Sims 3 on 2.4 uMBP lagging, even on lowest settings

Posted:
in Mac Software edited January 2014
Hey all. I have a unibody Pro, 2.4ghz, 4 gigs of ram and using the "best performance" setting in the energy saver preferences to use my good GPU and I get extremely low framerates in The Sims 3. My girlfriend loves this game and it runs like crap on her macbook so I let her install it here and I feel bad because it runs, but extremely slowly.



I tried changing the graphical settings from the default maxed out options to medium, then after not seeing any improvement I put the settings ALL on low and turned off the advanced shaders and reflections, the bare minimum, and still got 15 frames per second maximum when zoomed out, then when zoomed in on my characters I got 5-7 fps these are the same exact speeds I got at max settings. I tried removing the game and all traces of it and reinstalling and still have the same result. Then I tried blasting the fans to keep the gpu/cpu temps down and still no luck.



Also there are NO apps running in the background during gameplay. I always have my computer on "better battery life" and switch on the GPU just to play so it logs out, and when I log in I make sure nothing is running before starting up the game.



Any input, ideas or solutions?



Thanks in advance!

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 5
    MarvinMarvin Posts: 15,310moderator
    Can you download Cinebench R10 and run the OpenGL benchmark test between 3 and 5 times



    http://www.maxon.net/index.php?id=162



    Also OpenMark with a triangle count of about 100,000:



    http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/15242



    Try these benchmarks on both modes (9400M and 9600M GT).



    This way you will be able to see if it's an issue with the Sims software or something lower level.



    The 9400M should get 3500-4000 in Cinebench and the 9600M GT should get 5500 and in OpenMark, the 9600M should be about double the 9400M.
  • Reply 2 of 5
    adviladvil Posts: 5member
    Ok very weird... On Cinebench I got ~2200 with the 9400 and 1800 with the 9600.



    Openmark won't run for me but I'll try this test a couple more times or something.



    edit - here are screens of 3 of each GPUs results. seems very low...

  • Reply 3 of 5
    MarvinMarvin Posts: 15,310moderator
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Advil View Post


    Ok very weird... On Cinebench I got ~2200 with the 9400 and 1800 with the 9600.



    Openmark won't run for me but I'll try this test a couple more times or something.



    That's a very low score. Do you happen to have any devices plugged into your machine like a firewire hard drive or any expresscard/USB adaptors?



    Do you have Bootcamp installed because if you do, one thing you can try is booting into the Windows side and running Cinebench for Windows there to see if it's an issue with your Mac installation.



    If you have no devices plugged in, try flushing out your kernel caches. I think doing a safe boot (holding shift while booting) does this - it definitely clears some caches as it takes forever to load. You won't be able to run Cinebench in safe mode properly as it disables your GPU driver so you just have to reboot back into OS X normally.



    To be sure your kernel caches were removed, you can remove them using cocktail instead:



    http://www.maintain.se/cocktail/index.php



    In Files > caches, check system - you can do user too if you like but I don't think it will help here. In options, leave just the CUPS and dyld cache unchecked - make sure kernel caches is checked. Hit ok and then the clear button and it will tell you to reboot. It will rebuild the caches on rebooting.



    If none of those things above help, check your machine using your hardware test. Insert the installer disc that came with your machine and reboot holding the d-key. This will launch a low-level hardware test and it checks your Ram out.
  • Reply 4 of 5
    adviladvil Posts: 5member
    Ok I did both the memory diagnostic and it came back with no problems, then I booted into safe mode and restarted and I got scores 4815 and 5150 on each GPU. Does this seem a little low on the 9600's side still?



    Things seem to be much, much snappier. Cinebench loaded literally in less than a second as opposed to 5-7 seconds before.





    What can cause this to happen? My computer is only a month old so it's not like theres a buildup of crap in the system.
  • Reply 5 of 5
    MarvinMarvin Posts: 15,310moderator
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Advil View Post


    Ok I did both the memory diagnostic and it came back with no problems, then I booted into safe mode and restarted and I got scores 4815 and 5150 on each GPU. Does this seem a little low on the 9600's side still?



    Nope, those are pretty good scores. The tests that Cinebench runs can show the two to be fairly even but the 9600M GT is a good deal faster for gaming. If anything, the score for the 9400M is too high if you get those numbers when it's enabled. It should be closer to 4000.



    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Advil View Post


    What can cause this to happen? My computer is only a month old so it's not like theres a buildup of crap in the system.



    It's hard to pinpoint it, software caches can go bad for a number of reasons like permission issues, drive errors caused by overheating or not shutting down properly - maybe even not generating them properly to begin with. I wouldn't worry about it too much unless you get a recurrence. Chances are it'll have happened due to some random event and you won't ever see the problem again.



    It may even have come that way from the factory, which is why some people prefer to install the OS again after buying it. They will image the OS onto the drives and they may have copied over corrupted caches.
Sign In or Register to comment.