Re: Best All-in-1 computer for Sims 4

@DenisevdWoude92  G-sync is Nvidia's proprietary technology.  FreeSync was created by AMD and does the same thing, for practical purposes, but it works with any graphics card.  You don't actually need either one.  Adaptive sync is a vertical sync setting within the Nvidia Control Panel; I'm not sure whether AMD GPU drivers have a similar feature.

All of these technologies attempt to remove the possibility of screen tearing due to the monitor displaying parts of two different frames at the same time, usually the current one and the previous one.  This can happen because as the monitor refreshes, it loads the most current data available at that exact moment, and not all portions of the screen refresh at exactly the same time.  So if a new frame comes in from the GPU in the middle of the refresh, the already-refreshed pixels will be showing the old frame, and the ones still refreshing will show the new frame.

Imagine you're moving the camera around, and the top half of your monitor displays what you were looking at 10 milliseconds ago while the bottom displays what you were looking at 5 ms ago.  Now imagine your game looks just a tiny bit broken like that all the time, except when you're not moving the camera.  It's not pleasant.

G-sync and FreeSync allow the monitor to wait until it receives the entire frame from the GPU to display it.  The monitor also has a totally flexible refresh rate rather than a few presets, e.g. 30, 60, 100, and 144 Hz on a 144 Hz monitor.  So if the GPU is providing 53 frames per second, the monitor can display each of those 53 frames right as they come in, with an effective refresh rate of 53 Hz, rather than refreshing at a constant rate and trying to fit the frames into that rhythm.

This is great for fast-paced games where you want the data to be as fresh as possible, for example competitive shooters, but matters much less for Sims games.  So while it's a nice feature to have, it's not worth spending a lot of extra money.  You can avoid screen tearing with only a bit more delay in the frames appearing by applying vertical sync, or adaptive sync if it works better, alone or in combination with an fps cap.

If you like AOC monitors, this one would work well.  It's an IPS panel with good-enough brightness and a 165 Hz refresh rate, which is more than you'll get in Sims 4 anyway.  (That will be less about the graphics card being maxed out than the game engine being what it is, but either way, no point in paying for a higher refresh rate than you can use.)

https://www.alternate.nl/AOC/24G2SPAE-BK-23-8-inch-gaming-monitor/html/product/1862248

This is brighter than the LG monitors I linked before, and equal in theory to the first one you linked, but as mentioned, IPS has better color range than VA, so the effect is not equal.  In a dark room, the dimmer screens would be fine, but if you play with the lights on or sun coming through a window, you'll probably want a brighter screen.

Another helper mentioned to me that iiyama is a Japanese brand with very good but not top-quality products.  I hadn't heard of the company and would still do some reading if I were considering buying one of its monitors myself, but let me know if you'd like me to look at these options as well.

Please don't apologize for asking so many questions.  I answer here because I enjoy it, both helping players pick out the right system for them and talking about hardware in general.  And this is a significant purchase for most people, so it's important to provide the best information I reasonably can.

@puzzlezaddict Okay, please correct me if I'm wrong, but if I understand correctly, it basically doesn't matter which monitor I buy in terms of FreeSync and G-Sync, right?
I see that the AOC monitor you linked has Adaptive Sync, so hopefully that works just fine.

I really don't think it would be pleasant if screen tearing occurs so I would like to prevent that.

What exactly is an fps cap? I've never heard of that, is it built in as standard or do you have to buy it extra if necessary?

The AOC monitors all look good, but they are cheap, of course that doesn't have to mean anything bad, but sometimes cheap ends up being expensive, but I think it’s a trustworthy brand, so I think that if I buy a monitor from there I’ll be fine, a higher brightness is certainly my preference, so I think this monitor is perfect.

I've actually never heard of Iiyama, so I don't think I would quickly consider purchasing anything from it, but it's good to know, because as I said before, I saw the brand on the Coolblue website, but had never heard of it before, so I didn't pay much attention to it at the time.

It's so kind of you to say that I don't have to apologize for asking so many questions, but sometimes I just feel so stupid, but the last time I played Sims on a PC, it was Sims 2, and that’s quite a long time ago.
Anyway, I think it’s really nice of you to want to help others in making the right choices in terms of what system works best for them.

Until now I have always played Sims 4 on a PS4, but because it is getting slower and slower with longer loading screens and because I can’t download Mods and cc with it, I wanted to buy a PS5, but then I realized that there is still no option to download mods and cc, so after a long time of thinking and consideration, I decided to switch to Sims 4 for PC and that I have to accept the fact that I have to buy all the expansion packs again.

@DenisevdWoude92  It doesn't matter, for practical purposes, whether your monitor has G-sync, FreeSync, or neither.  Adaptive sync isn't a monitor setting, regardless of what the product page says; it's a setting within Nvidia's graphics control panel, and you can apply it independent of the monitor(s) you're using.

An fps cap is a cap on the frames per second the graphics card generates.  The idea here is that there's no point in generating more frames than the monitor can display.  Doing so can cause screen tearing and also make your GPU work harder than necessary, which isn't necessarily a problem but also doesn't accomplish anything.  The Nvidia Control Panel has a Max Frame Rate setting, which is a hard fps cap, so you wouldn't need to install anything else.  I was just saying that you can prevent screen tearing with existing built-in tools rather than needing the monitor to do it for you.

@puzzlezaddict That's good to know, thank you for the additional explanation. I will think about it and take it into account in my considerations.