"puzzlezaddict;c-17408746" wrote:
The recommended specs for Planet Zoo are considerably higher than for TS3 on ultra settings, all packs included. Are you looking to play Planet Zoo on ultra as well? Or do you just want to play at all? If you're not sure, I can give you examples for both categories; just let me know what to look for. (And please tell me if your budget is in U.S. dollars or some other kind.)
"puzzlezaddict;c-17409149" wrote:
Before saying anything else, all of the laptops I'm listing would handle everything Sims 3 could throw at them on ultra settings. I'm basing all this on Planet Zoo because it's significantly more demanding, and your budget has plenty of room to accommodate its requirements.
As it turns out, you could get a laptop with hardware that's at or above all the recommendations for Planet Zoo for $1,100, plus free shipping. (In this case the recommended hardware should be able to run Planet Zoo on high settings at a 1920x1080 resolution smoothly at 60 fps.) Cyberpower is having a sale right now, and this model is surprisingly cheap:
https://www.cyberpowerpc.com/system/Tracer-III-15Z-Slim-VR-300
Its Nvidia 2060 is a little better than the recommended 1070, which itself is a bit higher than seems necessary—an AMD RX 580 is the other recommendation, and it's a significantly slower card than the 1070. The processor is above the rec by a good margin, and 16 GB RAM is plenty; it sounds from the reviews like 8 GB is only barely not enough.
This laptop comes with a 512 GB SSD standard, which is enough storage for all three games plus your saves, mods, cc, and whatever smaller apps you'd want to install. You could also upgrade to a 1 GB SSD if you wanted: among the options, the WD Blue is the same price as the default 512 GB Intel. WD's solid state drives are fine, not the best and not problematic either, but I doubt it would make a difference as long as your plans don't include lots of reinstalls and/or constantly moving around hundreds of GB of data.
Since you wanted several options though, here are a couple more. This MSI is also $1,100 but comes with an additional $100 rebate. It has the same hardware as the Cyberpower except for a slower graphics card—its Nvidia 1660 ti is about equal to the 1070, depending on the benchmark and which site ran it.
https://www.newegg.com/aluminum-black-msi-ge-series-ge65-raider-432-gaming-entertainment/p/N82E16834155331?Item=N82E16834155331
This Dell has the same hardware as the MSI except for the screen, which in all likelihood has a 60 Hz refresh rate. Dell gaming laptops tend to have dimmer screens, still pretty to look at but not as bright, and also correspondingly longer battery life. Of course you'd never want to game on battery, but you might find the longer charge convenient for other purposes.
https://www.bestbuy.com/site/dell-g3-15-6-gaming-laptop-intel-core-i7-16gb-memory-nvidia-geforce-gtx-1660ti-512gb-ssd/6350873.p?skuId=6350873
I saw a lot of other options, but these were the best three for $1,000 and up. Among the cheaper ones, all had at least one less than ideal component: a processor that's under the recommended strength (but still better than the minimum), 8 GB RAM, a single 256 GB SSD. Memory can be added and hard drives swapped, and if you'd like to go that route, this is the best good candidate, at $800 once you subtract the rebate:
https://www.newegg.com/black-msi-gl-series-gl73-9sd-409-gaming-entertainment/p/N82E16834155241?Item=N82E16834155241
If you have any other questions, or you're looking for something a bit different, please feel free to ask.
"puzzlezaddict;c-17409149" wrote:
Before saying anything else, all of the laptops I'm listing would handle everything Sims 3 could throw at them on ultra settings. I'm basing all this on Planet Zoo because it's significantly more demanding, and your budget has plenty of room to accommodate its requirements.
As it turns out, you could get a laptop with hardware that's at or above all the recommendations for Planet Zoo for $1,100, plus free shipping. (In this case the recommended hardware should be able to run Planet Zoo on high settings at a 1920x1080 resolution smoothly at 60 fps.) Cyberpower is having a sale right now, and this model is surprisingly cheap:
https://www.cyberpowerpc.com/system/Tracer-III-15Z-Slim-VR-300
Its Nvidia 2060 is a little better than the recommended 1070, which itself is a bit higher than seems necessary—an AMD RX 580 is the other recommendation, and it's a significantly slower card than the 1070. The processor is above the rec by a good margin, and 16 GB RAM is plenty; it sounds from the reviews like 8 GB is only barely not enough.
This laptop comes with a 512 GB SSD standard, which is enough storage for all three games plus your saves, mods, cc, and whatever smaller apps you'd want to install. You could also upgrade to a 1 GB SSD if you wanted: among the options, the WD Blue is the same price as the default 512 GB Intel. WD's solid state drives are fine, not the best and not problematic either, but I doubt it would make a difference as long as your plans don't include lots of reinstalls and/or constantly moving around hundreds of GB of data.
Since you wanted several options though, here are a couple more. This MSI is also $1,100 but comes with an additional $100 rebate. It has the same hardware as the Cyberpower except for a slower graphics card—its Nvidia 1660 ti is about equal to the 1070, depending on the benchmark and which site ran it.
https://www.newegg.com/aluminum-black-msi-ge-series-ge65-raider-432-gaming-entertainment/p/N82E16834155331?Item=N82E16834155331
This Dell has the same hardware as the MSI except for the screen, which in all likelihood has a 60 Hz refresh rate. Dell gaming laptops tend to have dimmer screens, still pretty to look at but not as bright, and also correspondingly longer battery life. Of course you'd never want to game on battery, but you might find the longer charge convenient for other purposes.
https://www.bestbuy.com/site/dell-g3-15-6-gaming-laptop-intel-core-i7-16gb-memory-nvidia-geforce-gtx-1660ti-512gb-ssd/6350873.p?skuId=6350873
I saw a lot of other options, but these were the best three for $1,000 and up. Among the cheaper ones, all had at least one less than ideal component: a processor that's under the recommended strength (but still better than the minimum), 8 GB RAM, a single 256 GB SSD. Memory can be added and hard drives swapped, and if you'd like to go that route, this is the best good candidate, at $800 once you subtract the rebate:
https://www.newegg.com/black-msi-gl-series-gl73-9sd-409-gaming-entertainment/p/N82E16834155241?Item=N82E16834155241
If you have any other questions, or you're looking for something a bit different, please feel free to ask.
"puzzlezaddict;c-17410115" wrote:
That's unfortunate, but not surprising, given the price. The question then is whether you want to pay $1,000-1,100 for a laptop with an Nvidia 1660 ti, or $1,200 for a 2060, which is about 11% better. The 1660 ti is right at recommended requirements for Planet Zoo, so you'd get good performance either way, but the extra speed of the card would give you some breathing room or perhaps allow you to max out some settings that you otherwise wouldn't.
The other option you could go with is a 2060 and a weaker processor. But the CPU options in laptops are limited. Except for a few high-end (and extremely expensive) models, the only four CPUs you find in this generation's gaming laptops are the Intel i5-9300H and i7-9750H, and the AMD Ryzen 5 3550H and Ryzen 7 3750H. The 9750H is 30-something percent better in performance than the other three, which are all within a few percentage points of each other on gaming-related benchmarks. As far as Planet Zoo is concerned, the 9750H is above the recommendations, and the others are about halfway between the minimum and recommended CPUs. On the flip side, the 9750H runs hotter than the others by a significant margin, although like all modern processors, it will throttle before it gets hot enough to damage itself. If you want to see some laptops with a weaker processor, I can certainly find some, but keep in mind that you'll probably be sacrificing some performance in Planet Zoo, even though TS3 will still run on ultra.
The best models with the 1660 ti are (hopefully) the same as they were yesterday. I found two with a 2060 that appear to not be sold out and cost $1,200 each (if you factor in the MSI rebate). The two have the same specs, except that the Lenovo has a 1 TB SSD, whereas the MSI has the usual 512 GB version.
https://www.newegg.com/black-msi-gl-series-gl73-9sek-411-gaming-entertainment/p/N82E16834155239?Item=N82E16834155239
https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1462365-REG/lenovo_81sx000fus_15_6_legion_y540_gaming.html
(The MSI is a bit cheaper from a third party upgrade company on Amazon. Normally I wouldn't want a laptop that had been upgraded by a third party, but in this case, they only touched the RAM, so it's probably fine. Probably.)
It looks like the Lenovo has better gaming performance and battery, whereas the MSI has better cooling. These reviews are pretty long and kind of dense, but you can check out the categories that matter to you, or just skip to the end for some overall ratings.
https://www.notebookcheck.net/MSI-GL75-9SEK-Laptop-Review-An-average-mid-range-gaming-laptop-with-loud-fans.435496.0.html
https://www.notebookcheck.net/Lenovo-Legion-Y540-with-RTX-2060-laptop-review-Gaming-laptop-with-good-sound-and-144-Hz-panel.428659.0.html
Cyberpower does have a prebuilt laptop with a 2060, pretty much the same as the one that's sold out now:
https://www.cyberpowerpc.com/system/Prebuild-Tracer-III-15V-ET9924
The other good options with a 2060 seem to all be $1,400 and up, and the performance gain would still be quite small.
"puzzlezaddict;c-17410347" wrote:
The two in my last post are better for exactly one reason: they have a 2060 instead of a 1660 ti. The 2060 is about 12% better in terms of gaming, and when the difference between laptops with the two cards was $100, it seemed like a worthwhile upgrade. But at $200, that depends on your own preferences. The 1660 ti will run Planet Zoo well, and the 2060 will run it better. TS3 won't notice the difference. (TS2 is its own special cookie no matter what GPU you have.)
If you want to play Planet Zoo at a higher refresh rate than 60 Hz—some people notice a difference, others don't—the 2060 is worth it. (If you're curious, go to a Best Buy, find a 60 Hz and a 144 Hz monitor, open a File Explorer window, and drag it around the screen as fast as the mouse will move. If you don't see the difference there, you wont in-game either.) If you want the extra storage, the Lenovo's a great deal. If neither of these matter to you, then maybe the 2060 isn't worth the higher price.
For what it's worth, the Lenovo has pretty impressive in-game performance given its price. The only laptops with a 2060 that beat it are significantly more expensive. The MSI is a couple percentage points behind (it varies depending on the game), but not enough to be a huge deal.
