Intel HD Graphics 4000 1536 MB Driver Update?

Hi Christina.

I've beta-tested some sims with high graphics demands in the past. What specific game is it? Maybe we can figure something out. Hey, the price is right!

Also please tell us which MacBook Pro sub-model, from "About this Mac:"

Hardware is everything with these kinds of inquiries and there are easily over 100 variants of the MacBook Pro, most with different graphics hardware. So. let us know and we'll see what can be done.

Christinadrdh wrote:

I am being asked or told that it could possibly be that the Intel chip needs to have a driver update.

That advice is for an IBM-compatible PC.

If you are running a recent version of MacOS, you already have the latest drivers for everything, and they are not available separately.

You should seriously question the competence of the source of that recommendation.

Perfect! I have the same model but with 8GB RAM and I've swapped out the orig hard drive to a fast SSD. Let me do some digging. I probably won't be able to get back to you until this evening or tomorrow morning.

I'm back with a well-scratched head.

You have a well-set up MBP. I did the SSD switch about 18 months ago on mine and it was like getting a new computer. With 16 GB RAM your VRAM-from-RAM is very good.

Is Sims 4 a native install (like from the App Store) or are you running it through Steam?

I've looked up sysreqs and compared you comment:

...and I am still seeing lag in a particular section of my game.

to my sim experiences and that rang a bell. You may have something that can't be improved upon at your end because it could be the programming. Read on.

I have a naval warfare sim that, at certain stages, produces a transparent smoke effect. My old iMac with a 2.93ghz i7 quad-core processor and 1GB VRAM of hardware acceleration stuttered a little every time the smoke effect appeared, even though that computer exceeded all the sysreqs by a mile.

Now I have a 5K iMac with a 4.2ghz quad-core i7 and 4GB of hardware-based VRAM and guess what? The same spot still stutters to the same degree on a computer that benchmarks at 2.4X faster than the old one! The rest of the game runs fine. That suggests to me that the programing of the smoke is different.

I noticed in the Sims 4 Support site that there is something called "laptop mode." It is mentioned at the bottom of this EA support page:

https://help.ea.com/en-us/help/the-sims/the-sims-4/the-sims-4-system-requirements/#mac

It may be useful to try that, not so much as a cure but as a test.

Our MBPs don't have separate graphics hardware like my iMacs. It is shared with the main processor--that will always be a handicap. As far as I know, the shared VRAM at 1.5GB is as much as that processor can handle even with your extra RAM.

I'm not washing my hands of this yet. I have a few more things to check.

Allan

If you have a third-party SSD drive installed, have you used Terminal command:

sudo trimforce enable

to enable TRIM?

https://www.lifewire.com/enable-trim-for-ssd-in-os-x-yosemite-2260789

When completed, restart in safe mode some time. In a few minutes, it will remove all the old deleted data and you should see a speedup.