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#52 Old 27th Jul 2021 at 12:52 AM
Quote: Originally posted by nitromon
Your game runs at 39C? That's... almost impossible. It's cooler than my idle. What's your secret?


6 chassis fans, 1 cpu fan, 2 GPU fans!
I attached a screenshot to show my temps as proof - I use HWInfo64 to monitor temps. (not sure how accurate the sensors are but the case is pretty cool, I'm not worried.)
The four numbers in the system tray are:
1st - 37c - CPU Temp
2nd - 32% - CPU Total Usage
3rd 38c - GPU Temp
4th - 25% - GPU Core Load
Screenshots
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Scholar
#54 Old 27th Jul 2021 at 1:05 AM
Quote: Originally posted by nitromon
Sometimes I forget how wonderful it is back on a desktop. At this temperature, you don't really need to monitor them at all.


Oh yes, the gaming desktop PC rules lol! I do have Sims 3 installed on my laptop, but I haven't updated it for years. I brought the components to build my pc and dammit, I'm gonna use it until it dies - then I'll build another one lol.
I intalled the monitor software to see the differences as people warned this mod really heats up your system. It's not too bad.
What TPS number did you settle on?
Scholar
#56 Old 27th Jul 2021 at 1:23 AM
Quote: Originally posted by nitromon
For my homeworld right now, I'm running at 480 TPS, yeah I'm weird, I'm going by increments of 30. I tried it earlier at 240 and it didn't help at all with the game hiccups etc... However, when I was playing the France world, it ran fine at 120.

On a laptop, and one poorly made by HP, overheating is a real issue. Today is a hot day and even with a cooling pad, the GPU ran up as high as 77*C during gameplay at 480 TPS at high fan. However, last night when I tried it and it was a cool evening, it maintained around 70-74*C on medium fan..

Again, by comparison to other programs, it really isn't that bad persay. Starcraft 2 runs at 80*C on high fan. However, that only occurs during the 30-45 game time of SC2, while in menu mode, etc... it runs extremely cool below 60*C. TS3 is ongoing and people play it hours on end, so it would not be a good idea to run it above 75*C too long.


I was about to say, that isn't bad on laptop compared to other games.
And yes, i noticed this mod has different effects on different save games, on a densely populated Sunset Valley that I've been running for about 5 years that I test mods on, I don't see any change to it until I set the TPS to 1000, then its a tiny bit smoother lol. Other games I see a massive improvement all round on 200. I'm trying to find a good number for my regular game that I'm building up (its a large empty world, Arendale that I'm filling up with lots of house and I'm building up community lots at the moment)
It's currently on 120 TPS, I don't see much difference, not even in Build mode and CASt, so I think I'll try your number, 240
Scholar
#58 Old 27th Jul 2021 at 2:01 AM
Quote: Originally posted by nitromon
I'd say set it to the world you play the most in or set it to the max you are comfortable with. Since your system has no overheating issue, I would think it is fine if you just run it at 1000 for your most dense and heavy world. But I'm not sure, will it make the lighter worlds run too quick? Such as camera rotation, etc...?


Good idea, I probably won't switch between too many worlds and save games anyway, I tend to stick to about 3 main ones.
Yeah the lighter worlds were very speedy at 1000, the camera movement made me woozy lol
I used to use smaller worlds to build on and then transfer the build to the main worlds so i didn't have to deal with the lag of Build mode and CASt, but I think I could do most of my builds in the main game, perhaps an empty version and switch between that one and the main game if I have to.
I'll try again on the 3 saves at 1000 TPS
Lab Assistant
#59 Old 27th Jul 2021 at 2:09 AM
I think it's kind of funny how the sims 4 has been getting laggy and slower with each pack and updates, but the sims 3 is getting fixed by modders, really funy how the tables are slowly turning.
Scholar
#60 Old 27th Jul 2021 at 2:14 AM
Quote: Originally posted by bubblegumfish
I think it's kind of funny how the sims 4 has been getting laggy and slower with each pack and updates, but the sims 3 is getting fixed by modders, really funy how the tables are slowly turning.


YES! And the mods that have been coming out lately, new ones and the old ones being fixed like Zerbu's Ultimate Careers! I love it
Scholar
#61 Old 27th Jul 2021 at 3:38 AM
Which files does this mod affect mostly? The program files? Store content? mods? I'm interested in what it's doing behind the scenes.
Scholar
#63 Old 27th Jul 2021 at 5:12 AM
Quote: Originally posted by nitromon
If you scroll back to page 1 or 2, Duchess already included the source coding in github if you are into technobabbles.

But this link here talks more about it, I think it was the 1st time someone caught attention to this issue:
https://modthesims.info/showthread.php?t=645903

Theoretically, I'm thinking the game itself runs an internal logic clock, TPS can also be referred to task per second, though I'm not really sure in programming it is referred to that. Basically your hardware has it's own TPS which is calculated by it's hardware restrictions. When a software has its own internal clock locked to a certain TPS, this TPS then restrict the game from taking full advantage of your hardware TPS.

In this mod, you can set it to 0, which pretty much unlocks the software TPS and it will run as fast as your hardware allows. The problem with this of course, is that it might overpush the hardware and I actually tried it for a few seconds with the CPU usage up to 40-50% and temperature skyrocketing.

I'm not software, so a lot of this is just based on common engineering knowledge and I might be completely off. I'm sure someone with software background here can explain it better. In the link I posted, I actually thought by increasing the TPS it might actually make everything run super fast, including animation, mouse, camera, hence why I wondered if it could only be restricted to CAS and not the actual game. But apparently there's more to it than I realize and by adjusting the TPS, it smoothed out a lot of the game and didn't affect animation and other game dynamics because they are probably not based on the internal clock. So I would say it increases anything that is relevant to task per second, such as sims commands, functions, simulations, etc... which would indicate a lot of the game hiccups are due to "too many things" being requested to do and were bottlenecked while the software trying to get through to them.

A very noticeable aspect is sims changing clothes. Any delay in how the command is run through the game system would cause it to hold. This is why by unparking the CPU core, removing the CPU parking latency improves this function, and so would increasing the TPS. Less "wait" time while other tasks are being completed.


I just read back the whole thread, I missed that part.
Yes, I'm starting to see a lot more sims doing things together on a packed lot instead of standing around doing idles! That's great! :D
Interesting, so the TPS is like FPS and having to limit it to some games like to 30-60fps so the graphics card don't catch fire or something lol
I've been using QuickCPU to unpark all cores for a while now, it really makes a difference.
Lab Assistant
#65 Old 27th Jul 2021 at 6:48 AM Last edited by LazyDuchess : 27th Jul 2021 at 8:16 AM.
@nitromon Yup, that's a good explanation.
It works at normal speed because I didn't actually modify the clock to achieve this, instead I tracked down where in the code the game tells the processing to "wait" and modified it to take a custom value (The calculated TPS in milliseconds from the tuning file of course) instead of EA's.

So while the game technically runs faster due to this modification, the clock does not, therefore the game knows how to adjust animations/UI/etc. to make them appear at normal speed. This is common practice, it's why videogames are always kept at normal speed regardless of your framerate, and the lack of this practice is what makes certain games, mostly console ports as they're expected to run at 30-60 FPS, break at higher framerates.
There are a couple examples in TS3 where they forgot about this practice and this mod makes it actually visible, most notably the furniture previews in BB spin a lot faster the higher your TPS is.

I'm currently testing a new option that lets your system handle the TPS rather than a manual setting or no limit at all. I don't know the ins and outs of Windows and exactly how it handles it (It is closed source software after all), but it seems to work REALLY well on my system although at a high CPU usage, so it could be a new maximum performance option for those that are not too concerned about their temperatures/CPU usage. I'm going to do some more testing because I don't wanna fry anyone's system, of course!

EDIT: The realtime changes in TPS are really jarring when moving the camera and things like that so... will leave it as an experimental non default option most likely.
Scholar
#67 Old 27th Jul 2021 at 8:50 AM
Quote: Originally posted by desiree101
I just read back the whole thread, I missed that part.
Yes, I'm starting to see a lot more sims doing things together on a packed lot instead of standing around doing idles! That's great! :D
Interesting, so the TPS is like FPS and having to limit it to some games like to 30-60fps so the graphics card don't catch fire or something lol
I've been using QuickCPU to unpark all cores for a while now, it really makes a difference.


Modern graphics cards have been throttled not only by temperature, but also to stay within the stated power (something CPUs won't do: the TDP they list is before turbo) ever since Furmark came out and could actually set your graphics card on fire. So nowadays if you run something like Furmark, if the GPU says 300W, it will throttle itself to stay the hell under 300W no matter what its temperature is. You could run it on liquid nitrogen, and it still won't go above 300W, if 300W is what it said on the spec sheet. (Though you might undervolt it more then.)

And CPUs have been thermally throttled for like two decades now. You had to have a REALLY ancient CPU even at the date TS3 came out to not have thermal throttling, except not TOO old because then it wouldn't run that hot in the first place. And even then, the worst that could happen was that it would crash or lock up, not fry.

Fun fact, on my previous computer, which was a 9900K with a RTX 2080 Ti graphics card (i.e., THE hottest CPU and GPU at that time), I actually ran it with both the CPU and the GPU fans prevented from spinning for several days. And a closed case. Both CPU and GPU throttled themselves down INSANELY, and games tended to eventually crash, but even that took a long time. Neither CPU nor GPU got fried.

Now mind you, it's not something I'd recommend -- if nothing else, you'll lose 99% of your CPU and GPU power to throttling within a minute of starting a game -- but yeah, it shows beyond any doubt that anyone worrying that they can actually fry a CPU, while running the processing on just one core (like those ticks run in TS3,) if they don't insert delays is... cute in their utter stupidity. That person is at most qualified to be the janitor at a tech company, not the programmer.

And that goes double when reading data from the disk, like when you're in CAS. Windows ALREADY just blocks the thread waiting for IO, and lets another thread run until the IO is ready. And did so for like two decades already even by the time TS3 came out. Adding any extra delays is just pointless padding in CAS.

Now there can be debatable reasons to yield control to another thread now and then, especially on a single core, such as not starving the rendering thread. (But then again, you can just set the priorities and let the damn Windows thread scheduler do its job.) But even then you can just yield, and let Windows wake you up again when the scheduler decides to. You don't have to set your own delays there.

Basically short version: worst that could happen either back then or now is just that the CPU runs at full power, and is a little hotter. But... so what? It should be able to. If your computer can run Prime95 without crashing, which it should unless it's a fundamentally defective computer, then it should be able to run The Sims 3 at full speed.
Forum Resident
#68 Old 27th Jul 2021 at 7:36 PM
For people who aren't hardware savvy yet want to try this, any suggestions for how to make sure the gpu doesn't fry? Just monitor the temperature?
Forum Resident
#69 Old 27th Jul 2021 at 7:55 PM
Quote: Originally posted by lakme
For people who aren't hardware savvy yet want to try this, any suggestions for how to make sure the gpu doesn't fry? Just monitor the temperature?


You should be fine even at the previous default of 1000 TPS. The only time where you might run into some issues temperature-wise is setting it to 0 in the ini, which is essentially letting your hardware decide at that point. It won't for sure damage anything, just something that you'd want to monitor, yes.

But at 500 or 1000 or anything in between, you should really be as fine as you would in vanilla with your FPS limited.

You have been chosen. They will come soon.
Scholar
#70 Old 27th Jul 2021 at 7:57 PM
Quote: Originally posted by lakme
For people who aren't hardware savvy yet want to try this, any suggestions for how to make sure the gpu doesn't fry? Just monitor the temperature?


Mate, I just told you. Your GPU literally can't fry from too much to do, if it's been made in the last decade.

Plus, this doesn't do anything to the GPU anyway. The throttling was only for the CPU, not the GPU. In fact, TS3 doesn't even have an option to limit the frame rate, which is really the only thing that would affect how much the GPU has to do. The GPU is going full throttle all the time unless you do something else to limit it.

And the easiest thing you could do is probably just force V-Sync on in the drivers. You probably don't really need more than 60 fps for this kind of game anyway.
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retired moderator
#71 Old 27th Jul 2021 at 7:59 PM
Yes, I would just monitor- if you use this free program then the Max and Min temperatures are stored, so when you quit the game you can see what temperatures were attained.
https://www.cpuid.com/softwares/hwmonitor.html
(Get the 'classic' version, that's the free one).
Scholar
#73 Old 27th Jul 2021 at 10:55 PM
Quote: Originally posted by LazyDuchess
I'm currently testing a new option that lets your system handle the TPS rather than a manual setting or no limit at all. I don't know the ins and outs of Windows and exactly how it handles it (It is closed source software after all), but it seems to work REALLY well on my system although at a high CPU usage, so it could be a new maximum performance option for those that are not too concerned about their temperatures/CPU usage. I'm going to do some more testing because I don't wanna fry anyone's system, of course!

EDIT: The realtime changes in TPS are really jarring when moving the camera and things like that so... will leave it as an experimental non default option most likely.


Wow! I didn't think this mod could get any better
Scholar
#74 Old 27th Jul 2021 at 11:20 PM Last edited by desiree101 : 27th Jul 2021 at 11:47 PM.
Quote: Originally posted by Moraelin
Modern graphics cards have been throttled not only by temperature, but also to stay within the stated power (something CPUs won't do: the TDP they list is before turbo) ever since Furmark came out and could actually set your graphics card on fire. So nowadays if you run something like Furmark, if the GPU says 300W, it will throttle itself to stay the hell under 300W no matter what its temperature is. You could run it on liquid nitrogen, and it still won't go above 300W, if 300W is what it said on the spec sheet. (Though you might undervolt it more then.)

And CPUs have been thermally throttled for like two decades now. You had to have a REALLY ancient CPU even at the date TS3 came out to not have thermal throttling, except not TOO old because then it wouldn't run that hot in the first place. And even then, the worst that could happen was that it would crash or lock up, not fry.

Fun fact, on my previous computer, which was a 9900K with a RTX 2080 Ti graphics card (i.e., THE hottest CPU and GPU at that time), I actually ran it with both the CPU and the GPU fans prevented from spinning for several days. And a closed case. Both CPU and GPU throttled themselves down INSANELY, and games tended to eventually crash, but even that took a long time. Neither CPU nor GPU got fried.

Now mind you, it's not something I'd recommend -- if nothing else, you'll lose 99% of your CPU and GPU power to throttling within a minute of starting a game -- but yeah, it shows beyond any doubt that anyone worrying that they can actually fry a CPU, while running the processing on just one core (like those ticks run in TS3,) if they don't insert delays is... cute in their utter stupidity. That person is at most qualified to be the janitor at a tech company, not the programmer.

And that goes double when reading data from the disk, like when you're in CAS. Windows ALREADY just blocks the thread waiting for IO, and lets another thread run until the IO is ready. And did so for like two decades already even by the time TS3 came out. Adding any extra delays is just pointless padding in CAS.

Now there can be debatable reasons to yield control to another thread now and then, especially on a single core, such as not starving the rendering thread. (But then again, you can just set the priorities and let the damn Windows thread scheduler do its job.) But even then you can just yield, and let Windows wake you up again when the scheduler decides to. You don't have to set your own delays there.

Basically short version: worst that could happen either back then or now is just that the CPU runs at full power, and is a little hotter. But... so what? It should be able to. If your computer can run Prime95 without crashing, which it should unless it's a fundamentally defective computer, then it should be able to run The Sims 3 at full speed.


This is good to know! I've never been one to overclock my computers or anything like that, as long as my system can play the games I want and everything else, I don't need to squeeze any more power out of it. I did do a stress test on one of my GPU cards with Furmark a long time ago and it survived lol. I wouldn't bother doing it again though, it's not necessary.
Scholar
#75 Old 27th Jul 2021 at 11:26 PM
Quote: Originally posted by Moraelin
Mate, I just told you. Your GPU literally can't fry from too much to do, if it's been made in the last decade.

Plus, this doesn't do anything to the GPU anyway. The throttling was only for the CPU, not the GPU. In fact, TS3 doesn't even have an option to limit the frame rate, which is really the only thing that would affect how much the GPU has to do. The GPU is going full throttle all the time unless you do something else to limit it.

And the easiest thing you could do is probably just force V-Sync on in the drivers. You probably don't really need more than 60 fps for this kind of game anyway.


I think you got me and lakme mixed up!
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