Game guide:Multiple ways to improve The Sims 3's performance

Are you experiencing lag in your game? Does it crash frequently? Do you get the pesky Error Code 12 all the time? This guide will provide you with so many different things that you can do to fix your game and boost its performance!

Requirements

First things first: your computer has to meet the system requirements, which can be seen on the official website by clicking here.

What to do/use

3booter + FPS Limiter

J. M. Pescado at More Awesome Than You has created a useful tool called 3booter which helps the game to start up and works perfectly together with FPS Limiter.

Both these tools have to be placed in the game's folder (C:\Program Files\Electronic Arts\The Sims 3\Game\Bin) and can be downloaded at MATY.

• Download 3booter: http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/ts3/tools/3booter-win.zip
• Download FPS Limiter: http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/ts3/tools/fpslimit.zip

Delete files in DCBackup

Go to Documents\Electronic Arts\The Sims 3 and open the DCBackup folder. There should be a file there called ccmerged.package: keep it(!) and delete any other file that may be in that folder.

Delete cache files

In order to prevent errors, it's highly advised to delete the cache files in Documents\Electronic Arts\The Sims 3, which are:

• CasPartCache.package
• compositorCache.package
• scriptCache.package
• simCompositorCache.package
• socialCache.package

The game will regenerate these each time it loads up so the player should always delete these files before playing.

WorldChaches (Windows only!)

Windows users only! Don't do this if you're playing on a Mac.

You can safely delete this folder. Don't worry if you don't have it: some players don't, while others do. Like the previous cache files, this one will also regenerate each time you load up the game.

Edit GraphicsRules.sgr

This can make the game run smoother and the in-game clothes changing is also faster.

Go to C:\Program Files\Electronic Arts\The Sims 3\Game\Bin, right-click on GraphicsRules.sgr and open it with Notepad. There should be four lines that look like this:

seti cpuLevelUber 4

seti cpuLevelHigh 3

seti cpuLevelMedium 2

seti cpuLevelLow 1

Change them to:

seti cpuLevelUber 4

seti cpuLevelHigh 3

seti cpuLevelMedium 3

seti cpuLevelLow 3

Combine your package files

If you use lots of mods, you can combine them all in a single package. This helps in decreasing load times.

Simply follow this tutorial. You will need S3PE, a free tool which can be downloaded here.