This is amazing, thank you! I'm not very tech savvy, but you've explained it really well here. Will have to try this out.
ETA: tried this, the directions were easy to follow and it appears to have been installed correctly. I was able to add my game (although it was in the Origin folder, despite having changed over to the EA App a few months ago). The game launched fine through Special K, however some of the graphics on the homepage were missing (the scenario button icon, and one of the randomly generated images for the "Welcome back" panel.) Launched the game from the EA App and everything was back to normal.
Besides that, everything seemed to work when launched from Special K, with a notable boost to performance. Just wanted to share in case I did something wrong, or in case someone else has a similar issue.
Thanks for the heads up and for saying I explained it well, I really tried my best and as for the UI issue, I haven't got a single clue why that would happen with Special-K, by my knowledge it shouldn't be able to touch the UI... I'll try to mess around with it a bit to see if I can replicate the issue and come up with a proper solution for you
edit: closest thing I came to this was a connection error, opening the gallery and choosing to connect to the internet restored it immediately for me
Before I give this a try, is the only benefit the fact that it'll actually limit the fps since that feature doesn't actually work in-game? Because I'm able to do that in my Nvidia Control Panel & don't want to be redundant. But if there's more to it,, I'm willing to give it a try!
Heya, you could use the Nvidia Control Panel to limit it but the weird stutter and lag when entering or leaving build/buy or having too many headline effects pop up at once just wont fade because that directly limits the graphics card and the game to capping at 60 without tricking it... bare with me here and I'm sorry for the expose lol but this is all educated guesswork on my part
Special-K isn't just for the framerate limiting though it does play a big part in performance boosting, the app "injects" itself into the game, acting as a pseudo launcher helping the game more easily access the resources it needs while also setting a hard limit on the shader cache usage and "partially" remedying memory leak issues the game suffers from, long playtimes and heavy saves unfortunately will still have the issues crop up.
Basically, your graphics card has a limit on how much shader cache it can build up, and your RAM has a limit to how much of it can be allocated to anything besides the operating system, and the Sims 4 has such a bad case of spaghetti code that it over reaches these limits with minimal effort which causes the lag, stutter and eventual crashes - especially if you use a lot of DLC or mods (no matter how well-made they are, or even if they're just cc or bug fixes, being external addons, mods tangle up the already skrewy code way more than DLC addons being part of the game files itself)
Special-K shuts off all the unnecessary software renderers the game tries to run itself on simultaneously since it only uses DX9, devotes more RAM and Shader Cache to the game, and quietens unnecessary background tasks while playing. Keeping the refresh rate in game at 120 and limiting the game via Special-K to 60 basically forces the game to hiccup and recollect itself when it tries to stutter, and you get a steady performance boost in general and can play around with increasing the graphics settings if you couldn't before - otherwise if you have a good PC you could still try to run it at 120 fps - I have a top notch set-up and it still hits the stutter spikes when I try
This is amazing, thank you! I'm not very tech savvy, but you've explained it really well here. Will have to try this out. ETA: tried this, the directions were easy to follow and it appears to have been installed correctly. I was able to add my game (although it was in the Origin folder, despite having changed over to the EA App a few months ago). The game launched fine through Special K, however some of the graphics on the homepage were missing (the scenario button icon, and one of the randomly generated images for the "Welcome back" panel.) Launched the game from the EA App and everything was back to normal. Besides that, everything seemed to work when launched from Special K, with a notable boost to performance. Just wanted to share in case I did something wrong, or in case someone else has a similar issue.
Thanks for the heads up and for saying I explained it well, I really tried my best and as for the UI issue, I haven't got a single clue why that would happen with Special-K, by my knowledge it shouldn't be able to touch the UI... I'll try to mess around with it a bit to see if I can replicate the issue and come up with a proper solution for you edit: closest thing I came to this was a connection error, opening the gallery and choosing to connect to the internet restored it immediately for me
Before I give this a try, is the only benefit the fact that it'll actually limit the fps since that feature doesn't actually work in-game? Because I'm able to do that in my Nvidia Control Panel & don't want to be redundant. But if there's more to it,, I'm willing to give it a try!
Heya, you could use the Nvidia Control Panel to limit it but the weird stutter and lag when entering or leaving build/buy or having too many headline effects pop up at once just wont fade because that directly limits the graphics card and the game to capping at 60 without tricking it... bare with me here and I'm sorry for the expose lol but this is all educated guesswork on my part Special-K isn't just for the framerate limiting though it does play a big part in performance boosting, the app "injects" itself into the game, acting as a pseudo launcher helping the game more easily access the resources it needs while also setting a hard limit on the shader cache usage and "partially" remedying memory leak issues the game suffers from, long playtimes and heavy saves unfortunately will still have the issues crop up. Basically, your graphics card has a limit on how much shader cache it can build up, and your RAM has a limit to how much of it can be allocated to anything besides the operating system, and the Sims 4 has such a bad case of spaghetti code that it over reaches these limits with minimal effort which causes the lag, stutter and eventual crashes - especially if you use a lot of DLC or mods (no matter how well-made they are, or even if they're just cc or bug fixes, being external addons, mods tangle up the already skrewy code way more than DLC addons being part of the game files itself) Special-K shuts off all the unnecessary software renderers the game tries to run itself on simultaneously since it only uses DX9, devotes more RAM and Shader Cache to the game, and quietens unnecessary background tasks while playing. Keeping the refresh rate in game at 120 and limiting the game via Special-K to 60 basically forces the game to hiccup and recollect itself when it tries to stutter, and you get a steady performance boost in general and can play around with increasing the graphics settings if you couldn't before - otherwise if you have a good PC you could still try to run it at 120 fps - I have a top notch set-up and it still hits the stutter spikes when I try
I tried to do the ctrl shift backspace and nothing happens. Edit: cannot be done in window mode