playing the sims 3 in 2020

The most efficient way to cover all the relevant system info is with a dxdiag. You can run one, post the results on pastebin.com or some other free filesharing site, and link it here.

https://help.ea.com/en-us/help/pc/how-to-gather-dxdiag-information/

If you're looking to buy, that's a different conversation. You can link computers you're considering, or post your budget and country and ask for suggestions. Or, if you prefer, it's easy enough to write out the typical recommendation for a new computer so you can look around yourself.

A very good PC. I strongly recommend something with an i7 or equivalent, and at least 8GB of RAM. The PC I mostly use for TS4, and now TS2 as well won't run TS3 with anything more than one expansion pack without crashing (integrated graphics, CORE i5, 8GB RAM), but my laptop (i7, I think around 8GB of RAM--bought it used, since it was the only rugged laptop on my budget) will run two packs at once. And that's with everything on low or medium. And even then, there are slow moments. I did buy a gaming PC that did run TS3 quite well (i7, Radeon Graphics, 8GB RAM), but the RAM failed soon after purchase. I will change the RAM out (RAM isn't much more than the UPS postage to the warranty office for Acer in Texas--and besides, I think their rough handling when I got the PC from Amazon started the issue)), and it should run better.

But, in terms of the game itself, get it. It's much better than TS4, and definitely improved over TS2 in some ways (Sims in TS2 are better, in my opinion). And Steam, every now and then, will put most of the EPs on sale for $5 each. I've bought most of them, as of late. But, just the base game has lots to offer--pun intended. There's plenty of lots to build on and explore, which most of the other Sims games don't.

Yeah, it is not very easy play the sims 3 with not s o great pc.

I have 8 GB ram and graphics card nvidia geforce 950 gtx and the game runs fine. I rarely get crashing and if the game is slow is because I have way to many mods..otherwise my game experience has been good so far

TS3 is one of the few games that truly benefits from using an SSD. I actually made a 512GB one my priority with building my desktop. SSD for speed, space for all the saves (I also have a storage drive but it's a regular HDD and older)

> @BrittanyChick22 said:
> I have 8 GB ram and graphics card nvidia geforce 950 gtx and the game runs fine. I rarely get crashing and if the game is slow is because I have way to many mods..otherwise my game experience has been good so far

I had a 950 to, it just died last month. ): I ended up getting a 2060 :3

> @InfraGreen said:
> TS3 is one of the few games that truly benefits from using an SSD. I actually made a 512GB one my priority with building my desktop. SSD for speed, space for all the saves (I also have a storage drive but it's a regular HDD and older)

It really does! I watched a youtibe video to get an idea of it, i think from the launcher it takes about 1 minute to 1 minute and a half to start up! :D

I run Sims 3 on a notebook. Granted, it's a fairly powerful notebook. The disadvantage of running Sims 3 on a completely modern machine is you do have to do some work before hand to get it to recognize your GPU, and it may not recognize your CPU either in which case you also need to fool it into thinking that less powerful CPUs in general are more powerful. I have 32GB ram, but all that means is I can run a web browser at the same time as playing.

If you do have a powerful machine, look into using an FPS limiter. Nvidia's tool does not work for me (it probably has to do with the dedicated and integrated GPU selection), but 3booter works fine as long as I run the game in full screen mode.

Edit: Another vote for an SSD. You need it for both your boot drive and the drive you're running Sims 3 from. I think for most people that's the same drive. I have dual nvme drives, and generally, it does only take a minute or so for the game to load. It's a little longer than Sims 4, but OTOH, I only have to deal with it once or twice (if I travel) per play session.

I run all my games on an HP Pavillion x360 laptop that I got from Best Buy 2 years ago for around $600 USD.

I recently bought a new Asus Tuf gaming laptop for about $500 and it runs beautifully on high settings. I didn't have to do anything to it, luckily, since I'm not technologically gifted, lol