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missdancer145's avatar
missdancer145
2 years ago
Solved

Can this laptop handle Sims 4 with expansions?

Would this laptop be able to handle Sims 4 with expansions please? 🙂 

https://www.currys.co.uk/products/asus-vivobook-16-x1605za-16-laptop-intel-core-i5-512-gb-ssd-silver-10251628.html 

Any other recommendations under £600 would be greatly appreciated! 

Thank you! 

pc
  • puzzlezaddict's avatar
    puzzlezaddict
    2 years ago

    @missdancer145  I personally would pay the extra to play my favorite game on ultra settings, at least up to a point.  (I wouldn't be here telling you to spend £2,000 if that's what was required; that would just be unreasonable.)  I tend to think about these things in terms of how much time I'll spend with the game, or using the computer overall, and for that, another £100-200 for a game I might play for literally a thousand hours on this laptop seems well worth the price.

    Sims 4 will lag at times; that's just what it does and is an inevitable result of the way it's built.  The question is not how to avoid lag but how to ensure it resolves as quickly as is possible given the constraints of the game engine.  For that, the processor matters a lot, and you're looking at models that are all, for practical purposes, reasonably close to the best options out there.  This can get a little complicated, but the goal is to give Sims 4 four processor cores all to itself, with those cores running at a high clock speed.

    For that, a gaming laptop is usually somewhat better than a non-gaming laptop, although some CPUs in non-gaming laptops are also very capable.  (It depends on the model, and there are too many to summarize neatly.)  But this isn't the difference between lag and no lag, or a lot and a little; it's more about resolving the incidents quickly.

    The larger difference is in graphics quality, where the gaming laptops you're considering are more than twice as fast as any laptop without a dedicated graphics card.  Here again, I think it's totally reasonable to spend more money to be able to play comfortably on ultra graphics settings—you're going to be staring at the game a lot, and it's more fun if it looks pretty.

    At the end of the day though, it's not my money.  And I'm also a person who learned to build a gaming PC in order to install the parts I wanted and play higher-end games, so I might not be the most objective source.

6 Replies

  • puzzlezaddict's avatar
    puzzlezaddict
    Hero+
    2 years ago

    @missdancer145  This laptop should be able to handle all current Sims 4 content on medium-high to high graphics settings, and it's a good laptop overall.  But you could get the same performance for less money, or you could get a gaming laptop for the same price.  For example:

    https://www.currys.co.uk/products/lenovo-ideapad-gaming-3-15.6-gaming-laptop-amd-ryzen-5-rtx-3050-512-gb-ssd-10249077.html

    The dedicated graphics card in this laptop means you could run the game on ultra settings rather than medium-high.  It does only have 8 GB RAM, but that's not nearly as much of an issue as it could be on a non-gaming laptop.  The dedicated graphics card has its own video memory rather than borrowing from main memory, meaning that extra 2 GB or so of RAM will still be available for the processor.

    I'm not seeing any other gaming laptops for under £700 right now, although that could change in a few weeks with the holiday sales (no guarantee, just a general pattern over the years).  So this is currently your best bet in terms of gaming systems.

    If you're more interested in a non-gaming laptop, you have a lot of options for £600 or less, so you can afford to be picky.  Are there any other details that matter to you, for example screen size or weight?  Either way, let me know, and I can list other options.  Or if you're happy with the one you've linked, it's a reasonable choice too and will certainly perform as well as any non-gaming laptop I could find right now.

  • puzzlezaddict's avatar
    puzzlezaddict
    Hero+
    2 years ago

    @missdancer145  Those are both good options, but you don't really need an RTX 3060 for Sims 4.  That doesn't mean you'll see no benefit at all from it—you'd especially notice a difference if you installed high poly custom content or a Reshade-style utility—only that you can run the game itself on ultra settings without the upgrade.  The processor in these two laptops is the same, meaning the inevitable slowdowns due to the game engine itself will generally resolve at the same speed.

    It's nice that both of these laptops have 16 GB RAM rather than 8, although you could upgrade the Lenovo I linked as well, and for more like £20-30 if you didn't need to pay anyone to do it for you.

    If you do want the faster graphics card, this is a viable alternative as well.  I don't think it's better than the Lenovo you linked, just equal and essentially the same price, so if you like it better than the Lenovo for some other reason, it's worth considering.

    https://www.argos.co.uk/product/3414882?clickPR=plp:11:34

    All of these are good options, so pick whichever one makes you happy and doesn't cost more than you're comfortable paying.

  • missdancer145's avatar
    missdancer145
    2 years ago

    Amazing, thank you! 

    Do you think I'm looking and paying for something too high-spec just to play Sims 4? If so, what would be your recommendations? I'd hate to be spending out on something that I don't really need just to play Sims comfortably without any lags 🙂 

  • puzzlezaddict's avatar
    puzzlezaddict
    Hero+
    2 years ago

    @missdancer145  I personally would pay the extra to play my favorite game on ultra settings, at least up to a point.  (I wouldn't be here telling you to spend £2,000 if that's what was required; that would just be unreasonable.)  I tend to think about these things in terms of how much time I'll spend with the game, or using the computer overall, and for that, another £100-200 for a game I might play for literally a thousand hours on this laptop seems well worth the price.

    Sims 4 will lag at times; that's just what it does and is an inevitable result of the way it's built.  The question is not how to avoid lag but how to ensure it resolves as quickly as is possible given the constraints of the game engine.  For that, the processor matters a lot, and you're looking at models that are all, for practical purposes, reasonably close to the best options out there.  This can get a little complicated, but the goal is to give Sims 4 four processor cores all to itself, with those cores running at a high clock speed.

    For that, a gaming laptop is usually somewhat better than a non-gaming laptop, although some CPUs in non-gaming laptops are also very capable.  (It depends on the model, and there are too many to summarize neatly.)  But this isn't the difference between lag and no lag, or a lot and a little; it's more about resolving the incidents quickly.

    The larger difference is in graphics quality, where the gaming laptops you're considering are more than twice as fast as any laptop without a dedicated graphics card.  Here again, I think it's totally reasonable to spend more money to be able to play comfortably on ultra graphics settings—you're going to be staring at the game a lot, and it's more fun if it looks pretty.

    At the end of the day though, it's not my money.  And I'm also a person who learned to build a gaming PC in order to install the parts I wanted and play higher-end games, so I might not be the most objective source.

  • missdancer145's avatar
    missdancer145
    2 years ago

    Totally agree with all of that! I'll deffo consider a gaming laptop and those options mentioned above 🙂 

    You've been a great help- so thank you! 

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