Getting a new computer - advice needed!
saraswati:
My experience has been that Sims3 will run adequately on a 512mb graphics card, but the game runs much more smoothly on a card with at least 896mb of graphics ram.
Greyform:
Quote from: saraswati on 2009 December 15, 20:45:53
My experience has been that Sims3 will run adequately on a 512mb graphics card, but the game runs much more smoothly on a card with at least 896mb of graphics ram.
Sheesh, mine's only a 256mb, and I have no problem running the game. Of course, my video card is the weakest link on my machine.
saraswati:
Greyform my suggestion is more what I've noticed it takes to make the game run well, it runs on older spec cards however the way EA's coded the game results in some strange rendering of the game at times.
The one I experienced the most with the 512mb card was that once I had a couple of peices of CC I'd get "white objects" on larger lots for anything up to a minute while the game struggled with rendering the textures.
Rayea:
Most of what needs to be told has been said so far.
Being that I live in the UK, most of the places I can buy from are likely to be too local to me to be of any use.
But I will say a few things.
If you are going to spend some decent money on a PC, PLEASE remember to buy a decent, heavy duty PowerSuply Unit (PSU)
Some of the good VidCards need a 1000watt psu or higher (I am told its the GTX ones that need that much. a GT can survive on lower)
We had a gent come buy parts. I knew him, as he was a regular buying gaming parts. He played Everquest2...Spent just over 3grand on parts. Dual SLI cards, that were close to £200 each...a £400 pound, 2 mainboard capable, water cooling intergrated, heavyduty gamers case....Dual Core Pentium CPU (back befor QuadCore became the new Dual Core, hehe)
And you know what? He spent 4 hours on the water cooling, 1 to set it in place, 3 to make sure there were no bubbles...And his PSU fried the mainboard, the chip and gave memory probelms to his expensive VidCards...
Becasue he didnt get one that was realy up to the needs.
So, that is my one piece of advice....Make sure your PSU can handle anyhitng your PC throws at it. :)
KawaiiMiyo:
Quote from: GnatGoSplat on 2009 December 15, 14:19:59
Anything built within the last 2-years should be more than adequate.
I'll second this. My computer I got a few years back, One of the cheapest at the time. It's an athlon dual-core, 2ghz processor, and 2 gigs ram. I only spent $250 on it at Best Buy. Works fine for me. It came with a lousy integrated video card though, so I just got a new one. Only about $100, and it has 1gb of ddr3 ram. I'd recommend tigerdirect.com for video cards. There might be better sites out there, but I found that to offer some of the lower prices.
Anyways with my current computer, my game runs fine at max graphics, if there is any lag or skipping in my game, (Which I hardly notice, until I have the game running for a few hours.) It would more be my computer/processor than the video card. So I would think a computer similar to mine might be considered more of a minimum if anything. (But even the cheapest computers now are probably better than what I have) Oh I'm also running Windows XP o.O I heard if you use vista or newer, you need higher specs to run the game? So perhaps mine wouldn't do so well in that case.
But with a $1k budget, I'd agree that nearly any new computer should be fine, as long as you buy a decent video card for it. If you are like me and don't know that much about hardware, if it helps I'll share one thing I learned. Don't settle for integrated built-in video cards. :-X Buy 'em separate. I hadn't realized until now what a huge difference it makes.
Anyways I know I didn't have too much to add as far as advice goes. But perhaps having another example or seeing another persons specs might help. To have something else to compare to. (At least it does with me!)
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