Help with new laptop

Mareah

Hi!! I need help with a new laptop i am thinking of buying, here is the link:
https://www.amazon.com/MSI-Bravo-15-7-4800H-RX5500M/dp/B088ZQMGVS
Ok so my current one works just fine but the colors are all messed up and pixelated becasue of the issue with Nvidia so i am looking for a new one with an amd card instead and i am going to try and sell my current one. I dont know if i am being hasty but this issue is not new so i dont know if they will adress it. Would you recommend i buy a new one or am i just being insane? lol Anyway, Is this one good enough to run sims 3 and 4 with many packs and store content and on max settings? I will keep it in mind until i decide what to do.

puzzlezaddict

The RX 5500M is about 10% faster, on average, than an Nvidia 1650 (mobile), and a 1650 should run Sims 3 on ultra settings, minus the two (water and high-detail lots) that usually need to be turned down somewhat on any system. So the 5500M would probably also handle ultra settings. I say "probably" because the relative performance of the two cards can vary quite a lot in different games. Still, you should be fine, and laptops with the 5600M, which is significantly faster, are unsurprisingly significantly more expensive, plus there aren't that many of them.

The other hardware is fine, or more than fine, for TS3. I would hesitate to buy from that particular seller, given its ratings, but the same laptop is usually available on plenty of other sites.

However, it's not clear that the colors in Sims 3 would look better on an AMD card. There's obviously a problem with Nvidia cards, but I haven't seen screenshots from AMD GPUs in a while, certainly not since people collectively settled on a definition of what changed with the colors of Sims 3 back in December. It's a lot of money to spend for a laptop that might be exactly the same as the one you have now.

Maybe someone will show up with a fully updated Windows and a new enough AMD card to give a definitive answer. Personally, I'd wait until that happened to buy anything. But yes, if it comes to that, this particular laptop should be a good choice for Sims 3.

Mareah

@puzzlezaddict Thank you so much for helping! Yes, i am going to wait a little more before going with this since it is lots of money, might look around for amd users to see how are their graphics looking. I contacted Nvidia about it and they adviced me to download this thing called DDU and follow a few steps so i am hopefully going to try that too.

Just one last thing i want to ask. I have Nvidia 1660 currently, how does it compare to The RX 5500M? I dont mind if the Nvidia card is slightly better.

puzzlezaddict

That depends on which exact card you have. In a laptop, that would be either a 1660 ti Mobile or a 1660 ti Max-Q. The Max-Q is about 20-25% faster than a 5500M, and the Mobile is about 45% faster, although again there's a lot of variation from one game to another. I certainly wouldn't trade a 1660 ti of any kind for a 5500M overall, although I understand that the poor graphics in Sims 3 is the problem here.

By DDU, I take it the Nvidia person meant Display Driver Uninstaller. That's not going to help unless there's a problem with your existing graphics driver—the point is to clean uninstall a potentially corrupt driver and install a fresh copy. The issues with Sims 3 are so widespread though that it's highly unlikely every affected player has a corrupt GPU driver that also wouldn't be fixed by a regular update. Still, if you want to try, there's not much harm. Here's a guide to using DDU, in case it helps:

https://crinrict.com/blog/2019/02/clean-re-install-of-graphics-drivers-with-display-driver-uninstaller-ddu.html

Mareah

@puzzlezaddict Mine is the 1660 ti Max-Q. Sorry for the silly question but does it being 20-25% faster than the 5500M makes a noticable difference? What would you say is the amd equivalent to my nvidia card, so i can keep that in mind when i am searching for a laptop. It doesnt seem like the 5500M would be a good alternative then.

Yeah, i also didnt feel like my drivers were the issue since so many others have this problem too, but i didnt want to discourage the agent by suggesting that. I linked them to the thread a member here created for this issue in Nvidia boards so hopefully that leads to somthing too. Thanks for such fast and detailed responses!

puzzlezaddict

Having a slower graphics card certainly makes a difference, but whether that difference is noticeable depends on the user. Do you generally get higher framerates than 60, and does that improve things for you? (You could manually limit fps to 60 and test.) Do you already get fps drops in certain situations, and how much does that bother you? Some fps drops are inevitable due to how the game is programmed and its reaction to busy lots, but how far framerates fall is partly a factor of how fast the graphics card is in the first place, i.e. a faster card will be able to generate higher fps even in those situations. Whether that affects your enjoyment of the game is highly subjective though.

An AMD 5600M is between the 1660 ti Max-Q and Mobile cards in performance, although it's closer to the Mobile. So it would actually be an upgrade over your current card, provided the other hardware performs up to expectations. But the 5600M isn't that common yet—the only one I can remember seeing actually on sale somewhere is this Dell:

https://www.bestbuy.com/site/dell-g5-15-6-fhd-gaming-laptop-amd-ryzen-5-8gb-ram-amd-radeon-rx-5600m-256gb-ssd-60hz-red-print-backlit-keyboard-grey/6409419.p?skuId=6409419
https://www.bestbuy.com/site/dell-g5-15-6-gaming-laptop-144hz-amd-ryzen-7-8gb-memory-amd-radeon-rx-5600m-512gb-solid-state-drive-grey/6409421.p?skuId=6409421

That may change in the coming months, although Nvidia cards are still going to be a lot more common in laptops.

Mareah

@puzzlezaddict I limited my fps to 60 using Nvidia control panel, but i don't keep an eye on my frame rate while i am playing, it is not a problem tho because i changed my mind about the 5500M since i just looked at the laptops you linked and they are in my price range so i am going to consider them instead. Thanks a lot! You saved me a lot of time by suggesting them, thank you so much! I might end up deciding to buy one sooner than i thought, if this graphical issue gets on my nerves lol. One last thing, does a slower card cause items to load slower when you enter a lot? because i think that would be the only thing that might bother me with a slower graphics card.

puzzlezaddict

I think the time it takes items to load on a lot is dependent on the speed of the GPU and the speed of the GPU memory (VRAM), aside of course from the number of items on the lot and whether the game engine is struggling with any other tasks at the moment. Interestingly, the 5500M actually runs a little faster than the 5600M, and its effective memory speed is a bit slower. The 5600M makes up for it by having a lot more compute units, as well as some other stuff that I'd have to look up; the point is its overall benchmarks are a lot better than the 5500M.

The reason I bring this up though is that Sims 3 can't use all the power of high-end graphics cards, which is why something like memory speed might matter. It doesn't help to have 6 GB VRAM rather than 4 if the game can only use a fraction of that; the absolute speed is then likely more important. However, a 1660 ti has the same VRAM speed as a 5600M, so I wouldn't worry about that. The 5600M's speed (not its memory speed, the clock rate of the card itself) is also within the range of the Nvidia 1650, which, while slower than a 1660 ti, is still more than fast enough for Sims 3.

All this is to say... probably not? I don't think there would be any noticeable difference in the time it took to load objects unless you had a totally overstuffed lot that even the 1660 ti needed 30 seconds or so to load. Even then, you might need a stopwatch to notice. Since I haven't seen anyone play Sims 3 on this particular laptop though, I don't want to promise you it would be exactly the same, or near enough. No one uses Sims 3 in benchmarks these days, and I don't know anyone with this particular card, let alone someone who'd let me borrow their laptop.

Anyway, the 5600M is so fast, I can't imagine it bogging down in Sims 3, even if it's a couple percentage points slower in certain situations. The limiting factors would probably still be the game engine and the VRAM limit, not the card itself.

Mareah

@puzzlezaddict Awesome, it does seem like a solid card! I thought my current card was the best i could get in a laptop, i didnt know there were better ones. I am feeling really curious about this amd card right now. Although i dont know much about them but hopefully if i get the laptop i can try making benchmarks for you since you are intersted in pc and laptops haha! I feel like we could talk for hours about this kind of stuff without me losing interest, it was really fun and informative reading all your replies. Anyway, thanks again for your help!

puzzlezaddict

You're welcome, and if you do end up getting one of these laptops, I'd love to hear how it runs Sims 3.