Hello SimGurus,
since Patch 1.33 I face the following memory issue:
I load a world,
play,
go back to main menu,
wonder why the memory utilization dropped by about 2% only,
load the same world again and get a 10% higher memory consumption than before.
With my current computer that makes about 300MB!
It seems the whole world data keeps being allocated.

Anyone else with the same issue?

... wat?

English, hun.

Cyron43 wrote:Hello SimGurus,
since Patch 1.33 I face the following memory issue:
I load a world,
play,
go back to main menu,
wonder why the memory utilization dropped by about 2% only,
load the same world again and get a 10% higher memory consumption than before.
With my current computer that makes about 300MB!
It seems the whole world data keeps being allocated.

Anyone else with the same issue?

Yeah i've had this happen and have it happen to where it caused my whole pc to shut off because of memory usage. I have error trap almost 8 to 6 times in my game. So something is up but i don't know how to read or send error trap to find out what the problem is. I know i get sim kids and babies stuck aging up. I get a lot of issues that if i didn't have overwatch unfortunately i wouldn't be able to play sims at all.

Right now im getting an issue with a sim just being frozen like a statue in game and not sure what's causing that. Yes i've had the memory usage spike up like that on different launches, though a huge number of things can be causing that.

I'm with Pepper, Say Whaaa????

I'm a bit of a computer whiz, but seriously... I need words on this one... More of them.

Okay I explain.
Open thwe task manager. Given you run Windows (sorry I don't know anything about Macs) right click on that task bar at the bottom of the desktop.
In the upcoming context menu click "start task manager"
In the lower right corner of that window you can see
"Physical memory: XX%"
This is the memory usage I'm talking about.
Keep an eye on that value during you play.
I have 3.something GB RAM (4 installed) and the usage during the game runs is normally about 75% to 80%. Due to this bug it goes up to 90%.

What I mean with garbage collector: All memory allocated by a program must be freed once it's not used anymore.
Especially with a programming language like C++ this deallocation has to be done programmatically by a so called destructor. It can happen with huge programs that a developer forgets a destructor. Memory leaks are the most popular example for this.
Anyway this destructor does not free the allocated memory itself. It just flags it for not being used anymore.
Now the Garbage Collector (yes it's truly called that) is a system routine which runs periodically through the memory management, looks up these "flags" and finalizes the deallocation.

Sims is a resource hog to be sure but I haven't encountered that issue on my new machine.

My old machine had to be rebooted every couple of hours to completely clear the RAM.

Which OS did you say you were using? Windows 7 or Vista?

Windows 7

I just noticed something like this happening with my game. Last night, for the 3rd time, I turned on the game and went to clean up a bit. The game was on the main select your neighborhood menu. When I came back, my computer was off. So this has happened 2 times in the past, but I didn't really think much of it. So after last night, I no longer thought it was a coincidence. I did the same thing again and just waited. After about an hour of sitting at the select your neighborhood menu, my computer just turned off. I think the problem is just the main menu itself. I don't have this issue during any other part of the game.

The sims 3 used to run slow on my computer. Then I downloaded Overwatch. Now it doesn't.

I kind of get what you are saying Cyron. My problem is similar, I think. But the game is so laggy anymore I just can't even stand to play it. How many EPs and Store Stuff is too much?

I only have LN and SHT. And some store items (outfits and a few counters etc.) Anymore when I start up the game, it is using 25% CPU which doesn't seem like much but the physical memory is 53%! and the processes amount is 1,23460 KBs! (for two EPs installed) It is getting longer and longer to load the game, even longer to load a lot/house and I am just about fed up.

Another thing if I minimize the game and look in Task Manager the process is still going even though the game is on pause and consuming 1,23460KBs. The process should stall/stop when the game is minimized and paused. Memory leak?

This was true in one of the EPs in TS2 and was fixed eventually to make no longer happen.

The loading times for the game are just as unbareable now as in TS2 and that is with only two EPs installed. As a matter of fact I can still play my old TS2 saved game with loads of CC in not have this lag.

I am disappointed very much. Because I have Windows 64bit OS, with 4 GBs of RAM and an ATI HD 1GB video card and my game is worse after installing SHT. No hacks or CC.

Cinebar wrote:I kind of get what you are saying Cyron. My problem is similar, I think. But the game is so laggy anymore I just can't even stand to play it. How many EPs and Store Stuff is too much?

I only have LN and SHT. And some store items (outfits and a few counters etc.) Anymore when I start up the game, it is using 25% CPU which doesn't seem like much but the physical memory is 53%! and the processes amount is 1,23460 KBs! (for two EPs installed) It is getting longer and longer to load the game, even longer to load a lot/house and I am just about fed up.

Another thing if I minimize the game and look in Task Manager the process is still going even though the game is on pause and consuming 1,23460KBs. The process should stall/stop when the game is minimized and paused. Memory leak?

This was true in one of the EPs in TS2 and was fixed eventually to make no longer happen.

The loading times for the game are just as unbareable now as in TS2 and that is with only two EPs installed. As a matter of fact I can still play my old TS2 saved game with loads of CC in not have this lag.

I am disappointed very much. Because I have Windows 64bit OS, with 4 GBs of RAM and an ATI HD 1GB video card and my game is worse after installing SHT. No hacks or CC.

Do you have Twallan's Overwatch mod? LN has a car-spawning bug that causes lag and Overwatch keeps the cars under control. Might help your game performance a bit.

Hi Cinebar,
please help me. What do you mean with processes amount in KB/s?
In case you mean the read/write amount from to the HD I can explain that: Your computer shoves big amounts of data between the RAM and the so called pagefile on the HD. This happens when you run low on memory. While in game the system pushes some data and functionality for the desktop to the pagefile. In the moment you switch to the desktop these data has to be pulled back and therefore some of the game data is moved to the pagefile. Maybe that's what you are seeing.

Also The Sims runs a lot of parallel threads. Not all are put on halt when you switch to the desktop. Under normal circumstances they shouldn't take much CPU time but on a weak computer they use the time where the threads with a higher priority (i.e. graphics rendering) are paused so they can make up for piled up workload.

Sorry I know this is complicated and I can't explain it in more simple words.

I have this problem, too..but I didn't use to. I'm trying to figure out what is going on as well and took off all my EP's installed the basic game..that's it...I didn't install any patches. I did read where one simmer figured out part of her lag and memory useage came from a glitch that happens if you add a lot to your game that requires rotating the lot to fit with the front placing the street.
It would only happen if there were spawners on the lot..fish, seeds that type of thing. Each rotation multiplied the spawners and they multiplied underground so you couldn't see it. I don't know how she discovered this (there are some very talented people out there) but deleting the added spawners helped a lot. Please note: overwatch is not catching this for cleanup.
So far with only the base game loaded and no patches I am not getting the cpu warnings...( a lot less loaded naturally)but I am going into norton to see what the influx is after gaming. I am grateful to hear of what other players are experiencing with this. According to what is loaded even with all the games/stuff packs added together it shouldn't equal what is shown...is it the patches?

Cyron43 wrote:Hi Cinebar,
please help me. What do you mean with processes amount in KB/s?
In case you mean the read/write amount from to the HD I can explain that: Your computer shoves big amounts of data between the RAM and the so called pagefile on the HD. This happens when you run low on memory. While in game the system pushes some data and functionality for the desktop to the pagefile. In the moment you switch to the desktop these data has to be pulled back and therefore some of the game data is moved to the pagefile. Maybe that's what you are seeing.

Also The Sims runs a lot of parallel threads. Not all are put on halt when you switch to the desktop. Under normal circumstances they shouldn't take much CPU time but on a weak computer they use the time where the threads with a higher priority (i.e. graphics rendering) are paused so they can make up for piled up workload.

Sorry I know this is complicated and I can't explain it in more simple words.

This is what I thought...my computer is nearing 5 years and rather then upgrade the memory I bought a new computer. I am curious however how many other factors are going on with the game...like the spawners multiplying with each rotation is going on that also takes up memory with each save.