Astronomical Memory usage

[Papp101]

I have recently bought the sims 3 off of my friend. I have all content packs. From the beginning I've been having this problem. While I'm playing, the game will get up to about 3.8GB ram usage and freeze then crash. It used to only happen while in the create a household mode, but now it happens about 5 mins after starting to play. I have tried the DEP fix.
Battlefield 3 doesn't use this much memory for me.

I have 8GB of ram (1gb dedicated to my onboard graphics)
Core i5 3750k @ 3.4GHz
Intel HD 4000 Graphics
Windows 7 64bit

Any help is greatly appreciated

[whiterider]

The memory usage is normal for TS3. Crashing when it reaches ~4GB used to be a sign that the exe was not LAA (large address aware, capable of using more than 4GB of memory), however that was fixed with a patch long ago - if you have all the Expansion Packs installed, then you have that patch, so it's not a memory problem. I suspect that the memory usage is (finally) plateauing around 3.8GB, which is why it's always around that when the game crashes.

That leaves the most likely cause of the crash, especially if it's getting more frequent, as the graphics. Although the HD 4000 is the best integrated graphics around, it's still nowhere near strong enough to play TS3, especially not with all patches and EPs.

Is this a desktop? Upgradeable?

[Papp101]

It is upgradeable, but I don't see how it isn't strong enough to play TS3. I have Batman Arkham city with everything maxed. Unless the engine for TS3 is really badly programmed. It plays perfectly smooth with graphics maxxed but I'll just try lowering the settings.

I've monitored the memory usage while playing and it freezes right when it reaches 3.8gb. When it drops a bit while the game is minimized it will play again for a few seconds.

[whiterider]

Yes, TS3 is very badly coded. You can see the graphics cards known to work (or not) here: Game Help:TS3 System Requirements.
The benchmarks for the HD 4000 are staggering for integrated graphcs (http://www.notebookcheck.net/Intel-HD-Graphics-4000.69168.0.html), but still put it in the company of a load of dedicated cards which cannot reliably run TS3.

Was the game reaching 3.8GB memory usage more slowly before? Or just continuing to run after reaching that point?

[Papp101]

Yeah, before I could play for hours before it would reach 3.8GB then freeze. Other than while creating a character. I would have to speed through that just to finish in time.

[Papp101]

Just tried playing with the graphics lowered. It did not manage to reach 3.8GB, but instead of freezing I just got an appcrash.

[whiterider]

As far as the apparently memory-related crashing goes, I would usually suggest saving frequently, as that reduces the amount of junk being held in memory and can put off a crash. That's obviously not practical if you're crashing so quickly, though.

Honestly though, if you're playing other games and getting good use out of that computer, I would probably suggest not playing TS3 at all unless you decide to upgrade the graphics. There's no point in wearing the chip out before its time if it's serving you well otherwise. The problem, of course, is that it's impossible to predict whether or not upgrading would also solve the original crashing issue - it does seem to be hitting a 4GB limitation, but there's no reason for such a limitation to exist in the game executable, in your OS or in the hardware, so I've no idea why that could be happening.

[Ghost sdoj]

I don't think this is related to the problem, but if having Sims 2 CC in the game can increase memory use enough to cause lag, it might help to make sure that you don't have a Sims 2 outfit or hairstyle in there. But if you haven't reported any lagging you probably don't have one, and even if you do this is most likely just a band-aid on a major wound.

[Papp101]

Well, I will try to get my old Geforce 8800GT working and see if that fixes the problem.