going to a GTX 1060 or 1650. But it might be the difference between being able to use Reshade, or your preferred Reshade settings, and not.

If using Reshade mattered to you, and you had some money to spend on a used GTX 1060 or 1660, it might be worth upgrading. (Although in that case, I'd suggest borrowing a GPU from a friend or family member so you could see how much improvement you'd actually get before spending money.) But since you're happy with SweetFX, and the game apparently runs fine for you as-is, I wouldn't bother with an upgrade until you wanted to play some other game that would benefit more.
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KevinL5275 wrote: ↑

September 19th, 2023, 2:11 pm

With only 800MB available, I'm shocked that Sims3 can display at that high of a resolution.

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I've heard of people playing in 4k without too much trouble as well. My game runs at 144 fps (locked down) the majority of the time, I'd say at least 95% of the time when I don't have Pets installed. Horses cut that in half even though the GPU isn't close to maxed out—sometimes neither the chip itself nor the memory is running at full speed.

I can't really prove it, this is just a theory, but I think that the speed of both the chip and the video memory matter here. With the game only able to use 800 MB VRAM, the GPU is going to need to swap and re-process a lot of data very quickly, even if the game's overall demands are low by modern standards. And as players, we can be sensitive to significant fps drops and small delays in rendering objects even when the game catches up quickly.

Thank you for all the interesting information. I bought a used Nvidia 3060 graphics card and as we already guessed it doesn't make a lot of difference when using Reshade. The game was a bit more stable but crashed at some point too. But since I haven't upgraded my card in over 6 years I'm happy to have a more future proof card now. I also finally managed to have a better anti aliasing in game at 1080p with the Nvidia inspector. SweetFX does look a bit strange with this but for now I don't want to sacrifice it.

puzzlezaddict wrote: ↑

September 19th, 2023, 11:09 am

Sims 3 can only use 800 MB of VRAM at any given time. And this is a real limit, not just a myth or rumor. I've benchmarked with the game open, running in build mode for an hour on ultra graphics at a 2560x1440 resolution. The VRAM usage immediately goes just over 800 MB (there's a bit extra in use by the system) and stays there indefinitely.

May I ask what program/tool you used for these tests?
Not that I disbelieve the results, more just curious how my own system behaves in this regard.

CardinalSims wrote: ↑

September 26th, 2023, 6:02 pm

May I ask what program/tool you used for these tests?
Not that I disbelieve the results, more just curious how my own system behaves in this regard.

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I use hwinfo:

https://www.hwinfo.com/download/

Standard caveats: the portable version is fine, no need for a full install, and make sure you click the green Download button for hwinfo itself, not anything else.

And I use this excellent log viewer:

https://www.hwinfo.com/forum/threads/lo ... lable.802/

For testing itself, open hwinfo, click "sensors only," wait a 1-5 minutes (in case the Windows startup process is still finishing up), and click the button with a sheet of paper and a + icon to start logging. The same button ends logging when you're done. Save the file to the desktop or wherever you want, and when you'd like to view it, launch the log viewer and choose the log you just made.

The log viewer will have trouble opening a log if it's been converted to another file type or (sometimes) even opened in Excel, so either don't do that or keep a backup copy.

Hwinfo captures everything, or close enough, so it can be a little disorienting to deal with it and its correspondingly long logs at first. But it's easy enough to start with a few values that are of interest to you—CPU core use and temperatures, GPU core load and temps, GPU and VRAM clocks, GPU memory use—and build out from there.