I have and PC from 2K12 with 8GB RAM a Quadcore Phenom II CPU at 3Ghz and a newly replaced graphics card (Nvidia GTX 1050 OC). I have installed alll EPs and SPs and nearly the whole Store and some mods (mostly nraas).
It took me around 4-5 min to load a savegame. A new game took nearly 10 min to load. The installation is on an SSD and I use Win7.

It's the best I can get out of this, but I think on Linux it will be faster (tried this some years ago with my older Nvidia 450 GTS).

The average player has never heard of MTS.

But yeah I have a pretty different rig in terms of hardware but it's in the same broad category in terms of being high-end but not the latest and not the greatest.....4-5 minutes if I leave the game open the whole time and 10 if it needs to set up an entirely new save. Everything's on SSDs which helps a bunch but in the future I want to experiment with RAMdisks. I have 16 gigs now which doesn't give me a lot of breathing room.....in fact, it causes me plenty of issues with editing video, but I can get by with it. As soon as I'll have 64 gigs I'll want to streamline my game install and see if I can load the whole thing into RAM. Might not do much but I like the idea of it and no one can stop me.

like seriously? Maybe among victims of S4
This site was literally 1st where I landed while searching for stuff for TS2 when in unique moment of glory EA give us S2UC for free (well, for the price of Sims 3, but still).

I think you greatly underestimate the amount of people who play The Sims, and how little most of them have to do with the game's community.

And most of them likely think the store is the only place to get more content, and CC are viruses that will blow up your computer...

The average human being barely knows how to wipe their own ass so I think it'd be accurate to say that they're wildly incompetent with computers as well.
But that's not the point of this thread and when anyone argues that CC is dumb or unnecessary or whatever I'll fight them either way.

No offense, but a QUADCORE PHENOM 2?? Even a first gen i5 is better than that. But whatever, no hate. Although you should look into upgrading, since it's 2019. Like an old used i7-2600 dell pc will be faster imo :b

Anyways, I actually run Linux (Fedora 30, kernel 5.0.10) with Steam's Proton (newer, valve-supported version of wine) and I can say that it's alright. I don't think installing Linux will make Sims 3 any faster, but installing Linux will probably make your PC run faster since better memory management, etc. If you are going to try Linux, download a live usb of Ubuntu Mate and test it out on your computer. With Live Usbs, you can test out the OS without having to install it on your hard drive. It's magical.

Good luck on your Linux Journey!

Quite possible, but you really *need* to smash my tiny bits of faith in humanity (and its grey-mass existence) which I have left?

@redandvidya theoretically it could, if the GPU is decent and does not bottleneck the whole thing. Superior memory & CPU management, better design, better control and ofc lack of AnyMicrosoftCrap eating machine's power. Even with video performance loss because of translation layer (but DX9K is kicking, slowly) it may work overall better. Theoretically.
Though - it would be very (*very*) unwise to blindly jump into completely foreign territory "because Sims3 will work better (maybe)".

Fair enough, I've had my fair share of headaches with Linux, like broken video drivers, not recognizing files, etc. But it's worth it for ext4, which makes my hard drive feel like an SSD xD

Yup a Quadcore Phenom II! I also have an EeePC from 2008.
My loading times with the Sims 3 is much better than the times of some other players.

Don't need an upgrade, cause I don't play actual Highend Games only older stuff and some GOG Indiegames wich are decent on hardware requirements.

I run Arch Linux on both machines for years (Phenom II has hardened Kernel 5.0.12, EeePC has Kernel 5.0.7) and they are fast. It has simply a better resourcemanagement than Windows, and it's fully configurable/customizable.
Don't have any problems with drivers or bugs. I use Win7 only for some programs I need for work (and Sims 3).

Interesting fact about Linus is that you can use the graphics card memory as an extension to your normal RAM. This isn't possible in Windows.

My point is that despise all benefits it's different system and "sims" or other entertaining motivation is very wrong, especially for the people not ready or not willing to challenge theirs habits.

I have read all the comments and have come to the conclusion that we will not have a 64 bit port for TS3. I hope TS5 has a similar proposal to that of TS3 and without the performance issues after all I was interested in TS3 precisely because of its gameplay where your sim can have countless possibilities and the world around it evolves along with it.

Well there's a 64bit version coming for Mac, since Catalina has dropped support for 32BIT apps, apparently the patch is macOS only. I wonder if someone can somehow port it over Windows