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Lab Assistant
Original Poster
#1 Old 23rd Feb 2018 at 5:45 PM Last edited by TuxxedoCat : 23rd Feb 2018 at 6:13 PM.

This user has the following games installed:

Sims 2, University, Nightlife, Open for Business, Pets, Seasons, Bon Voyage, Free Time, Apartment Life
Default FPS down for seemingly no reason on Windows 10
When I booted up my game today, for some reason I'm getting low FPS. Like not unplayable FPS, but just low. I've had all my settings maxed out and played with a pretty solid constant 50-60 for a while, but now it's more like a 20-30. Something that works sometimes is lowering my settings to minimum and then turning them all back up... then for a little while I'll get 50-60 again, until I load another lot or the hood screen - then same issue. (Not to mention I have absolutely no idea why this solution "works".)

I am just... confused. I looked through Windows Update to see if it had installed anything that could have possibly caused this, but doesn't look like it. I certainly haven't installed anything and my drivers for the RX 460 (which is the only card I have) are all up to date. The RX 460 is perfectly capable of running the game at the highest settings, as evidenced by the fact that it was fine before. But now even the much worse mobile NVIDIA GPU in my laptop gets a better FPS.
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Lab Assistant
Original Poster
#2 Old 23rd Feb 2018 at 5:48 PM
Okay, on further investigation it does appear that a Windows 10 update relatively recently has affected graphics.

https://support.microsoft.com/en-gb...pdate-kb4074588
"Addresses issue where, in certain hardware configurations, the frame rates of DirectX Games were unintentionally limited to a factor of the display's vertical synchronization."

Hmmmm... Going to uninstall this update and see what happens.
Lab Assistant
Original Poster
#3 Old 23rd Feb 2018 at 6:08 PM
Yup, seems like this update is to blame. Seems like karma came to bite me in the butt after a post I made a few days ago about The Sims 2 working fine on Windows 10 for most people...
That being said, this is a security update and is pretty easy and safe to uninstall. I'm not sure whether or not Windows might reinstall it later, but if you're on Windows 10 and are experiencing stutter and/or low framerates then just go and uninstall the KB4074588 update.

One thing to notice with this update though, is that, from what I could tell by searching, it does help with performance in some other games. If (for some reason) TS2 isn't the main game you're playing and you've seen a performance boost in other games, you might want to keep the update at the cost of The Sims 2.

ETA: I think The Sims 2 also has a "vsync off" cheat. Since the update does concern vertical synchronization (vsync), maybe turning it off could also help with performance when the update is installed? I'm not able to test anymore so I couldn't tell you - just suggestions to anyone who might experience the same issues.
Lab Assistant
Original Poster
#4 Old 23rd Feb 2018 at 10:25 PM Last edited by TuxxedoCat : 23rd Feb 2018 at 10:58 PM.
Well... I left my computer unguarded for 30 minutes and seems like the update reinstalled itself. That sucks.

ETA: As I don't want to make 5 posts in a row, I'll just edit this one. I can confirm that turning vsync off helped me fix it finally. Doesn't look like the update can be avoided so honestly, if you're not afraid of tearing (although I haven't noticed any, guess it's because of my monitor's refresh rate being higher?), just add "vsync off" to your userStartup.cheat file and be done with it.
The Great AntiJen
retired moderator
#5 Old 23rd Feb 2018 at 11:02 PM
Yup - I dual booted back to Win7 to run TS2.

I no longer come over to MTS very often but if you would like to ask me a question then you can find me on tumblr or my own site tflc. TFLC has an archive of all my CC downloads.
I'm here on tumblr and my site, tflc
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