Sims 3 Supported Graphics Cards
I just bought a new laptop, and I saw many people recommending an Acer Aspire 5 for playing sims. So I bought the laptop (Acer Aspire 5 A515-55-576H Intel Core i5 10th Gen 1035G1) just to play sims....
Forum Discussion
@Briee2122 To be honest, if your goal is to play Sims 3, you should probably cancel the order. (Sims 4 is a different story, although I still think you could probably do better.) The G1 graphics chip is fine as far as integrated graphics go, but it's far from ideal for Sims 3, especially if you want to play with most or all packs. The most demanding packs—Pets, Seasons, then Island Paradise and Into the Future—may run very poorly or not at all on this laptop.
If you'd like advice on what might work better, feel free to post your budget and country, as well as any other details that matter ot you. And if you'd like some advice before you decide whether to cancel your order, I'll be around tonight.
Thank you for the fast reply! My budget is around $600. And I want something that will just run the sims 3 pretty well since I have a different laptop for everything else.
@puzzlezaddict I canceled the order it is giving me too much anxiety 😢 and I already have a good laptop for everything else, so I just want this to play sims. It doesn't have to be top tier. Just something that will run the entire game smooth with good graphics. My budget is around $600 and I would really appreciate recommendations, please ! Thank you!
@Briee2122 Is this $600 U.S.? If so, you can definitely do better than the laptop you found. The question becomes whether you want a faster graphics card, capable of ultra graphics settings instead of high; or more storage, 512 GB instead of 256; or both, with a slightly higher price tag.
This laptop ($600) has an Nvidia 1050, which is capable of high or a mix of high and ultra settings, although all ultra settings might be difficult if you have the most demanding packs installed. If you use high poly (high-resolution) custom content, you might have to dial back the settings a bit more. Still, you should be able to run all the Sims 3 content you want. It also has a 512 GB hard drive, in case you need a lot of storage.
https://www.bestbuy.com/site/6409467.p?skuId=6409467
This one has an Nvidia 1650, which is around 40% faster for gaming, although the gap seems to be smaller for Sims 3. (It still does better than the 1050 though.) It does only have 256 GB storage, but that should be more than enough for all your Sims 3 content. You could actually fit all of Sims 4 on that drive too, if you're looking to play especially if your other computer is going to hold the rest of your non-gaming data. Where it might get dicey is if you had a large amount of cc for both games (think > 50 GB total) and liked to keep a lot of backup saves.
https://www.walmart.com/ip/806865249
There aren't a lot of other options in your price range, unless you're willing to go open-box. As a good example, this one has an AMD RX 5600M graphics card that's significantly faster than an Nvidia 1650, a stronger processor than both laptops above, and has an "open-box: excellent" opeion available from Best Buy for $612. This is also a very highly rated gaming laptop overall, one of the best in the "cheap" (under about $1,200) category. It does only have 256 GB storage though.
https://www.bestbuy.com/site/6409419.p?skuId=6409419
Beyond that, the next good options start close to $700, which it sounds like you'd rather not spend. And the options with slower dedicated graphics cards are close to $600 as well, so you'd be sacrificing some performance without saving much money.
If you have more questions, please feel free to ask.
- If I might chime in, I can confirm that The Sims 3 can run well on all Ultra settings (except High Detail Lots, but that one doesn't slow it down much even when maxed out) on my GTX 1050 4GB (Mobile).
As for Intel Graphics, I managed to run it pretty well on Medium settings on Intel UHD Graphics 620 (with my Intel Core i5-8250U), but again, it's probably not a good idea to use it if there's another option.
No matter which specs you pick, you will probably have to do some optimization for the game to work as intended.
