How Much Ram Do You Need?

4GB is fine for now. I would recommend going up to 8 GB for future expansion packs. 16GB if you have an i7 processor. You'll notice a difference between 16GB and 8GB.

EA incorporated in the Late Night patch the ability for the game to recognize LAA, so having 4GB is now working with Sims 3. At least on 64 bit systems.

What I should include is the 4GB can be dedicated to playing Sims 3, you would need more to work the OS. I have 8GB installed now, and I don't experience the lag in normal (medium map) towns, and only have a little lag with the large mapped towns. Usually due to the game creating new families. Overwatch helps with the rest of the background things that happen in a world.

With extended play, jumping back and forth between households, and taking breaks to lurk around the net, I've had RAM usage run as high a 5 GBs. I'm happy with my 8 GBs. :)

I have 4g of ram and 5 years old pc and my game loads in 1min!

Sorry, I know very little about computers. My game is running slow and lagging. I have an 8gb and am running the followng: Sims 3, WA, Late Night, Ambitions, Fast Lane, High End Loft, and Outdoor Living. Do I need more than 8 to run these? Any help is greatly appreciated.

dclay wrote:
Sorry, I know very little about computers. My game is running slow and lagging. I have an 8gb and am running the followng: Sims 3, WA, Late Night, Ambitions, Fast Lane, High End Loft, and Outdoor Living. Do I need more than 8 to run these? Any help is greatly appreciated.

Having 8 gigs is just one part of the puzzle, You must also look at your video card and in some cases your HD being there is now more than three types. 1.IDE/Enhanced IDE 2.SCSI 3.SATA I/II/III Number one is now extinct Number 2 even though it is faster than IDE and not wide spread as it was in the past is fading. Number three is the best format to have depending on the Sata format. Back to the video card your CPU can be bottlenecked depending on the video card you are using therefore you cannot achieve the full benefits that your computing experience can afford to you. Example: using a Nvidia 7600 GS while your CPU is a Intel 2700K. Even though you have a nice CPU, your video card is stuck in the past and your experience may be lessened by the videocard. Having 8 Gigs of ram may only help a little. There are many scenarios that can come into play when you want to get a good experience.

Thank you for the information. I am not at home to look, but my Video Graphics is something like ATI Mobility Radeon 4530. It's almost 3 years old now. I have done the latest update, but is my graphics card basically a dinosaur?

Your processor can become an important factor.

2gig is min, 8 is average, and 16 is kicking butt.

2 GB is NOT enough if you have all EP and SP. I do and tabbed down, paused, idle it uses 2.6 GB. Running full tilt on a community lot with 20 sims on the lot and a concert going on, I've seen it run as high as 7.5GB for the game alone. Now give the OS 3 so it has plenty, then another 2 for other processes (so you don't have to go through and end them before you play, then reboot after, I say for All packs you need a minimum of 12 GB RAM, and 2 on the GPU on top of that. So a integrated GPU, like many laptops have would need 16 GB with all packs to maintain a 40-60 FPS and not have lag. (Assuming the CPU and GPU are enough to allow that kind of processing power and, graphics performance under that load.)