Sims 2 Download Limits
#1 23-03-2015 
Hello everyone again

I have a question about download limits. I think I have reached it I know a lot of people say there is none but there is. I have 45,352 custom content downloads that is about almost 9GB and the game refuses to let me put in anymore. I know I need help!!!! But Im like why not. It gives that "this program will now close error" basically crashes.

What I have to do is delete some stuff to let some new stuff in. Which stinks. I have a brand new computer which thanks to this site my AMD Radeon 290 works great with. I know its not corrupted CC cause it works alone and if I remove one of my subfolders it allows more stuff in. (I also removed random subfolders) just to see if there is a conflict nada.

Question is can I do anything else to stuff more stuff into my computer? I just hate to delete. Why do they always say there is no download limit?

Or please put me out of my misery of trying to find a way to add more stuff.

Windows 7
2TB hard drive
AMD radeon 290
8GB RAM
I5 intel CPU
desktop computer


I see that MAC users do have a limit do windows 7 users also have that limit?
melismcken, proud to be a member of LeeFish since Oct 2014.

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#2 24-03-2015 
There is a practical limit based on what your computer can handle. At some point after several GBs of CC, your game just can't process anymore. Some people manage to shoehorn in a few more bytes than others, but they have figured out how to disable the first hurdle: to overcome Windows' "2GB per application" limit.

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#3 24-03-2015 
But good lord that must take eons for the game to load, and isn't it super frustrating trying to find anything in such a cluttered catalog? Delete delete delete! vamp

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#4 24-03-2015 
I've got 20GB in my old sims 2 folder and never did anything to it. What is this 2GB application limit? I have about 10GB in my medieval sims 2 folder and that loads in ten minutes or less. Mac users have a hard limit, but I've never heard of one or experienced one with my pc. The only effect I have seen is slower loading times. There is someone on MTS with 60GB who loads there game over night.

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#5 24-03-2015 
My full game has about 12gb and does take a while to load but I think it loads in less than 30 minutes. (Dunno for sure since I haven't loaded that game in forever, lol.) The game I load the most has about 8gb and the smallest (which is supposed to be my testing hood but I keep adding things to it, oops) is about 4gb. It's not as hard as you may think to find stuff since I'm really into collection folders- especially for things like Cassandre's sets. I even went through all of the things I have of her's and made them collection only and I really need to do that to all the BillyJean sets I have. Smile

As to a limit for PC users: some say yes there is, some say no there isn't. I say it all depends on your computer. A few computers ago my biggest game would've taken well over an hour (probably closer to 2) to load - if it did at all - and there would've been a fair amount of lag. I think the actual cc and how you manage it probably affects things too. If you have a lot of cc that are big files sizewise they'll naturally take up more room on the disc.

Fake edit: Hmmm, I had a look at the actual amount of files in my biggest game and there are 45,714 (I could add more because there WAS more at one time), which isn't much more than melismcken has, and my computer isn't as new.. less RAM, smaller hard drive.. I may or may not have proven one or two of my points above.

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#6 24-03-2015 
I wonder if you have scrubbed your downloads, not to delete but make them load faster. Compressed where you can, made sure all of you files have no spaces or strange characters. Even though you said you have no conflicts are any of the items you use high poly, outdated mods, wonky meshes. I am very impressed that you have all of those things in your game and you use them all. I have read that only your computer limits the downloads. I wish you luck.

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#7 24-03-2015 
Ok, the system has 8 GB of memory, right? So even if Windows and TS2 itself did *not* require any memory, then STILL your total memory is too small to fit ALL your CC, which is 9 GB. But Windows and TS2 both *do* need an amount of memory as well.
On top of this all, Windows is a multi-tasking environment, and in order to be able to run multiple tasks, it will *never* use all of its memory for a single application. That's why there is this 2GB limit: most programs will not get more than 2 GB of memory allocated. Most older machines would not be able to access more than that amount at any single time anyway. The latest machines can, and Windows 8 probably does too.

Anyway, so your memory comes up way short. And a part of the CC will have been compressed, so at load time they get expanded in memory, and take up even MOAR space... Therefor, the system will need to back up a big portion of the loaded materials in so-called 'virtual memory', which is the windows page-file - space actually reserved for this purpose ON THE HARDDISK !!! That's what makes your game slow down - stuff gets loaded from disk, and then saved to that page-file to make room in memory!

Let me say this about it: my current machine has 16 GB of RAM memory, and my Downloads folder is about 2 GB. Only the stuff that I actually intend to use! Sometimes I add some more... but just as often, I check my downloads for files that I added a long time ago, and ended up NEVER using! That stuff goes out the door to make room for the new stuff. I keep my downloads below 2 GB.
As a result of this policy, my game loads in less than a minute, and I want to keep it that way. Because now I don't have to wait half an hour for my game to start. Once I click that icon on my desktop, one minute later I can actually be bossing my simmies around! I'm sure that @fanseelamb knows what I mean!
(This post was last modified: 24-03-2015 01:04 PM by BoilingOil.)

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#8 24-03-2015 
Thank you all for your responses. BoilingOil the funny thing is that I used to have this entire game on a laptop with 16GB ram and it still h ad the crashing problem. I also did do a compressorizer and used this link http://digitalperversion.net/gardenofsha...ic=21931.0 to get it to recognize more than 2GB of ram. And this one http://www.ntcore.com/4gb_patch.php to allocate more of the virtual memory. All to no avail.

The laptop had a 780M NVidia ge force video card with an I7 Intel CPU.

This is a weird thing that happens with the game also. On the laptop with 16GB of RAM I boot up the computer run the game with the existing size of downloads and it did take like 30 mins to load but it would use the entire 16GB of RAM the first load. I would then close it for whatever reason. The just re-open it would use only 50% of the RAM.

Same exact thing with this brand new computer with 8GB, open it uses 97% of RAM, close it during the same boot of windows, re-open it and only 50% of the RAM.

Why why why do the things I love so much (ie. cheeseburgers, Chinese food, ice-cream, The Sims 2) always have to treat me so so so bad!!!

P.S. mustluvcatz that fake edit was very convincing!!

I hope its ok to link other websites here

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#9 24-03-2015 
I don't really have anything useful to add, other that I've heard that it's not just the number of files that matters, but also what kind they are. Meshes take computer power to read, and the more the higher in poly they are, but recols barely require any computer effort at all. So if you have only a handful of meshes and 45,000 recols, you shouldn't have a problem (well, other than a serious recolour addiction Wink), but if you have 45,000 meshes and only a handful of recols, you might.

I agree with MLC that it's about your computer more than the actual numbers, though. I also agree that it is about how you handle your files. Like @ranabluu said, making sure you don't have any weird stuff, like spaces or brackets, in your file names (creators seem to love square brackets in their file names these days Rolleyes ) can do wonders.

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#10 24-03-2015 
As long as you're not spam advertising those sites, and your links are relevant to the discussion, I can't see Lee make any issues of it. :-)

Ok, so you have the 2GB+ workaround. You're still a little short on memory, but less so than without that patch. However, if that didn't even help on a 16GB machine, then I'm starting to wonder if some of your custom content isn't corrupt?

The thing with starting a game immediately on system startup is understandable. When you plan to go simming, it's always wise to first give your system 5 minutes after startup to settle down. Go read some email, or check facebook or your favorite forum(s) (even on the same box). Then come back in five, and tell the box what to go do with the game. You'll see that it's booting a little faster and not using the 95+ resources that time!
What you also might do, is to check whether everything that runs in the background is actually needed. Sometimes there are pre-loaders and quickstarters and other stuff active for Adobe and Java and iTunes and heaven knows what. Those thing take up time and memory, but are totally useless to your game.

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