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dmvdmeij1989's avatar
dmvdmeij1989
Newcomer
2 hours ago

Help choosing a laptop for my 10 year old daughter

Hi everyone,

My daughter is about to turn 10 and she has saved up some money so we can buy a new laptop together with her. She saved up about 100 euros and we are planning on spending about 350 euros.
We have been to a store so she could pick a model she likes and she has picked a 14” Asus Vivobook. No matter what the laptop we are buying as one of those models. I have looked around and found 3 (actually 5) models that fall around our price range.

I would like your opinion whether these laptops will be able to play Sims 4 at 1080p at 60fps with low-medium settings. We would prefer to stay slightly under budget so we can buy her something else alongside the laptop. But if the lower end laptops will not cut it we will buy the more expensive models.

I know neither of these laptops are ideal gaming laptops, but outside of Sims 4 they are all more than capable to fulfill her needs.

We have the base game and Horse Ranch and are not planning to buy any additional packs for now.

1: 525 euros (slightly over budget)

I5-1235u, Intel Iris XE, 2x8gb DDR4, 512GB SSD

 

2: 450-480 euros (at top of the budget)

I3-1215u, UHD 64eu, 1x 8gb DDR4, 512GB SSD (can upgrade to 1x16gb DDR4)

 

3: 350-380 euros (lower end of the budget, we can buy her something additional)

I3-N305, UHD 770, 1x 8gb DDR4, 256GB SSD (Ram is not upgradable)

 

I have also found 2 Ryzen models (Ryzen 3 75320u and Ryzen 5 7520u) with Radeon 610m. At 450 euros. But they seem to be a lot less capable of handling the game.

We would prefer to stay on the lower end of the budget, but not if that system will not meet the minimum requirements I have stated (1080p, ~60fps, low-medium settings)

If any of you have one of these 3 (5) systems I would like to know your settings, or I would love the insight of knowledgeable people to make a good choice.

Thank you.

  • dmvdmeij1989  I don't have any of these systems, but I can tell you the first one could run all current packs together on medium-high to high graphics settings before the patch a few days ago.  The game is supposed to have become more efficient after the patch, but the data is still coming in; at any rate, it's not a completely different game than before.  Your daughter might be able to get away with high-ultra settings with only Horse Ranch installed, but at the very least, medium-high should be fine.

    The second and third laptops are not nearly at the same level, and neither are the Ryzen laptops with a 7x20U processor.  If you can find one with a 7x30U CPU, or a 5500U or 5700U, that would be at or slightly above the level of the first laptop.

    Intel CPUs are a bit more difficult to assess because some of them have faster graphics only when there are two RAM modules present, so the memory is running in dual-channel mode.  So a laptop with 2x4 GB would have faster graphics than one with 1x8 GB, even though they're both listed with the same specs.  The i3 models have much slower graphics though—even an i3 13th-gen falls behind an i5 11th-gen in terms of graphics processing, again assuming the i5 has two memory modules.

    It would be nice to have more than 8 GB RAM as well, for futureproofing if nothing else, but you can upgrade later as long as the laptop supports it.  Sims 4 itself shouldn't use so much memory that it maxes out an 8 GB laptop with nothing else running on it, and if that does happen, it's typically because of too many background processes, not the game.  That in turn is simple enough to fix.

    Finally, if you'd like, I can take a look at online stores where you'd be willing to shop.  The language barrier isn't really an issue since the hardware is listed the same in any case.

  • Thanks Mark,

    Regarding the shops. My daughter is set on the model laptop. It is a 14" laptop with a numpad in the mousepad. She absolutely loves it. And would be dissapointed if the laptop she got did not have it. 

    We will also be using expiring gift cards for our share so we only have 2 shops we can buy from. The models I have listed are all the models available with both this model and at the stores we are going to buy.

    She literaly stated she would sacrafice preformence to get a laptop with this look. 
    But thank you for offering.

    I could link the laptops I have found if there are specs you want to see that I have not listed.

    I did figure the first option would preform the best since all specs are better. 

    It is good to know the more expensive one will be able to handle the game really well. Would still love some insight on someone that might be using a laptop with (similar) specs to the other options aswell to make a good comparison.