[ShiVER]

Thank you for clicking the topic! I'll get to my question first, followed by some explanation.

Question:
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Is this merely a video card issue that can be fixed if I upgrade from the ATI Radeon 3870 to the ATI Radeon 4870?

Explanation:
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I have created a vast, towering, stretching structure and filled it with so many items that it has become a burden to continue editing, it even once crashed to desktop when I tried to jump from Building Mode back to Edit Town Mode. Moreover, actions in edit mode now take more time than before. It takes over a minute to place the complex from my library onto a 60x60 lot. Then when I choose to edit and move to one of the levels I can clearly see rooms render one by one. Items are momentarily white before the texture pops onto it half a second later.

My Specs:
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Intel Core 2 Duo @ 3.0GHz
4GB RAM
ATI Radeon 3870
Windows XP Pro 32bit, SP3

[BG-0]

I wouldn't think that of merely a vid card problem. Easy way to test, lower/turn off settings that are demanding on the graphics card. If that doesn't help, I'd say it's mostly the engine not being optimized for that big structures.

[ShiVER]

Thank you for your response! As you recommended I lowered all graphic intensive settings except for texture quality. The result was such an olympic improvement to performance and solution to desktop crashing that I was able to add yet more items to the already staggering itinerary. It was as if Odin himself had endowed my machine with the force of the gods.

This suggests that the game can run that many objects and that it may be that my ATI Radeon HD 3870 is simply not good enough for The Sims 3. As for optimization, I do know that bloating rampages the game's atmosphere like the plague in Europe, which is why it takes so long for many others to load custom lots.