Good laptop for Sims 3+expansion packs
Hi everyone! A few months ago I bought myself a laptop which I could play Sims 4 on. I’ve been playing Sims 3 all my life though, and I enjoy it way more than I do playing the Sims 4. My question i...
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@Jadinasims Sure, it's not a problem. If you have the computer already, the easiest way to provide info is to run a dxdiag and attach it to a post.
https://help.ea.com/en-us/help/pc/how-to-gather-dxdiag-information/
If you're still shopping, feel free to link the options you're considering. Or if you don't have any in mind yet and would like a few suggestions, just let me know your budget and country, as well as any other features that matter to you, for example whether you'd prefer a laptop or desktop and any other software you'd want to run.
Here you go! Thank you!
@Jadinasims There's some variation in players' experiences, but I would say your laptop could probably run the earliest expansions well, and probably not the most demanding ones. In this category of laptop, it can take some experimenting to figure out which packs, and how many, run well, and which will not.
My guess is that the base game plus all stuff packs would most likely be fine, plus World Adventures, Ambitions, and Generations, if you want those. I would avoid Pets and Seasons, and maybe Island Paradise and Into the Future, at least at first. The intermediate packs, not Pets or Seasons and not the early ones, may or may not work well; this is where players' experiences can vary.
In your position, I'd install the base game only, perhaps with some stuff packs if I owned any. (SPs don't add much to overhead.) If the game ran fine, I'd add expansions one at a time, starting with the less demanding ones (WA, Ambitions, and LN), and decide whether performance was still good enough. When it started to drop off a bit, I'd stop adding more content.
If you really want Seasons in your game, it's possible that it might run okay with some adjustments. For example, you could disable rain and snow, or you could use lower graphics settings in the winter. This does work for some people, but for others it's not enough. You may also find that you can play with, say, Seasons or Island Paradise, but not both at the same time. I would guess the Pets EP, or more specifically long-haired pets and any horses, would be a real problem for your graphics chip with any settings.
The point is, yes, you should be able to play, but how well, you'll need to find out by experimenting a bit yourself. I certainly wouldn't go out and buy a bunch of packs all at once. On the other hand, I don't want to tell you that you won't be able to play with most of the packs, because it's possible you can. So the short answer is, take it slowly, see how things go, and hopefully you'll find a way to enjoy the game with whatever content works well on your laptop.
- @puzzlezaddict is the best! Thank you!
Hi what about this laptop ?
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B09BFMC29Q/ref=ox_sc_act_title_1?smid=A36Z5LD0I1SDUN&psc=1
@younglor That laptop should be able to handle most expansion packs together on a mix of high and ultra graphics settings. If you run all 11 EPs, you might see some small issues, particularly with pets or inclement weather (rain, snow, hail); the graphics chip in this laptop is right on the edge of what can handle all Sims 3 features without any problems.
I can't really tell you exactly how things would play out because in this category, a lot depends on the laptop's build quality and its internal settings, for example how much power the chip is allowed to draw. And I've only seen a few reports of people playing on this kind of hardware. So as to whether you'd be fine running Pets and Seasons, I would just be guessing, but eerything else should be fine.
I do want to point out that you could get a gaming laptop for the same price, one that shouldn't have any trouble with Sims 3 at all. If you'd like to see a few examples, feel free to ask. But if you'd rather stick with a non-gaming laptop, look for one with an i7-1165G7 processor: its graphics chip has 20% more compute cores and performs somewhat better.
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