Despite featuring lack luster graphics, The Sims 3 did not run nearly as nicely as we had expected it would when using the GeForce GTX 285 for example. Right away we were surprised at how jerky the game was when scrolling around. The jerky performance was a bit of a mystery, as the GeForce GTX 285 produced a minimum frame rate of 64fps at 2560x1600.

Therefore we kept the resolution at 2560x1600 and reduced every quality setting to its lowest possible value. Doing so increased the average frame rate to above 300fps according to FRAPs, and the game became incredibly smooth.

The next step was to enable each quality setting individually to see what was causing the jerky game play. The usual performance killers, such as lighting and shadows, made little difference when enabled. Our stuttering, or jerky performance if you will, was narrowed down to three settings, being “Animation Smoothing”, “Edge Smoothing” and “High Detail Lots”.

The High Detail Lots setting could be adjusted from 1 to 16 and what it does is increase the number of lots that are rendered in high quality. This had a massive impact on performance and enabling it on our GeForce GTX 285 would lead to jerky performance.

The Animation Smoothing also seemed to hurt the GeForce GTX 285 quite a bit. EA does comment that this rendering feature is designed for fast machines, though just how fast they need to be is not clear. The Edge Smoothing is an anti-aliasing setting and when set to high this also negatively affected performance and lead to laggy game play.

Although it is not clear, we believe low to be 2xAA, medium to be 4xAA, and high is likely 8xAA, though we are not 100% sure about this. What we find most interesting is the fact that the GeForce GTX 285 with every setting maxed out, with what we think is 8xAA enabled, the minimum frame rate was 64fps.

Correct me if I am wrong, but with this kind of frame rate we should never suffer from lag when scrolling around, especially given that this is a minimum and not an average frame rate. Based on our experience thus far, the minimum frame rate according to FRAPs, needs to be no less than 80fps for smooth perfectly playable performance.

While The Sims 3 is still very playable with a minimum of 60fps, we found the lag when scrolling around to be a real nuisance, and it is certainly not something we would be able to tolerate in a first person shooter. It was a real shame that graphics cards such as the GeForce GTX 285 could not provide a glitch free experience when using maximum in game quality settings at extreme resolutions.

For those of you who are wondering where the Radeon HD 4870 X2 and GeForce GTX 295 results were, we deliberately left them out, since neither Crossfire or SLI technology is working in The Sims 3 at this stage. Additionally, we would have liked to benchmark a pair of Radeon HD 4770 graphics cards, but again without Crossfire support this would have been pointless.

Unfortunately we were a little disappointed with the playable performance of The Sims 3 with the high-end graphics cards from both sides. Although we can tell you that the frame rates are more than sufficient with the Radeon HD 4870 and GeForce GTX 260 graphics cards breaking 60fps at 2560x1600, the game still does not play nearly as nicely as we would have liked.

Reviewed By Steven Walton