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Test Subject
Original Poster
#1 Old 4th Oct 2020 at 1:07 AM

This user has the following games installed:

Sims 3, World Adventures, Ambitions, Late Night, Generations, Pets, Supernatural, Seasons, University Life
Default How to get Radeon Pro 5500M card recognised and small interface
Hi! A while ago I made a thread asking about Sims 3 on bootcamp. I got a new macbook and successfully installed the windows and the game, but...
When I first loaded the game, the screen was tiny and I got the message that my video card was not recognised (AMD Radeon Pro 5500M). I googled a bit and, following the instructions, added my card name in GraphicsCards.srg. I couldn't figure out how to change GraphicsRules.srg because in the tutorial the author used a name of the previous card model, and I haven't seen any names similar to "Pro 5500M" there....
I launched the game again, the message was no longer there, but still tiny screen. I tried changing the resolution to the one my computer apparently has (3072x1920), the screen size went back to normal, but now the interface is tiny. It's practically impossible to see anything (see attached photos please, I wasn't able to make screenshots on Windows...). Is it because my card still isn't recognised or what? How do I change that?

Another problem is, the computer gets really noisy while the game is running, although it's brand new and has a decent RAM of 16GB. I created a new profile in AMD Radeon Pro app for Sims and limited screen frame rate to 30 and enabled triple buffering, I thought it would work, but it doesn't. Did I miss something? The noise is horrible, like it's trying to take off.


Screenshots
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Mad Poster
#2 Old 4th Oct 2020 at 5:42 AM
1 - The unrecognized card warning usually only appears once, at least until a graphics card driver update happens. You can see if your card is recognized or not by examining the DeviceConfig log, a file that is re-generated each time the game launches in the TS3 user game folder in Documents, where it says Found/Matched. Getting formal card recognition is not as difficult as many make it sound, but it really doesn't do that much. It gives you a more reasonable set of default settings (that can be changed anyway) and, only in some cases, allows more sims to be "called up" to populate community lots than perhaps otherwise. And it makes the DeviceConfig.log look nicer. It has nothing to do with resolution, the UI size, or the way your card is really used in-game. An undetected card warning would be a very different matter, as in the game probably wouldn't run.

2 - The UI in TS3 is not resizable. I think you're going to have to try different combinations of computer and game resolutions until you find a combo that you like. Mine is currently 1920x1080, but I'm on a bootcamped iMac not a laptop.

3 - To see the actual frame rates you are getting in-game, Ctrl+Shift+C to bring up the cheats console and type fps on (enter). Capping to 30 is usually not necessary, the refresh rate of your monitor should suffice (that would be 60 Hz, so 60 fps). AMD Radeon cards can be stubborn; like many, I use RivaTuner Stats Server (RTSS) on top of the Radeon control panel's settings to force the fps capping. It's a bit of an odd program in that it has to be running alongside of the game, but it can be set to start up with Windows and it uses up next to no resources. If you make changes to its profile or other settings, be sure to minimize RTSS down to the system tray rather than hitting X and quitting the program. But a great thing about it is that its own frame rate display is very clear and can be set to be any size or color you want and appear anywhere you like on the screen, so I keep its display on all the time rather than the cheat code one. Anyway, this is essential to take care of no matter how it's done because runaway frame rates on any strong, modern graphics card will be horrible for game performance and potentially damaging to the hardware.
Test Subject
Original Poster
#3 Old 4th Oct 2020 at 10:57 AM
Quote: Originally posted by igazor
1 - The unrecognized card warning usually only appears once, at least until a graphics card driver update happens. You can see if your card is recognized or not by examining the DeviceConfig log, a file that is re-generated each time the game launches in the TS3 user game folder in Documents, where it says Found/Matched. Getting formal card recognition is not as difficult as many make it sound, but it really doesn't do that much. It gives you a more reasonable set of default settings (that can be changed anyway) and, only in some cases, allows more sims to be "called up" to populate community lots than perhaps otherwise. And it makes the DeviceConfig.log look nicer. It has nothing to do with resolution, the UI size, or the way your card is really used in-game. An undetected card warning would be a very different matter, as in the game probably wouldn't run.

2 - The UI in TS3 is not resizable. I think you're going to have to try different combinations of computer and game resolutions until you find a combo that you like. Mine is currently 1920x1080, but I'm on a bootcamped iMac not a laptop.

3 - To see the actual frame rates you are getting in-game, Ctrl+Shift+C to bring up the cheats console and type fps on (enter). Capping to 30 is usually not necessary, the refresh rate of your monitor should suffice (that would be 60 Hz, so 60 fps). AMD Radeon cards can be stubborn; like many, I use RivaTuner Stats Server (RTSS) on top of the Radeon control panel's settings to force the fps capping. It's a bit of an odd program in that it has to be running alongside of the game, but it can be set to start up with Windows and it uses up next to no resources. If you make changes to its profile or other settings, be sure to minimize RTSS down to the system tray rather than hitting X and quitting the program. But a great thing about it is that its own frame rate display is very clear and can be set to be any size or color you want and appear anywhere you like on the screen, so I keep its display on all the time rather than the cheat code one. Anyway, this is essential to take care of no matter how it's done because runaway frame rates on any strong, modern graphics card will be horrible for game performance and potentially damaging to the hardware.


1. Right now it says in Deviceconfig "found: 1, matched:0" - does that sound right?
2. If I set lower resolution, the screen just gets smaller again (it only takes up the left top corner of the screen. I read that it can be stretched in graphic card app, but I don't see that option in Radeon Pro... Do I need to download something for this too?
3. Thank you, I will try RTSS. If I use it, should the game be launched through RTSS, like with Radeon control panel?
Mad Poster
#6 Old 4th Oct 2020 at 8:32 PM
RTSS just runs alongside of everything else. It will need a profile for TS3.exe (for Patch 1.69/Origin) or TS3w.exe (with the "w" for Patch 1.67/Everyone Else), but it doesn't need to start games. Usually once we are happy with our RTSS settings we can just ignore the entire program, other than making sure it is actually running, and for the most part or until some update or other messes things up for us again.

I think you've probably had enough messing about with the GPU recognition thing and sgr files for now for that to not be fun anymore. If you PM me a paste of the first 40 lines of your DeviceConfig.log, not the long lists of game option settings but the parts above all of that, I will send you exact instructions for recognition and for getting rid of the texture memory override (if you're getting that too, not everyone does).

There almost has to be a desktop resolution and game resolution combo that will work better for you than what you have described, whether it be restricted to windowed mode or full screen. Unfortunately the only MacBook Pro (bootcamped or otherwise) or laptop of any kind I have convenient access to right now and that doesn't belong in a museum is a 2014 model and it only has integrated graphics, so I can't really see what you are seeing.
Test Subject
Original Poster
#7 Old 5th Oct 2020 at 12:44 AM
Quote: Originally posted by igazor
RTSS just runs alongside of everything else. It will need a profile for TS3.exe (for Patch 1.69/Origin) or TS3w.exe (with the "w" for Patch 1.67/Everyone Else), but it doesn't need to start games. Usually once we are happy with our RTSS settings we can just ignore the entire program, other than making sure it is actually running, and for the most part or until some update or other messes things up for us again.

I think you've probably had enough messing about with the GPU recognition thing and sgr files for now for that to not be fun anymore. If you PM me a paste of the first 40 lines of your DeviceConfig.log, not the long lists of game option settings but the parts above all of that, I will send you exact instructions for recognition and for getting rid of the texture memory override (if you're getting that too, not everyone does).

There almost has to be a desktop resolution and game resolution combo that will work better for you than what you have described, whether it be restricted to windowed mode or full screen. Unfortunately the only MacBook Pro (bootcamped or otherwise) or laptop of any kind I have convenient access to right now and that doesn't belong in a museum is a 2014 model and it only has integrated graphics, so I can't really see what you are seeing.


Thank you, RTSS is amazing! I've never heard the game to be so quiet) It's still noisy of course, but not in a way that makes me afraid for my macbook.
As for resolution, it turned out that native AMD drivers are shitty and GPU scaling doesn't work on them, although it should. I installed custom driver from "bootcampdrivers.com" and finally the game scales to the full screen...
I am not sure if I should do anything else? The game seems to be working, but I don't know how well it recognises the card. I don't get "texture memory override", but there's one weird thing with textures: some things look very sharp, while others are blurry (example: some random maxis clothes). I will send you device config, so please take a look if you can


Screenshots
Test Subject
#8 Old 14th Jan 2021 at 11:29 AM
Hi !

I have the exact same problem and after searching the internet for a really long time, the only thing that matched with my problem was this topic

I seem to understand that the issue was fixed by installing a custom AMD from "bootcampdrivers.com" right ? So the original AMD was uninstalled and replaced with the custom one from bootcampdrivers ?
And this solved the problem of the tiny UI/Control pannel ?

English isn't my native language and I wanted to be sure before changing something this important on my laptop.
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