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i tried to install Sims 3 on a new Lenovo Thinkpad. Specs are Win 7 64-bit, 6GB ram, 500GB HDD, Radeon HD6630m gfx card. The driver for the graphics card is the latest.

When I try to play, the Sims' faces have huge artifacts on it, and it look's like fractured glass sticking out in crazy directions. Is this a grahpics card problem?

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I would try installing DirectX 9 (It will not mess with your current DirectX, only add to it). That is a system requirement, and may be related. microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?displaylang=en&id=35 If this works, please post back, and I will move it to the answers so you can check it. For now, it is kind of a wild guess. Your hardware otherwise meets the system requirements very easily. – KCotreau Jul 9 '11 at 13:35
Also, does the program have any updates you can install? There are a lot of people out there having trouble with graphics and Windows 7 with this game, so maybe they released a patch. You might also try disabling features in the graphics card control panel app. – KCotreau Jul 9 '11 at 13:38
What processor are you using also? There are apparently known issues with AMD also. – KCotreau Jul 9 '11 at 13:41
thanks for the replies, i will try installing dx9, its a core i3 processor. – Daniel Gratz Jul 9 '11 at 13:51
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You can't rule out that the graphics card is damaged/faulty, but, if you do not have any other problems in other games, I would try the following:

  1. Looking in (official game) forums to see if anyone else has the issue.
  2. Update the game to the latest patch.
  3. Update your graphics card drives to the latest version.
  4. If all else fails, take a look at other areas such as updating DirectX - although, this is usually the correct version when installing games.

After this, it is either the game is simply not compatible with your card or the card is faulty.

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the laptop has switchable graphics, when i select the power saving intel gpu, sims works fine. When i change back to the Radeon, the artefacts appear. Does this mean the graphics card has problem? Is there any tool i can run to check if the grahpics card is ok? – Daniel Gratz Jul 9 '11 at 14:12
Im running a tool called ATItool, it has a spinning furr ball thing. The fps when i select the power saving gpu are 171 average. When i tell the laptop to use the high performance gpu for it, there is zero performance change (the fps remain average 171). I would expect there to be quite a big increase in fps if the ati gpu were working. – Daniel Gratz Jul 9 '11 at 14:25
@Daniel Gratz Based on the large number of problems people have out there, I do not believe that your card is damaged. It may, or may not, be resolved by some setting in your card's properties. – KCotreau Jul 9 '11 at 15:05
ok, well it seems i have to restart atitool after changing between gpu's. I get a 2x increase in fps with the high performance card so it must be at least doing something. Probably it's just the game. I installed that directx package you sent me a link to and didn't help. – Daniel Gratz Jul 9 '11 at 15:12
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