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Scholar
Original Poster
#1 Old 29th Jun 2015 at 3:57 PM
Sims 3 performance on a SSD question
I've got hold of a SSD (Solid State Drive) and unsure how much of a performance Boost, i might gain from it.

Should I try to squeeze the entire game with all Custom Files/Neighborhood in Documents with my O/S on the entire drive?

Or better would just have The Custom Files on the SSD ( eg. C:\Users\{Username}\Documents\Electronic Arts\The Sims 3} with the main game on a slower ordinary slave Drive? (Such as D:\)

I don't care of the wait for the loading to the main menu, but that huge long wait from the main menu to the world, or travelling from world to world, always drove me crazy.
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Mad Poster
#2 Old 29th Jun 2015 at 4:10 PM
Installing the game files on an SSD will help loads. I did just that on my secondary PC, and now my loading times are nearly halved.

insert signature here
( Join my dumb Discord server if you're into the whole procrastination thing. But like, maybe tomorrow. )
One Minute Ninja'd
#3 Old 29th Jun 2015 at 5:14 PM
I have everything on my SSD C: drive. Both the program (well, all my programs as well as the OS, because that's where you get the biggest bang for the buck) as well as the Documents/EA/Sims 3 stuff. My loads are way better than off the HDD, although it can still take 2 to 3 minutes to load a save game, but that is about half the time as before. I do use a 2X1 TB mirrored D: drives for my general Documents, Music, Photos, and Videos, as that stuff loads just fine off of there for me. I also maintain my Sims 3 Archive over there, so saves I want to keep around get cut and pasted over there to take up less room on my SSD. Oh, and an external 2 TB USB 3 drive for my backups.

I never tried a setup of programs on the SSD and the Documents/EA/Sims 3 on the HDD, so I have no idea if, and how much of a performance hit that might cause. I guess it depends how much content you have, and the size of your SSD in making that selection (me, 25 GB cc+lots of mods, and a 500 GB SSD)
Scholar
#4 Old 29th Jun 2015 at 7:33 PM
It certainly helps with the loading times. I could not believe how fast the game loaded up switching from my old PC to my new PC with the SSD!

But it should be noted that it's good to not load up the SSD too much. My PC nerd friends have warned me of that.

♫ Keeping this here until EA gives us a proper playable woodwind/brass instrument ♫
For now, though, my decorative Bassoon conversion for TS4. =)
Scholar
Original Poster
#5 Old 29th Jun 2015 at 8:49 PM
I think TS3 plus all EPs and SPs is over 60gig or more, a huge chunk from a 120gb SSD, but I try just my saved files on the SSD, if I felt I needed more, then the entire game, but now thanks for personal experiences now I can,t wait to try it...
One Minute Ninja'd
#7 Old 29th Jun 2015 at 10:01 PM
I have to second nitromon on that. I just checked by program files (x86) for EA Sims 3 and with all the EPs and most of the SPs, I've got 32.5 GB taken up. Now, my documents/EA/sims 3 stuff, which is all my cc, mods, save games and personally edited save game worlds is another 35 GB. But just the game is only 32.5, and if you don't have much stuff in your documents EA folder, running it all on a 120 GB SSD is the way to go.
One Minute Ninja'd
#9 Old 29th Jun 2015 at 11:15 PM
Which brings up two other practices that make sense with SSDs. One, look at the software supplied. You should have an option to "overprovision" your SSD by some percentage, say 10%. This means 10% of your SSD will be "protected" from writing, so if and when individual "cells" begin to "fail", the software can draw on that protected block to replace the "lost cells". So while you might be "giving up" 12 GB of your 120 GB SSD, you are assuring a much longer life cycle for the device.

The second practice which I follow is to keep my swapfile on my HDD, not the SSD. Does this slow things up a tiny bit? Sure. But that swapfile is constantly being written to by the OS if you're low on system memory, and all those writes will in time cause those "cells" to fail. So less work by your SSD, and an extended life cycle, all for a modest hit on your swapfile reads/writes. Which, if you have sufficient memory in your machine, will probably be a non-issue most of the time anyway.
Scholar
#10 Old 30th Jun 2015 at 1:00 AM
Quote: Originally posted by nitromon
That's a misconception. Today's modern SSD are much better designed than the older versions and such issues are minimized. Furthermore, the issue with SSD degradation has to do with writing too much, not reading too much. Reading has very minimal impact on the SSD. So the best thing to do is to install your programs on SSD, but use a HDD or even a RAMdisk for caching, writing, etc...


I have no idea what any of that means...

♫ Keeping this here until EA gives us a proper playable woodwind/brass instrument ♫
For now, though, my decorative Bassoon conversion for TS4. =)
Scholar
#12 Old 30th Jun 2015 at 10:31 AM
Quote: Originally posted by nitromon
Sorry.

Reading from SSD is ok.
Writing to SSD is bad.



No, I mean, I have no idea what the difference between 'reading' and 'writing' is... lol

♫ Keeping this here until EA gives us a proper playable woodwind/brass instrument ♫
For now, though, my decorative Bassoon conversion for TS4. =)
One Minute Ninja'd
#13 Old 30th Jun 2015 at 11:19 AM
Quote: Originally posted by bassoon_crazy
No, I mean, I have no idea what the difference between 'reading' and 'writing' is... lol


Reading. What you did when you saw the words nitromon posted as an explanation.

Writing. What you did when you replied to nitromon.

Or, in other words, reading, retrieving information, writing, placing information.
Scholar
Original Poster
#14 Old 30th Jun 2015 at 3:37 PM
Yeah unfortunately TS2 & TS3 does a massive amount of writing on your SSD, even for a few minutes of play.

So far tested TS2 on it with my 5gig saved games folder, but kind-of disappointed, barely noticable, maybe slightly but it did jump fairly quickly to Change Appearance/Clothing first up, and another thing since you cannot hear the drive seek like I was used too, I gonna sometimes try to figure-out if it's supposed to be "loading " or has the game froze up. But then again mine SSD is going running on a SATA II motherboard at 3gps, when they are more suited on SATA III connectors as 6gps.

RAMDisks, probably would be benefitful, as long as you don't mind extra the risk of losing more work, if you get a sudden lock-up/power failure, where you were lose everything from the first boot-up than just your last saved game under normal circumstances, besides I only have 8gig RAM to start with.
Instructor
#15 Old 30th Jun 2015 at 8:30 PM
Quote: Originally posted by Citysim
But then again mine SSD is going running on a SATA II motherboard at 3gps, when they are more suited on SATA III connectors as 6gps.


If your motherboard is like mine and it only supports SATA II at 3Gb/s, you can try using SATA III 6Gb/s data cable to get the best performance of your SSD, it won't hurts your SSD lifespan if that's what your concern is, and make sure you set up the storage controller in your BIOS to AHCI mode, with this setup I get 7.5 rating for my HDD performance in Windows 7, if your motherboard don't support AHCI mode then the best you can get with IDE mode it's about 6.2 - 6.4 rating for HDD performance in Windows 7. You can also try to get a SATA III PCI-E add on card so your SSD can run on SATA III mode, but not all non SATA III motherboard supports SATA III PCI-E add on card, and you still need a motherboard that supports AHCI mode for your SSD to work at its best, otherwise your SATA III add on card is useless.
Scholar
Original Poster
#17 Old 4th Jul 2015 at 2:34 PM
Well I finally got round to testing out TS3 using my SSD, All my saved game data and world was on the SSD except for TS3 + Eps/SPs Game files as I didn't have the room.

After an agony 10-15mins wait to load from main screen to world (The green bar did move fast at lightening speed at first, and my first thought, was "WOW! but that turned out to be just a tease, it got extremely slow towards the end, and those last 3-4 pixels it had to fill up took probably up to 95% of my wait time. If there was any improvement there, I wouldn't of noticed.

So dissatified, It's gonna have to be RAMDisk, if I like it or not, so I'll decided to install and set up RAMDisk as I do have 8GIG of RAM

I created a 3GIG RAM disk then command the symbloic links to the Thumbnails folder, and the simcompositor.cache compositor cache as instructed (Did not have a WorldCaches folder and never had one for some reason so couldn't include that!)

Knowing Ill probably still be unsatisifed, I decided to also include a couple more performance tricks I knew before I'll Launch the game again.

I completely defragged the TS3 Game/EPs/SPs folders with Defragger, but not the Saved Games Folders as i know you should never defrag anything on a SSD.
Anyway the Sims3 Game Folders turned out to very fragmented which was about 25% so that defrag took quite some time.

Then I installed and used Game Booster 3, and closed almost every program and services including explorer.exe in a attempt to squeeze out every bit of juice of the TS3 engine.

Last of all, I created a batch file to run the game with FPS_Limiter with a maximum of just 25fps.

Anyway the result was still about a huge 10-13min wait from Main screen to World, I tried CAS here and there, that was a bit better, but I had to really and mean really look hard to spot out improvements, and a average player from my PC probably wouldn't even notice it's been thur a massive pre-start script.

I guess my motherboard is getting kind of old, it only supports DDR2 RAM, and SATAII Drives, so those have to be my next steps, in the meantime if I would to play a modern sims game I guess I have to return back to the TS4.



I downloaded and run Game Booster and closed almost everything, including explorer.exe
Instructor
#18 Old 4th Jul 2015 at 7:46 PM Last edited by PapaEmy : 4th Jul 2015 at 8:18 PM.
Quote: Originally posted by Citysim
After an agony 10-15mins wait to load from main screen to world (The green bar did move fast at lightening speed at first, and my first thought, was "WOW! but that turned out to be just a tease, it got extremely slow towards the end, and those last 3-4 pixels it had to fill up took probably up to 95% of my wait time. If there was any improvement there, I wouldn't of noticed.


Well 1st that depends on how big your saved game you're loading as well, 2nd how you organized your CC/mods, and 3rd you didn't put your BG on your SSD. I think even if you try to load with a fresh new game it won't improved much because your BG is on your HDD.

If you don't need much programs installed for your system, you need at least 64GB SSD to have all BG+EPs+SPs installed including your Windows 7 and other programs you might need. I have BG with all EPs+SPs (except Pets, Supernatural and Into the Future) installed and it took about 27GB of space in my SSD.

And for RAMDisk with 8GB of RAM, I adjusted my TS3 folder in my documents to about 2GB including mods (my mods is about 900MB but less than 1GB), to save space because I also only use 3GB for RAMDisk, I only used 1 saved game at a time when playing the game (I moved the other saved games I'm not currently playing to somewhere else in my HDD), and then placed the whole TS3 folder from my documents (not just caching) into 3GB RAMDisk and my loading screen results from main screen to world it's about 1-3 minutes.

PS: your motherboard and DDR2 are not the ones to blame, I still used an old Intel 775 for this setup, it's the game's fault
One Minute Ninja'd
#20 Old 4th Jul 2015 at 10:11 PM
Quote: Originally posted by PapaEmy
Well 1st that depends on how big your saved game you're loading as well, 2nd how you organized your CC/mods, and 3rd you didn't put your BG on your SSD. I think even if you try to load with a fresh new game it won't improved much because your BG is on your HDD.


I kinda have to agree that running with your program files on your HDD and just your save game files, or even the whole Documents/EA folder on the SSD will provide you with little to no assistance. What's filling up your SSD that makes ~30 GB of all of TS3 such a problem it won't fit on a 120 GB SSD? Actually, just what IS on your SSD, and what did you leave on the HDD, because you're not getting any benefit from that SSD with loads times like that.

Besides, even before having an SSD, I never had 10 to 15 minute load times. The only time I've ever seen that particular delay has usually been because of broken cc or package files meant for say TS2 rather than TS3 being included in the Mods folder (no idea what happens with TS4 packages placed in by mistake, but it's probably not pretty either).
Scholar
Original Poster
#21 Old 5th Jul 2015 at 7:10 AM
Bare in mind as stated above a 64GIG SSD may sound like plenty to install the Sims 3, alongside Windows 7 with your saved games, technicaly it is and possible, but I also got to bare mind it's never recommended to fit any SSD above 75% of capacty, otherwise they slow down if overfilled and defeats the purpose of using a SSD in the first place. So really that's only 50gigs, along Windows 7 with my 5.6GIG saved games folders, and I didn't reliase my SSD is only 60gig.

I guess my saved games folder is mess, it's usually much larger than 5.6gig if I forget to delete those .backup folders or .bad folders it keeps creating.

Anyway the next performance trick is to try Kuree's Savegame Cleaner.Most of my downloading was just on the first week of getting the game, and Ill never what I really did put in it, and due to performance, I lost interest in adding anything into the for years.
One Minute Ninja'd
#22 Old 5th Jul 2015 at 8:03 AM
Oh, I thought you said it was a 120 GB SSD. A 60 GB SSD is kinda too small to use beyond the OS and some applications like Office. 30 GB of TS3 would put a huge dent in it. It's going to be hard for you to ever see any performance improvement with that size SSD and being unable to load all your program files onto one. Good luck.
Instructor
#23 Old 5th Jul 2015 at 5:41 PM Last edited by PapaEmy : 5th Jul 2015 at 5:56 PM.
Quote: Originally posted by Citysim
but I also got to bare mind it's never recommended to fit any SSD above 75% of capacty, otherwise they slow down if overfilled


I'm not really sure about that cause I think I don't have that kind a problem with my SSD so far, but I put my windows paging file system in my HDD, whenever it needs writing it goes to my HDD, I only put windows, TS3, few other games like CoH 2 and TS3/EA document folder to my SSD, the rest of the programs, download, pictures music, and video folders I installed/moved them to my HDD, so there's almost no writing on my SSD.

As Nitromon mentioned:

Quote: Originally posted by nitromon
If you use 3GB RAMdisk and OS+processes takes another 1-2GB, that only leaves you 3-4 GB to run the game. Your system will start to cache to the pagefile when it is within 1 GB of the max RAM, making this whole thing redundant.


this is why I adjusted my TS3/EA document folder to 2GB so I have about 1GB spare space in my RAMDisk, whenever I want to save my game I always use "save as" to replace my current game (this goes to RAMDisk when saving but then ROG RAMDISK will moved them automatically to its original location in TS3/EA documents folder when I dismounted the junction in RAMDisk), I didn't notice any reduced performances when playing the game and it start caching to my HDD when it's over 1GB because most of them are already in my RAMDisk, but then again that depends on how you play TS3, because everybody has different style playing it, I don't play more than 3 generations in my household so I can keep my saved game not more than 500mb.

Furthermore TS3 is 32bit program so it won't utilized more than 3-4GB, and I don't have much programs installed, so 3-4GB space of RAM to run the game is fine with my system
Instructor
#25 Old 6th Jul 2015 at 2:23 PM Last edited by PapaEmy : 6th Jul 2015 at 2:34 PM.
Quote: Originally posted by nitromon
I think you are using a different one too? Is it the type that leaves the RAM free until it fills it up? I have tried those before and actually was hoping to get Superspeed function similarly. Those are typical better since then the size you set is irrelevant until they're fill.


Yes I'm using a different one and it leaves RAM free until it fills up. I'm using Asus ROG RAMDisk for my RAMDISK software, it's easier to use, the software runs properly though I'm using non ROG Asus motherboard, my motherboard is Asus P5P43TD-Pro, I think the software can be run with other motherboard's brand too but I haven't try that. If you'd like to try it you should use/download the one provided from Asus X99 motherboards support, that's the newest one. What it does; you can leave all items in RAMDisk and the software will do the rest (moving its contents to its original location) while shutting down windows or when dismounting the junction and then removing RAMDisk drive.

But I don't think I get the Superspeed function with TS3 even with 16GB of RAM, it gives me smooth run almost no lag, but it does give me that kind speed with other games. I think I'll need 32GB or 64GB RAM to have super speed running TS3 so I can move all TS3 with its EPs SPs and mods to RAMDisk

As for paging file system, I use custom set up; 1024MB reserved and 2048 max, and place them to my HDD drive. I don't use minimum set up for 16MB, but sometimes I disabled paging file system altogether when forcing my system to use all of its RAM when I need to.
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