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KarinaJackson07's avatar
6 years ago

Will Huawei Matebook D14 2020 run Sims 3 and all expansion packs?

Hiya, I was hoping someone could help me out on this one. I've been researching for the past week, trying to find the right laptop for University and to play Sims 3 (+expansion packs) on. Reading many blogs and forums I understood that the laptop minimum requirements should be:

8GB RAM 

Nvidia GeForce GTX .... 

At least 500GB HDD/SSD

However, this laptop I'm looking at (Huawei Matebook D14 2020) has:

  • AMD Ryzen 5 3500U processor.
  • Quad core processor.
  • 2.1GHz processor speed with a burst speed of 3.7GHz.
  • 8GB RAM DDR4.
  • 512GB SSD storage.
  • Microsoft Windows 10.

... MD Radeon Vega 8 graphics card - Does it matter it isnt Nvidia GeForce GTX? Would it still run the game?? 

The other options I was looking at are also:

1) Asus tuf gaming fx505 specs

2) HP Pavilion 13-an1005na Full-HD Laptop

However, theyre both a bit bulky and I would'nt be able to carry them to University everyday. 

I'm a little lost, I hope this post gets noticed and someone could let me know what is the best option here 🙂 

1 Reply

  • @KarinaJackson07  If you really want to play with all expansions enabled, then no, a Radeon Vega 8 would probably not be able to handle the load.  Everyone's experience is a bit different, but in general, I wouldn't expect you to be able to use Pets and Seasons on a laptop with that chip.

    I was trying to help someone a few months ago with a 2500U (a few percentage points slower) that had the same Vega 8 chip in it.  This person ran benchmarks while playing, and despite using low/medium settings, their GPU core load would eventually rise to 98% and the game would crash.  Temperature was reasonably well controlled.  We tried a number of tweaks, but nothing fixed the problem—the most it did was postpone the crash.  If I remember correctly, they were playing with Seasons, but not all three of the other demanding packs (Pets first, then Seasons, then Isla Paradiso and Into the Future).

    The slowest version of the Nvidia 1050 is about 250% faster than a Vega 8, and more specifically, it's a separate component that's built to handle the graphics computing the game requires.  The two are really not in the same class in terms of what can be expected of them.  While most games scale down appropriately (more or less) to adjust for weaker hardware, for some reason Sims 3 does not, and it runs much more poorly than it should on components that should theoretically be able to handle low or medium settings.  Or at least that's what happens with the more demanding EPs.

    There are higher-end laptops with dedicated card like the Nvidia 1050, but of course they're much more expensive than bulkier gaming laptops with the same hardware.  So if you want to keep cost down, you'll need to choose between being able to play with the packs you want and having the convenience of a lightweight portable laptop.  Whether the tradeoff is worth it is up to you.

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