Sims 3 RAM Question

I will start this thread off by admitting that I am not code or tech savvy. I am a fast learner, but if I am asking something stupid then that's simply ignorance on my part and I am sorry about that and will do better in the future.

So I know that Sims 3 is a 32bit program, while I'm not sure what that means exactly, I do want to know if there is a way to increase the amount of RAM that the game uses. As it stands, it is a LAA and uses 4gb. I am curious if there is a way to trick the program into thinking it is only using the allowed RAM but that it is actually using more? Or, is it possible to make a 32bit program 64bit?

I've been reading dozens of forums, and since it is an old game title I would assume that all methods of trying to improve the games stability/performance has been tried by this point. I thought I would ask the question still and maybe learn something in the process. If this is a dumb or ridiculous question just put a cute picture of a cat laughing and I'll carry on my way .

 

The better question would be why on earth would you want the game to take more ram?

 

Because it's a massive load of a game. If you bought a game and all its side releases to be downloaded with it, wouldn't you want to play with all those? There are ways to increase stability and performance with mods and you can reduce the graphics and FPS, but you are still going to have stutters and game crashes if you don't watch the RAM like a hawk while playing to save the game and completely restart it so that you don't lose progress.

 

but what makes you think it doesn't utilize the ram?

Since I do have sims3 on my notebook thanks to my sister I could take a peek inside the game:
This is sims3 maxed out on 1080p:

As you can see, it uses well above 4GB ram and runs absolutely fine.


I don't know where you got the idea from that the game is limted to 4GB or performs bad. over 400FPS, no stutters, no lag nothing.

 

Interesting. Everything I've seen shows that it caps at 3.5 or 3.7. I'll be patient and wait for my laptop and then see if I have any issues.

Thanks for that! Weird that everything I've seen shows one thing and then seeing this. I believe you, I'm just curious why the misinformation online about it.

Really appreciate you taking the time to respond!

 

I've nibbed a bit into it, it seems that the information you have is outdated. Sims3 on the newest patches has no limit to ram anymore. So I guess that explains everything

The game did have issues back on earlier versions where it would limit the ram, causing some extreme performance issues.

 

Are you talking about the 1.17 patch that converted the program to automatically being a LAA? It was my understanding that that still capped at 4GB.

I've spent the entire time since you posted that SS literally scratching my head and trying to understand. Posted on Reddit asking for others SS of their RAM usage too which I'm sure won't be instant and might take a day.

The thing that trips me up here is that everything I read about 32bit programs is that they are limited to 4GB for reasons I do not understand but I've read the reasons several times. https://www.quora.com/What-are-the-memory-limits-for-32-bit-applications-on-a-64-bit-Windows talks about this, and I think I've read this 10 or more times now and I have one question...maybe the reason for you clearly having more RAM used is because it is using more than one process?

 

I am not sure about the details. As far as I know 32bit applications are limited to 3.6gbish ram but have seen weird stuff happening such as trickery like PAE etc. In the end, it doesn't really matter tho, because what you're actually concerned about is the performance of the game, which seems to be absolutely fine.

 

You're right about that, all I care about is performance. Thanks again for your time!!

 

If you should run into issues, try that video series, apparently someone made a 10 part in depth video series on how to optimize the game as good as possible.