It is slow, for real. I don't know about fifteen minutes, but it is at least four minutes for them to sleep a full night on highest speed. This is graphics on lowest it will go. Speed is bork bork borked *tosses utensils*

This speed thing is awful.

I've been searching around various forums and tons and tons of people are having this problem. A lot of them are claiming they have great PC's with fab graphics cards and loads of RAM. Then you get some people who say their PC's (or MAC's, this seems to be a universal problem) aren't as good yet the game is running really well for them.

I've read on a few forums that 2 versious of the game have been released, one has the speed fooked and the other is ok. I don't know how true this is though, all it takes is for one person to make that claim and then others to repeat it.

The only problem I am having is with speed. The game is smooth, just slow. I can deal with it when my sim is doing things, but working and sleeping take so long that it's killing the game for me. 1x speed is the same as all the others. I've turned all my graphics options down to low, not much difference really. Now I know my graphics card is a bit old and pants, but I'm reluctant to go out and buy a new one in case this IS some kind of bug. I do have 4GB of RAM though and TS2 with all expansions ran as fast as you liked.
I just need EA to say if this is an issue or if everyone who is complaining (and thats a lot of people, who, like I say claim their set up is fantastic) actually has crappy systems.

I really hope this is a bug and it can be fixed with a patch or something.

I noticed that 2cond speed has 2 sim minutes a second while the rest has 1 minute a second.

I am same. does not bother me much. my game is on low anyways

I just finished testing it again.

My sim worked for 7 sim hours from 8am to 3pm. As I understand it,one sim hour is one real life minute, that means that it would take 7 real life minutes on speed 1.
When she went to work,I checked the real time and it was 1:06pm,when my sim finished work,I checked the real time again and it was now 1:14pm so I had to wait about 7 real life minutes. That would have been NORMAL if the time had been on speed 1 but not on speed 3 which is the one I had.

So yes,it is borked. *tosses utensils also*

6 minutes to sleep at 3x? That's really weird... it only takes around 45 seconds for me.

I can confirm that there seems to be a difference in versions. Long story short, my son and I have computers that are way above minimum requirements (gaming comps) and my daughter has one that is barely minimum.

Son and I both have problems with game speed where all speeds seem about the same (1 to possibly 2), but the rest of the game is flawless, smooth, non-laggy/choppy, no graphical errors, etc - we're using the digital download.

Daughter is having no problems with game speed, there is a very noticable difference between them, and 3/4 is pretty darn fast. Her game is considerably more laggy/choppy than ours, she has frequent crashes and graphical errors (which are somewhat expected due to her specs)...and she's using a retail box set disk install.

I don't know if it's the different versions causing it, but there's no way her computer is or should be faster than ours...and it's not, other than the fact that changing speeds on ours just does not seem to work, at all. It's like the buttons are broken.

Yeah, it took about fifteen minutes. Granted, I let them get very tired and they had a mediocre bed.

It definitely shouldn't be my PC. This thing is brand new and is well above the minimum specs for game play.

First of all (and this is my opinion) i think some people are getting confused by Slow speed (the folk who keep saying the game is running fast for me) and Slow time (the actual issue) The speed of the game animation redndering, sun moving and everything is fine for me but Time is actually borked. The highest speed and its counterpart, what a crock. It takes about 7-10 minutes depending on what bed they sleep in. and My sims tend to sleep too much. If they go to bed at midnight they sleep till nine. TS2 never slept for 9 hours unless they were lazy. Cooking? forget it. grab a bowl of soup or toast and jam and head out the door.

I actually do have a high end self built machine with the game running everything on high. At first i thought it was my OS, which is Win7 RC but since im seeing XP, Vista, some Macs having the issue i know its not the case. Game runs fine the time is broken. I haven't noticed my sims pausing too much, but like i said in another post, This game is like Vista. It's not finished and we are chumped beta testers.

I like the game but it needs polishing.

For the slowness of the game, I think it's because of the specs of your computer. Because I've played the game on two different computers and on the better computer the speeds have been faster, and on the other computer the speeds were slower (and very annoying!).

So I think that's the problem, or is that just me?

Bothering to read through the rest of the posts first would have answered your question.

I usually end up taking a nap because I get tired of waiting.

Has anyone actually contacted EA on this by email or phone to figure it out. Do they know about this problem? Have they said anything in the press about it?

I have a midrange system (2.7 Ghz processor, 2 GB ram, Windows XP, and a Nvidia 8500 card w/ 512 MB cache), and the timer thing is stuck. I was going to get some more ram in hopes of fixing things, and have spent the past two days trying to tweek every thing on my computer to free more memory. Now that I know it's more likely the game itself, I feel better. I may still get that extra RAM as I have been considering it for some time, but if what others are saying is true, it might not help.

Yes, there is a pretty widespread issue with the speed controls not functioning properly. My computer is not new, but it easily meets the required specs and I have the same problem.

Even besides that technical problem, the amount of time it takes for sims to do anything seems ridiculously long. The alarm wakes up my sim before work and he doesn't even have time just to finish making breakfast for himself before the carpool shows up.

game play is fast for me, but the whole sleeping and working thing is bugging me...the 4th speed IS NO DIFFERENT from the 3rd, which I think is what everyone is trying to say but some are getting it confused with the actual game play/computer specs. I dunno maybe EA thought we'd enjoy sitting around for 5 real time minutes as our sims do 8 hour in game actions.

Speed 4 is no different than Speed 3. Speed 4 is Speed 3 until the current task is complete then it resets to Speed 1.

EDIT: From the little manual that comes with the DVD version:
Time Controls
Pause game — P, 0, or `
Regular/fast/ultra speed — 1/2/3 (or corresponding keys on Num Pad)
Fast forward to the end of interaction — 4

From the Lessons in game:
3/4
The world can progress in one of three speeds, each of which can be controlled from the buttons on this panel or by using keyboard shortcuts: 1 for Normal Speed, 2 for Fast Speed, and 3 for Ultra Speed.
4/4
Lastly, you can use the Fast Forward button or the "4" key to put the world into Ultra Speed until the current interaction is complete.
Note that the game will automatically go to Speed 3 if all of your Sims are asleep or at their jobs.

They should make speed 3 faster than because its still slow.

i thought i was the only one. lol. quite often my sim and i are reading at the same time. :D

I personally watch TV when I play, either real TV or what ever my sim has on TV...its a shame that my cooking girl no longer catches on fire every episode.