The Sims 3 graphics setting

[HOTRODr418]

I recently bought an AMD Radeon R7 260x graphics card. I play the Sims. I put the settings as high as they can go, the game runs good without any issues. But the loading and saving times are longer then usual. What should i do?

 

[markwp]

Nothing. If you were previously running onboard graphics, the delay may just be due to your gpu loading and unloading. I wouldn't worry about it.

Mark

 

[HOTRODr418]

I was using a ATi Radeon HD 4670. It wasnt a bad card, but it was laggy at times. But when I had that i was also running Windows Vista. Since i got this new card, i am now running Windows 7. Seems to be running more smooth.

I was just curious on what i could do to lower to loading and saving times.

 

[bigpinkdragon286]

When you increase graphical detail in games, games generally load higher resolution textures, and more of them. In essence, you're loading more DATA for your graphics card to work with, so in seeing your load times increase, you are experiencing normal behavior. This isn't something to worry or concern over, if you were, but it can be obnoxious, if you're used to faster loading times.

The only cure is to either return to the settings you used previously, or improve the speed at which your computer can feed DATA to your graphics card. Using an SSD as your boot drive and installed location of your games comes in handy for this, as it dramatically increases the speed at which games load and OS libraries can be accessed. It's not necessarily a cheap option, but it's probably the only acceptable option, as turning the graphics back down rather nullifies the benefits of upgrading your graphics card.

Also, increasing RAM can help, but only in the case that you had an insufficient amount to begin with. A minimum of 2 GB should run the Sims adequately, without increasing your load times, but other games such as Crysis would benefit from 4 - 8 GB, as they have much larger footprints in RAM.