Will this Laptop work with the Sims 3?
I purchased Sims 3 and all DLCs, and I was wondering if the Lenovo Thinkpad T520 would work smoothly? Here are the specs: (P.S. it runs the sims 4 pretty well but I don't have all expansions and such...
Forum Discussion
Okay, but how much do you have free? You should see something like "x GB free of 256 GB total."
If you have 50 GB or more free, and you want to try, go ahead and install the base game (~7 GB), World Adventures and Ambitions (another 6 GB total), and however many stuff packs you like (100-200 MB each). Don't expect to be able to use ultra or even high settings though. You can try the default values for your card and adjust from there. Water and high-detail lots are by far the most demanding settings, so it's best to leave those on low; I set them at the second settings from the bottom, even though everything else is maxed out. It will also help to lower the in-game resolution, which you may want to do anyway to make the UI readable.
A decent (if rough) metric is your in-game framerates. Open the cheats console (crtl-shift-C) and enter "fps on" without quotes. A number will appear in the upper right corner, and it will give you some idea of how your graphics card is performing. Your fps will vary somewhat depending on what world you're playing in and even what's on screen, but you can compare the same location across settings easily enough and get an idea of what the card is and isn't capable of handling.
If you like how the game runs on your preferred settings, you can try adding more packs, one at a time. But using all packs together is probably not going to work out very well. If you add a more demanding pack and the game starts to lag, or you get significantly lower fps, you'll know not to push it any further.
If you have 50 GB or more free, and you want to try, go ahead and install the base game (~7 GB), World Adventures and Ambitions (another 6 GB total), and however many stuff packs you like (100-200 MB each). Don't expect to be able to use ultra or even high settings though. You can try the default values for your card and adjust from there. Water and high-detail lots are by far the most demanding settings, so it's best to leave those on low; I set them at the second settings from the bottom, even though everything else is maxed out. It will also help to lower the in-game resolution, which you may want to do anyway to make the UI readable.
A decent (if rough) metric is your in-game framerates. Open the cheats console (crtl-shift-C) and enter "fps on" without quotes. A number will appear in the upper right corner, and it will give you some idea of how your graphics card is performing. Your fps will vary somewhat depending on what world you're playing in and even what's on screen, but you can compare the same location across settings easily enough and get an idea of what the card is and isn't capable of handling.
If you like how the game runs on your preferred settings, you can try adding more packs, one at a time. But using all packs together is probably not going to work out very well. If you add a more demanding pack and the game starts to lag, or you get significantly lower fps, you'll know not to push it any further.
