I would try a couple other games to see how they perform. Plenty of free 3D games to try. You might have some basic misconfiguration.

All right. Wanted to sanity-check that 3D acceleration was working at all.

I haven’t played the game, so I don’t know how it might perform off the top of my head.

goes to look at game specs

According to the data sheet, you have an Intel HD 5500, an integrated GPU.

The game’s system requirement has an Intel GMA X4500 as the minimum, which is an older integrated GPU, though the recommended GPUs are dedicated. It’s hard to know what “minimum” translates to; some games have wildly impractical “minimum” requirements, though I’d hope not that far.

https://old.reddit.com/r/thesims/comments/5edr3x/the_sims_4_performance_on_intel_hd_620_graphics/

I myself am using an Intel HD 3000, i5 laptop, and the game more or less runs a tad short of 60 fps on High settings in 720p mode

That’s an older integrated GPU, about half the score, though I’d guess that you’re running at a higher resolution.

Okay. I guess I’d probably confirm that the game is using the 3D accelerator, as if that’s not the case, then that’s probably going to be the problem. If it is being used, maybe see what happens with reducing graphics settings. I guess that the simplest way to do that and go through the whole Proton stack is probably to use some HUD that shows the GPU being used.

Let me install the game myself.

installs

Oh, you have to create an EA account to use the game. The hell with that.

Okay, I won’t do a step-by-step, but in broad terms:

I’d do whatever it is that got it launching, if you had to do something.

Then try mangohud and/or DXVK_HUD.

In the Steam Properties for the game, under General->Launch Options, you’re going to want:

DXVK_HUD=1 %command%

in the field. If you’re adding any other environment variables besides DXVK_HUD to get it to start successfully — I see some people discussing using them in the ProtonDB page — include those too.

When it launches, if DXVK works with it, you’ll see text in the upper left corner of the game window. The first line will be the video card being used, if it’s hardware-accelerated. For my system, on a game where DXVK_HUD shows up, I see “Radeon RX 7900 (RADV NAVI31)”.

That works with some WINE/Proton 3D games, depending upon which 3D subsystem they use.

For mangohud, for Steam Properties, it’ll be:

MANGOHUD_CONFIG=full mangohud %command%

That injects itself at various Linux 3D layers. If that works, then in the game window, you’ll see lines reading “RAM”, then “VRAM”, then either “VULKAN” or “OPENGL”, then some version, then the name of your video card. For me, that’s “Radeon RX 7900 XTX”. If I disable hardware acceleration (e.g. if I run LIBGL_ALWAYS_SOFTWARE=1 MANGOHUD_CONFIG=full mangohud glxgears in a terminal, which will run a small 3D test program, glxgears, without hardware acceleration, I’ll see “llvmpipe” there instead).

Hopefully, one of DXVK_HUD mangohud will work for you, get that text up.

If it does have something that looks like the name of your integrated GPU, probably "Intel something-or-other*, then it’s using your 3D hardware, but it’s still running slow. In that case, I’d probably:

• Try flipping all the graphical settings and/or resolution down, see if it runs reasonably, and start flipping them up one at a time to see what’s particularly problematic.

• Try a different Proton version. It’s also possible to download Proton-GE, (Proton Glorious Eggroll) which is a third-party build of Proton that includes some fixes that Valve doesn’t include in their Steam builds of Proton. This wouldn’t be my first shot for “a game runs slowly”, more “a game doesn’t work correctly”, but it’s a lever that one can at least try pulling. Normally, if this were a solution, I’d expect it to be in ProtonDB.