Sims 3 : Possible way to reduce lag?

[Noctosphere]

Hello everyone,
I'm a Sims player and have a lot of problem with The Sims 3. It lags a lot.
The main issue is the town I'm playing with holds about 200 sims. That's a lot, especially with the sims 3 where they all "play" simultenaously (as AI).
So, due to the fact that the number of action is very high, is it possible to make the game use more CPU power / RAM to reduce the lag?
If it is possible, how do we do that?
If CPU/RAM usage can't fix this or may cause more problem, then tell me too and I'll try to figure another way to do this.
thanks a lot

EDIT:
By the way, here are my specs and what my Sims 3 normally uses :

My specs :
3.40 GHZ Intel CPU
16 GB RAM
GTX 760 (2gb) GPU

The Sims 3 Usage :
2GB RAM
Around 3% of the CPU
GPU : Unknown

 

[Peloisan]

These should help you;
http://sims3.crinrict.com/en/2011/04/bug-lags-intermittent-freezes.html
http://simswiki.info/wiki.php?title=Game_Help:Getting_new_graphics_cards_recognized_by_the_game
http://www.carls-sims-3-guide.com/technicalhelp/slowgame.php
http://measmusings.blogspot.co.uk/2013/05/three-different-ways-you-can-make-your.html
A ssd really helps, enjoy

 

[goober]

Ultimately, even if the game is technically running perfectly, which it never does but lets say it did, it'd still run pretty bad under those circumstances. The Sims 2 can still run terrible on today's hardware with all expansions going and stuff. 2 and up just aren't coded very well. Which makes sense because it's EA but also doesn't make sense since it's such a cash cow for them you'd think that FOR ONCE they'd do us right. But alas.

As it stands I'd definitely recommend looking at the lag/intermittent freezes link peloisan shared as that's generally a HUGE part of the problem. I particularly had the car inventory nonsense completely slow my game to a crawl once. Hopefully you figure it out, Sims 3 can be great it's just a shame EA is EA. There's also some utility mods you can get to help out certain issues, one is in game for on the fly fixes but for the life of me I can't think of its name now.

 

[irvinscastle]

turn down the settings

 

[Noctosphere]

I found a way to use a lot of mods and to reduce the lag by a lot.
I open Sims 3 package editor;
I create a new mod by importing all package in the mods folder;
Save as a new package;
Put this new package file in the Mods fils;
Remove all the others.
Here we go, instead of loading a lot of mods, it lods only one big mod.

 

[Peloisan]

I tried that but didn't seems to have any impact, plaaying sims 2 now, better game in my option.