Re: Looking for a new laptop to play sims 4 on and for schoolwork!!
@tdiluvrx This newer laptop you linked is better than the Surface because it has twice the RAM and storage. But for the same price, this Acer has both upgrades plus a faster graphics chip:
I wouldn't use the touchscreen for Sims 4, but it might be convenient to have for other purposes. This laptop is marginally heavier than the other but still small and light overall.
This one has the same internal hardware as the one above plus a better screen: brighter, more pixels for a more crisp look, plus a higher refresh rate:
I wouldn't expect you to hit the max 120 fps in Sims 4, at least not if you're playing on medium-high settings or higher, but everyday tasks will feel more smooth, even something as simple as dragging around a window. You might still need to lower the resolution in-game, but it would be fine to experiment a bit with the settings.
This one has all of the above, including exactly the same screen, plus a significantly faster graphics chip, almost twice as fast in gaming on average. That's enough to get near ultra settings without any custom content installed.
Personally, I'd go for the last one, but it's not my computer or my money.
As for custom content, there are two issues. One is that the sheer amount will increase the initial loading times no matter what kind you use. This can be decreased, but not fixed, by suppressing the pop-up list of mods and cc at the Main Menu. The other is that high poly (high-resolution) cc is more demanding than EA-made items. So depending on your taste in cc, it can significantly impact performance and/or necessitate turning down some graphics settings. But here again, it's fine to experiment with the settings until you find a good balance between look and performance.
The number of played sims in a given save will increase the save file size by a significant amount, and the amount of RAM that save takes to run by a less-dramatic but still obvious margin. The number of sims in the active household has an even smaller effect. But it's not really important in the long run. From what I've seen, a save that uses close to 10 GB RAM to run is toast on any system, so you don't need to worry about budgeting more memory than that for the game.
If you have more questions, about these or in general, please feel free to ask.
