How fast is your TS3?
edalbformat:
Hardware development is going relatively slowly at the moment, comparing with previous experience in the past, when RAM and processor capacity almost doubled every year. The reason must be that if you are not using a computer to play games, you don't really need even the half of the capacity available today.
I use Windows XP 32 bits and have 4GB RAM installed that probably only 3GB is being used. RAM plays an important role in TS3 once I compared two computers, one with 2GB RAM and one with 4, both with powerful Graphic Cards and almost same CPU size. The biggest have AMD core and the other Intel Processor Duo Core too. The Intel had better performance, but failed by reason of too little RAM. So, RAM plays a big role.
As to upgrade computers, I have always a plan for when I'm going to acquire my next computer and prefer to wait until this buy is worth. No reason to buy something that is just a little bit better. Upgrading not always save that much money, once as much advanced a technology becomes, it also drops the price for a whole buy. At least here by us, buying spare parts can be much more expensive than going to something totally new. Not counting that in the case of Microsoft, it uses to subsidiate hardware when you install their product so much that buying a brand new PC can be more advantageous than buying a new graphic card or even some RAM. Of course, it is not the same in every land.
Skadi:
Quote from: RiceBall on 2009 August 16, 06:35:54
Nice video card but it' s hugely bottlenecked by your cpu a phenom II would be a better match. Hopefully your current cpu is socket am2 and not 939.
It was a freebie for building a computer for a friend. I've got a brand new mobo that supports amd 2/3 and the plan is to buy a new cpu after I drop some money on a better psu and cooling.
Buzzler:
Quote from: RiceBall on 2009 August 16, 02:42:36
Have you tried overclocking your existing cpu/mem? Defragged? Why spend money if you do not need to in my opinion.
You would get a more noticeable gain with a new cpu vs ram. Bad idea to buy faster ram, more is better, what I mean is 6-8 gigs of 6400 ram is more productive then 4 gigs of 9600 ram, cheaper too by roughly half. This is only appicable in a 64bit OS. Your video card will be a bottleneck if you upgrade to a faster cpu.
Overclocking can't do miracles. It's a good result to squeeze 3GHz out of a Brisbane-Athlon but the resulting 20% perfomance increase are just on the edge of noticeability. There's no way it can compete with a Phenom II at any rate.
I seriously doubt more than 4GB of RAM would do any good. Sims3 can only allocate up to 2GB anyhow and it's far from doing even that. And the graphics card won't be a bottleneck, TS3 ist just as CPU-limited as TS2.
Quote from: Skadi on 2009 August 16, 04:51:08
I am wondering if it would be worthwhile to arr-quire a copy of 64 bit XP to take advantage of the new hardware. Does 64 bit XP recognise more ram or is 4gb still the limit?
There won't be an overall 4GB limit anymore with XP64 but the 2GB allocation limit for TS3 will remain, so if that's the whole reason to it there's not that much of a point. Besides I wouldn't arr Windozes past 2K, circumventing the activation while still being able to patch on an OS that can't be definitely stopped from calling home isn't that much fun.
Quote from: RiceBall on 2009 August 16, 06:35:54
Nice video card but it' s hugely bottlenecked by your cpu a phenom II would be a better match. Hopefully your current cpu is socket am2 and not 939.
Sims 2 does not support multicore processors, so your performance leap may not be as profound.
There's no such thing as a general bottleneck, there are limits, and it really depends on the game you're playing. Unless you don't go and try to play TS3 on an IGP or something it's going to be CPU-limited no matter what.
Quote from: edalbformat on 2009 August 16, 08:30:44
Hardware development is going relatively slowly at the moment, comparing with previous experience in the past, when RAM and processor capacity almost doubled every year.{...} RAM plays an important role in TS3 once I compared two computers, one with 2GB RAM and one with 4, both with powerful Graphic Cards and almost same CPU size.{...}At least here by us, buying spare parts can be much more expensive than going to something totally new.
"Doubled" is just a little over the top, and especially RAM was a big issue in the past since in relation to the rest of the computer it was way more expensive. Now RAM is dirt cheap and we're stuck at the 2/4GB limit for some time now and probably are bound to be stuck for another "some time" in the future.
I've read before that TS3 runs better on machines equipped with 4GB instead of 2GB but I still don't get it. There's no way TS3 can benefit from that extra RAM directly since it cannot allocate it and it doesn't even come near its max memory allocation. Windows can use it as Cache but if there's a point to that why is TS3 dropping these contents out of its memory area in the first place? Smells fishy...
In Europe (well most of it) it's pretty much impossible to have a rig built from parts be more expensive than an entire PC, unless you don't go and pick out parts to have them assembled at the store... and then have Windows installed on it manually...
Luisa:
Fair enough, sounds like my speeds aren't too bad then considering I'm running it on a pretty much silent machine despite it only being air-cooled - which is what I wanted when I built it. Have built and owned overclocked rigs in the past but since I sometimes leave them on for arr-quiring stuff I thought I'd best save on the old electric - what with the AC needed to cool my kit down our bill is already about £60 (that's about $100 US) a week so yeah, I'll learn to be happy with what I got for now. :)
Thanks for the all the help and information tho, much appreciated. I'll leave the PC as it is for now and concentrate on getting a laptop that can play TS3 so that I don't have to leave my game behind when I travel or have to go into the office.
I suppose it'll be even tougher to get a laptop to play TS3 well than a PC, but I guess it can't hurt to try. :D
Rockermonkey:
Your speeds are fine. Mine is only a bit faster then yours at startup.
Never overclock, unless you have extra fans because it will cause the processor or card to become more unstable it most cases. So you have to be ready for wilder temps. My card was factory OC'd so I'm not sure of performance boosts but I'd say no don't do it unless you are liquid cooled or have a case with many fans. Whoever said that overclocking would be good needs to google :D because overclocking is usually something that many try not to do. Overclocking a card will only give a small gain but also give a pretty big chance of a faster death, of either being burnt out or the person clocking it to high and then, well burning it out XD. Leave overclocking to the maker's of the card, Sim fans aren't the kind of gamers who should even have to bother with overclocking, because if you can't play the game fine it's not going to get any better just because you overclocked a crappy card or processor.
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