>>37788680So when a program wants to use RAM, it has to ask the operating system to give it some.
When it's done with that memory, it has to tell the OS, so the OS knows it can be reallocated. Otherwise, the OS will just assume it's still in use.
If you forget to tell the OS when you're done with the memory, it will just sit around taking up space in RAM until the program terminates (or crashes), at which point the OS will automatically take it back. This is called a memory leak.
This means there's progressively less and less RAM available, which in extreme cases can severely impact performance.
In the case of the Sims 3, there's some kind of massive memory leak that causes the game to chug pretty hard after a couple of hours of continuous play. Since the initial loading screen is literally 10 fucking minutes long, it's not really practical to restart every hour or two, so the result is that long play sessions feel like shit.
