The Sims 3 Minimum Requirements/Is this computer good enough to run The Sims 3?

[Rohannnn]

Yes it should, probably smoothly on medium settings. That's good for a laptop.

[rachyxx]

ok so i have tried to get sims 3 workin on pc got new video card and stuff and still didnt work and it has no chance on my laptop as its pretty old
so i have decided i want to get a new laptop hopefully a pay montly deal as i am not that rich.
any help on what laptop to get what the sims 3 works on really well.
I really want an imac one or possibly dell (so it can be pink haha)
please help me xx

[Simaroo]

I play with everything on high with a HP 17" screen

Dual Core 2.0
4GB of ram
Windows 7
Nvidia 9600 M 512 Mb dedicated

Runs real smooth.

You need to try and get a video card that has dedicated ram preferably 512MB or better. Stay with Intel dual core 2.0 and above. As much ram as possible. If you run 4GB of ram then most likely you will also have a 64bit operating system.

Also if you can go refurbished you will save hundreds of dollars and the notebook will go through Q&A twice where most only go through once.

[Adam Hornsby]

Get a MacBook. i have a macbook pro, and the sims 3 runs great.

[Rohannnn]

The pay monthly mobile broadband deals are pretty horrible, you end up paying back more than double the cost of the laptop usually because the minimum contract is 2 years. If you buy with a finance deal or credit card though it's a lot more reasonable.

As mentioned above, the graphics card is the most important thing to look for because you can't upgrade it on a laptop at all.

I looked for refurbished Dells on ebay before and the deals there are very good, you can get a better spec and 3-year warranty for less than if you bought from Dell directly. You can get both the studio 15 (15" screen) and studio 17 (17" screen) with pink (or red) lids. I couldn't find any of the studio 17 on ebay though with a good enough spec.

Dell Studio 15 1555 Laptop 2.1,4GB 320,512MB ATI , e01 on eBay (end time 19-Sep-09 13:04:27 BST)
Dell Studio 15 1555 Laptop 2.1,4GB 320,512MB ATI , e01 on eBay (end time 27-Sep-09 08:11:00 BST)
DELL STUDIO 15 1555 CORE 2 DUO 2.1GHZ 4GB 320GB HD 3YRW on eBay (end time 08-Sep-09 13:44:42 BST)
Dell Studio 15 / 1555 Pink laptop, 2.0Ghz duo , 4GB Ram on eBay (end time 19-Sep-09 08:15:00 BST)
New Dell Studio 15 Laptop 2.00 4GB 1555 320GB PINK on eBay (end time 06-Sep-09 19:20:37 BST)

All of those should run TS3 reasonably well on medium settings.

If you want the game to work better than that, you need a laptop with something like nvidia geforce 9600 or higher numbered, GT130 or higher, or ATI HD4670 or higher. The cheapest Dell laptop with one of these is the Studio XPS 16. It's a lot more than the normal studio 15 and 17 though. For a mac, you'd have to get the Macbook pro I think.

[Adam Hornsby]

Originally Posted by Rohannnn

You can get both the studio 15 (15" screen) and studio 17 (17" screen) with pink (or red) lids. I couldn't find any of the studio 17 on ebay though with a good enough spec.

I would never buy anything like that from ebay. With ebay, you dont have any comeback if something goes wrong, whereas a retailer you will do, trust me on this, I work for one of these retailers, and I see a lot of dells come back.

Originally Posted by Rohannnn

For a mac, you'd have to get the Macbook pro I think.

Totally agree, of course

[Rohannnn]

Originally Posted by Adam Hornsby

I would never buy anything like that from ebay. With ebay, you dont have any comeback if something goes wrong, whereas a retailer you will do, trust me on this, I work for one of these retailers, and I see a lot of dells come back.

All of the sellers are listed as business sellers which means you're protected under the distance selling regulations. The sellers want to help you out because if you leave them negative feedback they risk losing powerseller status, which is serious for people who's business is selling on ebay.

You also have the PayPal dispute process (which is biased by ebay to almost always favour buyers to keep ebay's reputation good).

Plus you get with most of the ones sold on ebay a 3 year, on-site warranty direct from Dell.

I would definitely hesitate to buy a second hand laptop from a private seller on ebay, but these refurbished ones sold by companies whos business is buying them off dell and reselling on ebay, is a lot safer

[Adam Hornsby]

Originally Posted by Rohannnn

All of the sellers are listed as business sellers which means you're protected under the distance selling regulations. The sellers want to help you out because if you leave them negative feedback they risk losing powerseller status, which is serious for people who's business is selling on ebay.

You also have the PayPal dispute process (which is biased by ebay to almost always favour buyers to keep ebay's reputation good).

Plus you get with most of the ones sold on ebay a 3 year, on-site warranty direct from Dell.

I would definitely hesitate to buy a second hand laptop from a private seller on ebay, but these refurbished ones sold by companies whos business is buying them off dell and reselling on ebay, is a lot safer

Fair enough.
But i would not buy a dell, i saw one customer with one last week, and it was very slow, the build quality isnt too hot either

[Rohannnn]

I've heard people say this too, but I've never had any of these problems personally or experienced them when I've been fixing PCs for people. My dad owns a dell laptop and desktop, both over 4 years old, both still in use today and working fine. In fact the desktop was upgraded twice by me, since then both upgraded parts (GPU and PSU) failed, and the original Dell parts have been put back and work fine

The speed is determined by the spec (which is the same as any other manufacturer) and the software (which is down to the user, apart from windows itself). I can't think of why one brand should be any faster or slower than another, unless it's actually faulty.

I've heard about build quality problems but I don't think they apply to the studio range. I know someone who has the studio 15, I had a look at it and it seems like a decent laptop to me. Obviously they're not going to be up to apple standards but definitely no worse than any other brands around the same price. I'm not trying to sell Dell as a brand or anything, in fact normally I just go with whichever has the best spec and reviews for the price (isn't dell normally), it's just this time the thread starter said they wanted apple or dell

[2f45t4u]

That is a very nice GPU for a laptop. How much was the laptop if you don't mind me asking?

[2f45t4u]

I wouldn't chose based on brand, I'd choose purely based on what is inside and the price. If I'd have gone with a Dell, I'd have paid nearly £150 more for my PC and all it had better was the motherboard could take more RAM, but it had worse GPU, and the same processor as the PC I actually bought. Brand loyalty has no place in the computer market...

[EAUK_Aurora]

[Threads merged]

[Adam Hornsby]

Originally Posted by Hannahdisiac

Soo I'm thinking of investing in a laptop and would like to know your opinions on these specs:

- Pentium Dual Core T4200 2.16GHz
- 4GB RAM
- Nvidia Geforce GT 120M

Asus K70IO Laptop - Laptops at Ebuyer

Theres a link to the product if that would be any help. Any help would be appreciated!

That isnt a good spec. The intel pentium is only a basic processor, designed for things such as word processing, internet etc. You can determine the speed of a intel processer by the first letter and the end number:
T- lower end dual core
E- mid range dual core
P- higher end dual core
Q- quad core
SU- solo mobile
L- low voltage
U- these are ultra low voltage

Also the model range differs like this:
Celeron- low range
Pentium- low/mid range
Core Duo- higher end single core
Core 2 Duo/extreme- dual core processors
Xeon- sever processors

The graphics chip will also be rather basic

[Rohannnn]

Originally Posted by Adam Hornsby

That isnt a good spec. The intel pentium is only a basic processor, designed for things such as word processing, internet etc. You can determine the speed of a intel processer by the first letter and the end number:
T- lower end dual core
E- mid range dual core
P- higher end dual core
Q- quad core
SU- solo mobile
L- low voltage
U- these are ultra low voltage

Also the model range differs like this:
Celeron- low range
Pentium- low/mid range
Core Duo- higher end single core
Core 2 Duo/extreme- dual core processors
Xeon- sever processors

The graphics chip will also be rather basic

These days Celeron, Pentium, Core Duo, Core 2 Duo and Xeon are all based on, or at least have roots in the same "core" architecture that was first sold in 2007 (?) with the Core 2 Duo. So they perform very similarly, I'd be surprised if at maximum there's more than 15% difference between a laptop "Pentium Dual-Core" and "Core 2 Duo" running at the same clock speed.

I did a benchmark comparison on tomshardware, you can see it here.

Core Duo is actually dual core not single core (that's what the "Duo" means, the "2" in "Core 2" means second revision like Pentium 3 vs. Pentium 4).

The graphics card was discussed before, I think it might have been in another thread, it's basically equivalent to the nvidia 9500GT so fine for TS3 with most settings medium/high.

[navigatornami]

i`m thinking about geting this laptop will the sims 3 work on high

Best Buy

[Adam Hornsby]

Originally Posted by navigatornami

i`m thinking about geting this laptop will the sims 3 work on high

Best Buy

It could, but it has a intel built in graphics chip, so performance could be limited.

[2f45t4u]

Originally Posted by navigatornami

i`m thinking about geting this laptop will the sims 3 work on high

Best Buy

I very much doubt it because I had a GMA 4500M Intel integrated chipset in my old laptop (same as the 4500MHD but slightly less clock speed), and it ran on lowest settings at only 25fps. Granted I had less RAM, and that bestbuy laptop also has a free upgrade to W7, and can be upgraded to 8GB RAM (both of which I'd advise doing) but I can't see it running even on medium. Maybe some low, some medium, but deffo not high at an acceptable fps.

[jpd77uk]

I'm building a new syetem this weekend, and was wondering if the following spec will be enough to play The SIms 3 and other games such as GTA4?

Intel Core i7 920 D0 Stepping (SLBEJ) 2.66Ghz (Nehalem) (Socket LGA1366)
Gigabyte GA-EX58-UD3R Intel X58 (Socket 1366) PCI-Express DDR3 Motherboard
Patriot Viper 6GB (3x2GB) DDR3 PC3-12800 (1600MHz) Low Latency Tri-Channel
ATI Radeon HD 4890 1024MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card
Western Digital Caviar Green 500GB SATA-II 32MB Cache - OEM
Microsoft Windows Vista Home Premium SP1 64-Bit - OEM
Antec 902 Nine Hundred Two Ultimate Gaming Case
Corsair TX 650W ATX SLi Compliant Power Supply
LG GH22LP20 22x DVD±RW IDE Dual Layer Lightscribe ReWriter

[EAUK_Aurora]

[Threads merged]

Looks good to me

[SmileyRiley]

So, I checked mine out at SystemRequirementsLab.com and it says my computer passes, but I'm not so sure, because I only have 981 mb of ram

I have a Dell Optiplex 755
Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo CPU E6550 @ 2.33GHz
981 MB of Ram
Microsoft Windows XP Professional (Build Service Pack 32600)
Intel(R) Q35 Express Chipset Family (Intel(R) GMA 3100)
384 mb of video RAM
140.3 GB of free disk space

[Rohannnn]

The game should still run, you'll just probably have to keep the settings on minimum and not expect it to run smoothly.

I looked up the specs of the Optiplex 755. If the ones I found are correct, and you have the tower version (full width tower), you should have a 16x PCI-E slot that you could use to install a new graphics card. That would free up your RAM to give you 1024MB total, as well as hugely improving the graphics and speed of the game.

If you have a smaller case version than that, you may have a free graphics slot but it's probably half-height which makes an upgrade a lot more difficult. Still possible, just not easy.

[SmileyRiley]

Forgive me for taking so long to respond, been working double shifts at work.

I do have the full width tower. Are graphic cards expensive? Which one would you recommend for my computer?Would I have to "open up" the computer to put in the graphic card in or is there a slot on the outside? haha. I know very little about computers ,obviously. I appreciate the help very much.

[Rohannnn]

You would have to open the tower to do it. Usually that's not very hard though, you just press a lever on the back of the case and the whole side slides off. It probably seems like a difficult job if you've never upgraded anything before, but really if you've ever used a screwdriver and you can follow instructions it's not that hard.

If you want to think about doing it yourself, Dell has very detailed instructions, if you go to their site then support -> manuals then find the manual for your PC there should be a section about adding cards in there. Or you could just look up general instructions online. That should give you a good idea about whether you're confident enough to do it yourself.

The cards start at about £30 (online) for a fairly low-end one (low-medium settings), to about £50-£60 for something that will run TS3 nearly everything high, to £100+ to run other brand new or more demanding or more serious games.

If you haven't got or tried the game yet, it's probably still worth getting now, as far as I can tell it should definitely work and you might find you don't even mind the way it runs on your current spec.

[GLITTERlala]

I'm thinking about getting a Sony VGN SC31 S/P Laptop and i was wondering if it will play Sims 3 so its not all glitchy!?

It's got a dedicated graphics card, so that helps right? 320GB hard drive, 4096RAM, intel core 2 duo processor, processor speed is 2.0GHz... I'm trying to understand all that stuff! But i need some help. :\

[Rohannnn]

I tried looking up that model number and I can't find anything about it.
Do you have a link to somewhere selling it?

It sounds like it will probably run the game well, but that depends on the particular dedicated card it has, some cards run the game a lot better than others, so you need to find out the details about the card first