Any Sims players out there?

Dai · 22-02-2012, 21:04

I'm speccing a laptop for a young relative and would appreciate feedback from anyone who plays The Sims. How demanding graphically is this game and is it likely to run OK on a modern laptop with onboard graphics?
She's got a budget of Â£500 so we would obviously be looking at mid-range machines.
Any advice appreciated.

admars · 23-02-2012, 06:36

I assume you mean the Sims 3.
The missus plays The Sims 3 on our desktop PC ( a few years old now), as they bring out more and more add ons, the game gets more demanding, so the requirements get more demanding, as the player adds more "stuff".

Saying that, EA, know that the market for The Sims, isn't necessarily the same as those playing more demanding games, so the requirements aren't that great.

back of box says 2.4ghz processor and lists various graphics cards that will, and won't work (generally old v basic ones), some onboard ones are listed as working, as is the Nvidia Ion!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_sims_3

requirements 1/2 way down on right, Sims 3 forums may be better to see which laptops ppl are and aren't having success with.

Dai · 23-02-2012, 06:46

Quote:

Originally Posted by admars

requirements 1/2 way down on right, Sims 3 forums may be better to see which laptops ppl are and aren't having success with.

Thanks for the link and the idea. I'll go and do my homework now.

qasdfdsaq · 23-02-2012, 14:25

It'll run fine on a modern laptop with on-chip graphics let alone on-board (but then again almost all laptop graphics are on board).

But Â£500 isn't my idea of midrange, which for me is Â£700-1500.

That said any Sandy Bridge chip with on-chip graphics would run OK.

**Rob** · 23-02-2012, 15:24

Many of these games start off using only an initial proportion of the computer's hardware capacity. As the gameplay progresses and more rewards are earned there is more for the PC to monitor, continously manipulate and display. You then start to see the CPU and GPU use statistics climb. Thus you don't want to scrimp too much. What can be really critical, is the amount of RAM available to both the CPU and GPU, remembering that many laptop solutions are likely to use shared RAM.

Dai · 23-02-2012, 15:27

Yes, that's more or less what I was thinking Rob. I'm looking towards an i3 with 4-6Gb ram, assuming that power & space are more important than cutting edge graphics.

Also, she wants to try her hand at some Photoshop work and again I'm thinking CPU/Ram headroom is the priority.

tizmeinnit · 24-02-2012, 23:10

AMD APUs at least has decent AMD onboard gfx and not Intel's poor excuse. The APU should also give some benefit with PS

qasdfdsaq · 25-02-2012, 03:40

Really? AMD's APUs barely beat Sandy Bridge built-in graphics only by about 20% on average. If 20% slower is a "poor excuse" what do you call the AMD APU's 40-80% slower performance in anything outside of 3D gaming?

AMD beats Intel by up to 20% in graphics only performance
Intel beats AMD by 200-300% in everything else.

Poor excuse my arse.

tizmeinnit · 26-02-2012, 20:15

Intels poor excuse of onboard graphics. Nowadays these cpus work so well AMDs chips will still do well enough . Think you are stretching your stats somewhat there me duck lol

I am sorry you feel so badly about your bottom

qasdfdsaq · 27-02-2012, 10:29

http://www.anandtech.com/show/4616/l...e-l775ds7206/3

Computation score: Sandy bridge - 11,928; Llano - 1,698.

What exactly am I supposedly stretching?

ZrByte · 27-02-2012, 11:14

Quote:

Originally Posted by qasdfdsaq

http://www.anandtech.com/show/4616/l...e-l775ds7206/3

Computation score: Sandy bridge - 11,928; Llano - 1,698.

What exactly am I supposedly stretching?

By your own link look at the 3D mark scores and then compare the price of the llano Vs an I7. Amd based solutions have never been about performance, its more about Price to perfromance ratio.

qasdfdsaq · 27-02-2012, 13:17

We weren't talking about price to performance ratio.

ZrByte · 27-02-2012, 13:41

Quote:

Originally Posted by qasdfdsaq

We weren't talking about price to performance ratio.

Can you find an I7 for Â£500 or less? Because if you can't then I don't see the point in your post since the I7 is clearly making up for the poor performance of the Intel Graphics chipset.

qasdfdsaq · 27-02-2012, 14:26

Or rather, I don't see the point of your post as
a) We weren't talking to you
b) We weren't talking about price
c) We weren't talking about price to performance ratio
d) We weren't talking about I7s for Â£500 or less.

ZrByte · 27-02-2012, 14:46

Quote:

Originally Posted by qasdfdsaq

Or rather, I don't see the point of your post as
a) We weren't talking to you
b) We weren't talking about price
c) We weren't talking about price to performance ratio
d) We weren't talking about I7s for Â£500 or less.

Post in another thread then as this is very much about Laptops for Â£500 or less capable of playing the Sims 3 smoothly. Any AMD GPU/APU offering will smash an intel At that price range, Dont know about Nvidia/Intel combos. So again I dont see the point in your post. Maybe you should start your own thread?