Can someone advise me on a laptop to play the sims 3 on please?

gonzo127

Cisco001 wrote: »

BTW, if you don't mind paying £615, you could consider customize laptop.
The main pros is you got a higher resolution screen.
It comes up with £615
http://www.pcspecialist.co.uk/notebooks/genesisIV/

Genesis IV: 15.6" Matte Full HD LED 16:9 Widescreen (1920x1080)

Intel® Core™i5 Dual Core Mobile Processor i5-3210M (2.50GHz) 3MB

4GB SAMSUNG 1600MHz SODIMM DDR3 MEMORY (1 x 4GB)

NVIDIA® GeForce® GT 640M - 2GB DDR3 Video RAM - DirectX® 11

500GB SEAGATE MOMENTUS XT HYBRID, SATA 3 Gb/s, 32MB CACHE (7200 rpm)

that is a pretty good option, especially consdiering a ram upgrade (should you need one in future) is very cheap, with the i5, hybrid drive and the gt640 would make it quick enough for what your after.

however one consideration might be to go back to the lower res screen and up the ram, this is likely to improve the performance due to the graphics card having to render less pixels and more ram to work with - however this would be at the loss of the screen res

Cisco001

Levono machine is OK
http://www.pcpro.co.uk/features/376891/pc-pro-excellence-awards-2012-laptops
http://www.pcworld.com/article/244419/laptop_reliability_and_satisfaction_macbooks_rule.html

Cisco001

gonzo127 wrote: »

that is a pretty good option, especially consdiering a ram upgrade (should you need one in future) is very cheap, with the i5, hybrid drive and the gt640 would make it quick enough for what your after.

however one consideration might be to go back to the lower res screen and up the ram, this is likely to improve the performance due to the graphics card having to render less pixels and more ram to work with - however this would be at the loss of the screen res

Not agree with comment on screen.
You can upgrade ram when ever you want to. But you won't upgrade the screen yourself.

gonzo127

Cisco001 wrote: »

Not agree with comment on screen.
You can upgrade ram when ever you want to. But you won't upgrade the screen yourself.

this is of course is totally true and i do not argue this point,

my main thinking was actually about the graphics chipset, as if it has the lower res screen, that would mean that the graphics card will have to render less pixels, which could improve the performance and allow for higher levels of eye candy, even if it is in a lower res,

or more longevity out of the graphics chipset on new games because of the lower res screen mitigating the higher power demands of other games

the thought about upping the ram was due to the drop in price of the system with moving to a lower res screen would give enough of the budget to get that upgrade included within budget, and not as the direct replacement for the screen (sorry for any confusion caused about that)

EDIT - thoughts based on this http://www.notebookcheck.net/NVIDIA-GeForce-GT-640M.71579.0.html showing that the sims 3 is playable in high setting with fps of 45 when played at the 1366 x 768 so upping that to 1920 x1080 could mean that high levels of details are no longer playable meaning a drop to medium settings would be required

Cisco001

gonzo127 wrote: »

this is of course is totally true and i do not argue this point,

my main thinking was actually about the graphics chipset, as if it has the lower res screen, that would mean that the graphics card will have to render less pixels, which could improve the performance and allow for higher levels of eye candy, even if it is in a lower res,

or more longevity out of the graphics chipset on new games because of the lower res screen mitigating the higher power demands of other games

the thought about upping the ram was due to the drop in price of the system with moving to a lower res screen would give enough of the budget to get that upgrade included within budget, and not as the direct replacement for the screen (sorry for any confusion caused about that)

With playing with SIM3, I won't expect there would be any problem with GT640m with 1920 x 1080 screen. But it would upto ellebee1986 to justify what game he/she will be playing in future

ellebee1986

The sims 3 is about the only hi tech game I play, other than that I only really use it for browsing.

ellebee1986

thanks to everyone for the advice, ive taken on board what I should be looking for roughly spec wise, ive come across this and wondered whether everyone thinks this would be upto scratch?

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Acer-Aspire-V5-Slim-Light-Laptop-GT620m-Graphics-Intel-Core-i3-8GB-RAM-/360503205515?pt=UK_Computing_Laptops_EH&hash=item53efaa5e8b

also is it worth paying the extra £70 to upgrade to an i5 instead of i3 and go for this?

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Acer-Aspire-5755G-Intel-Core-i5-Dual-Core-8GB-RAM-Dedicated-Nvidia-GT630M-/271068934347?pt=UK_Computing_Laptops_EH&hash=item3f1cf7b0cb

any advice appreciated again