sorry , i cannot help but "you know nothing John Snow" ATM (until the @Sneaky... give us some info)

There're out there in the world machines with only 4GB soldered with Celeron (or similar) line proudly wearing the sticker "Windows 10 Ready!", which is one of these little understatements (they're completely capable to running that atrocity, but, well... nothing else).

I'm a bit worried that the OP machine could be one of this unfortunate crippled spawns of greed and marketing doing awful things to engineering team.

[EDIT: cut out wrong info]
RAM ofc is a 1st priority. Still, with that TDP I'd not have big hopes (rather none, honestly) regardless if there's some other GPU or not - with 7.5W limitation only low-low old ATI onboard solutions were there once but while they were a (tiny)bit better than old Intel iGPUs with that crippling TDP limitations it won't work. Undervolting could help a bit, but still - I do not think if it's worth the hassle.

my bad, scratch my last - it's BGA only. So no option to upgrade (I mistake this N for different chip).

there's official Intel info about this chip: [ https://ark.intel.com/content/www/u...o-2-58-ghz.html ] 7.5W max TDP, that "scenario one" is for passive cooling flatbase (ultra-thin devices) design (everything practically soldered-in or painted on the board). They're often sold with minimal memory and soldered ssd (the newest with pci ones) which partially masks lack of RAM. Kinda "Chromebooks" in general.

Not for S3 unfortunatelly.

PI STARTED PROJECT VIE!!

no offense man, loved that prank, those uptight bratty simmers needed something like that

Like what other details? When I said decently, I meant in a way to be playable unlike on past machines that you could barely tame the beast without long waiting times for clock to start, for sim to get in a taxi, etc. and etc. So my idea of "decently" might not be the same of yours. Though I won't deny it doesn't have a few hiccups of times, but that doesn't step from playing the game unlike in the past. Btw, I do have errortrap and overwatch installed, so yeah. That and the EP I have installed (WA, A, LN and IP) does pertain to why games performance well.

In fact, what is the maximum amount of RAM the game can use? Because I have a device equipped with 8GB of RAM, and for me the game is still lagging. We also have to keep in mind all the store content and the huge amount of mods that I have, plus the routing errors in the world I've mostly and I'm currently playing in. But after reseting everything with MC, usually all the major lag disappears for a few minutes. I've also noticed that the lag increases with the time that has passed since the last total reset, so I think that most probably it's my world (New Sunset Valley 2013) that has serious issues.

I'll probably have to switch the world sometimes in the near future, but the problem is that I get too attached to the big houses I build. Sadly, they don't fit well in any world.

The only thing worth saying about Vie is that it proved a point I wasn't even actively trying to make. Other than that it was a colossal waste of time, but I did get a good grade for it.

the game is able to use 3.7GB RAM for itself, but it's not only the game you are running on the system while playing. The system (in Windows case) needs for itself from 1 to 1.5 GB, that depends of the version and its state. The 8GB system is quite adequate, you can even squeeze a small RAM disk. 6GB should be considered a real minimum.

I did run a RAMdisk on the system I had with 8 gigs installed....I believe the RAMdisk was 2 gigs, and I always kept Chrome closed while playing. I'm on 16 gigs now which is on the small side for some of my use cases, but it's plenty for playing TS3 and leaving other programs open in the background. Chrome will easily use 5-6 gigs if I'm careless about the amount of tabs I keep open, but TS3 typically won't use more than 2 these days. That's largely due to me having moved on from the Bridgeport save I played in for many years, it's still very demanding and when I've gone back to it, it's still been using 2.5-3 gigs with little to no effort.

So yeah, 8 gigs or 6 if you're one of those weirdos who can't limit themselves to powers of two.

I should look into what's making that world run so poorly. It's quite laggy but playable, but my home lot which is quite detailed takes up so much memory that it's often made the game crash within seconds of me unpausing. 2400 megabytes is a lot but not enough to make my game unstable, but when I move back over to the home lot it'll add 400-500 megs and unpausing adds another 300. The most I've ever had in that world is, I think, just above 3900 megs. For a full minute, at that. Not even particularly sure what makes that world run so poorly because it doesn't strike me as being extremely bloated. Yes it's a big save but not THAT big.

Good news is I got bored with it either way and moved on to other, lighter worlds.

3.7 us a theoretical limit which RAM demands in 64bit environment can be fulfilled for a 32bit application, if there's enough memory to spare ofc. Though honestly I've never seen that in real life scenario. Max game memory usage I've even seen was around 2.1 GB *however* the actual Windows (it was 7) memory declared was ca 14GB (8 physical and 5 and something dropped on the swap). I suspect that around 2GB (it was the natural barrier at the beginning) is an actual natural "normal maximum" for the program and if the RAM usage goes higher that means SomethingWrongIsOnTheWay. The situation may be a bit different if one push the 2/4K textures on the game.

Ask any player on the Mac version of the game as they are still limited to 2 GB. Didn't you experience this for yourself for a while recently when one of your Windows machines was being repaired/replaced? To be fair, there aren't many who have the patience to keep playing that way long-term especially with most or all EPs going, but it is apparently possible for games that are only permitted to progress so far.

With the shit I've been through with TS3 over the years, you guys are telling me it's even worse on Mac? I'm sorry for your pain.....but hey, I'd hardly expect the opposite from Macs.

well, it's quite simple @nitromon - I rarely play big worlds with big populations and even more rarely I'm able to play big saves (not much time to spare and usually I got bored, heh - look how far I was able to commit myself to the legacy). I was personally more concerned about that nonsense memory aggregation (8+5something, remember?) but on the other hand that machine is rebooted only occasionally, once a month maybe, mostly just put to sleep. It's not really comparable to the unfortunate Mac's owners, because there was still ca. 1.5GB to take freely, while game on the Mac would be already locked. I remember, when I had a bit more time (less field trips with students), sometimes I even did not disable the game, but just pause it, drop into background and put machine to sleep. While woken up, the actual memory state of the game was ofc on the swap, so waking up it to play session could take some time.

Lately I do not even play the game because that machine on which it's installed is the only one in the house left with Windows.* Mostly occupied by my wife. Or one of the cats. Or both (three|four-both? It's kinda... complicated). So I'm rather in the Sims2OnLinux team now Maybe I'll install, just for the fun-test S3 on the my daily driver (T450) but I'm afraid it will be too much for that poor HD5500 there.

*and that Win7 installation has seen the writing on the wall already, maybe I will leave the Windows partition there just for the few games, completely cut off from the network, but I do not decided yet.

It's not that Macs that have strong enough components aren't perfectly capable of running the game or there is something inherently wrong with the operating environment. It's that EA chose to do the port for TS3 into the Mac OS themselves by way of a Cider implementation that emulates parts of Win XP (SP2) to make the game run, they did a horrible job, and never returned to fix it but instead kept marketing all of the EPs to Mac players as if there were no problems. The relief that Windows players got with Patch 1.17 that makes TS3 Large Address Aware and thus able to address more than 2 GB of RAM doesn't do a thing for the Mac version because of Cider and EA's shortsighted decisions, not because they are Macs.

EA did not do this with TS1, 2 or 4. The Mac versions of those games were outsourced (to Aspyr for at least two of them) and done properly, in fact they arguably run better on suitable Mac hardware for most than the Windows versions do.

Didn't say it was a Mac issue, I'm well aware of their wrapper and generally shoddy code work.....did NOT know it was based on XP. I know TS3 was developed on XP machines, I assume because it was the latest and most reliable OS at the start of development. I guess it makes sense that the OS X version was based on XP as well, then, since I'm pretty sure the game was compatible with Macs at launch.

Sorry for appearing to be triggered, but perhaps there were too many negatives in this sentence for me to understand what you meant.

Speaking of cleaning CC, does anyone know why the game doesn't let me delete CC while in CAS? The delete button is greyed out.

I've never heard of this being a feature......was that added in a later patch?

Wasn't that only in TS2?