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Original Poster
#1
18th Oct 2016 at 12:47 AM
18th Oct 2016 at 12:47 AM
How to change video memory usage(Can fix d3d9.dll crashes!)
Hey Simmers! 
Some days ago my game started crashing, giving a d3d9.dll ACCESS_VIOLATION exception, after a lot of time trying to figure out what was happening, i found out that the game thought my graphics card had 4 GB of memory instead of 512 MB. So, after a lot of messing around with the game files, i found an easy solution for this problem!
You don't necessarily need your game to be crashing to do this, you can just do this to lower or increase video memory usage, if your game is lagging or you just want to change it for any other reason.
Okay, here's the guide:
1. Open the "DeviceConfig.log" file located in your user directory(Commonly "Documents and Settings/Electronic Arts/The Sims 3")
2. Find the line that reads "Texture memory: xxxMB" (xxx will say the amount of video memory your game is using, do this step to know if it's correct or not)
3. If it isn't right, or you want it to be different, go to your Sims 3 installation directory (With the DVD version it's in "C:/Program Files(x86)/Electronic Arts/The Sims 3/Game/Bin"(64 bit) or "C:/Program Files/Electronic Arts/The Sims 3/Game/Bin"(32 bit))
4. Open "GraphicsRules.sgr" with Notepad
5. After this:
Add this new line: "seti textureMemory xxx"(Replacing xxx for the amount of video memory usage you want, in MB. Example: "seti textureMemory 512")
6. Now, it should look something like this:
7. Delete the "DeviceConfig.log" file(The one from the first step), just to make sure that our changes get applied
8. Set the "GraphicsRules.srg" file to Read-Only, to protect it from the game trying to change it.
9. Test the game!
10. After testing, to check if your changes worked, repeat steps 1 and 2
Hope this helped with crashes and video memory usage!
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Original Poster
#3
18th Oct 2016 at 6:19 AM
Last edited by ZeroG667 : 18th Oct 2016 at 6:44 AM.
18th Oct 2016 at 6:19 AM
Last edited by ZeroG667 : 18th Oct 2016 at 6:44 AM.
Quote: Originally posted by nitromon
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EDIT: I misread what you wrote. If your TS3 does actually recognize your dedicated RAM, in this case it wouldn't be using the shared VRAM. However, this method still doesn't actually work the way you've claimed. I just tested it for you. It doesn't cap the vram at 512MB. It actually doesn't make any difference in how much vram it uses. The textureMemory variable is specifically designed for shared vram setting in case of failure to recognize dedicated vram. I'm not entirely sure why your system GPU crashes and why this method fixes it. It is probably accidental and nonrelated. Sorry, still gotta give you a disagree b/c the method doesn't work as it claims, I monitored the vram up to 600MB. It is recommended if people having GPU issues to update the GPU drivers and make sure it is recognized by TS3. However, if this method works for you, hey if it ain't broken, don't fix it. Keep using it. |
Thanks for the info. Excuse my ignorance, but how does textureMemory exactly work then? By looking at the GraphicRules.sgr file, and because of the name, i thought it had to do with how much memory it will use for textures, by controlling the amount of textures loaded on the VRAM. I'm using a dedicated graphics card by the way(AMD Radeon HD 8400).
Also, in this part of the script(GraphicsRules.sgr), it sets the GPU Memory Level according to the Texture Memory:
Weird....I actually stopped receiving out of memory errors after using this method, and after what you told me, i found it even weirder that it was set at an extremely high value, that crashed the game just after it finished loading. I'm confused, hope you can clear things up for me
It's hard to think it's nonrelated...If the game always caps to 800 MB, i found it weird that i was getting out of memory crashes on d3d9.dll.
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