Your computer is generally a bit low in specs for the game but I don't see that being the cause for the issue your seeing. Your graphic card should be ok (unless it's a hardware problem in general).
I assume you've never played the game or had it installed on this computer before ? Did you patch to 1.55 (it's a bit strange that you're talking about ts3.exe and not ts3w.exe) ?
Je, my hardware is a bit on the low side, but as you said, it should in worst case merely cause some performance troubles.
I didn't have the game (or any other Sims for that part) installed beforehand and did literally nothing but installing Sims 3 via origin. I was told it might want to auto-update itself upon first game launch, but so far it doesn't seem like I've even gotten to the point where it can check for updates.
But the idea isn't bad, I will look for manual patches.
