I am so excited to make this thread after lurking for so long and saving all my spare cash. I am finally prepared to invest in a good Desktop and would love some advice from the resident tech gods.
1.) My budget is $1,500. While I'm willing to go that high, it'd be great to get what I'm looking for without using the whole budget.
2.) I have Sims 3 and 80% of the expansions including Seasons and Pets. I'd like to play on Medium to High graphics.
3.) I do use mods, CC, and store content.
4.) Other games I wish to play are: Minecraft, Steam, and Eudemons Online.
If there's anything else that I need to add, please feel free to let me know. Thank you for any and all help! It's all greatly appreciated.
1
Comments
And are you in the US, with these being US Dollars?
With this budget, you should be able to do a custom build where you, with some assistance, specify the parts and the vendor assembles the machine for you. And with these requirements, you should be able to stay well below your budget. Will you also need a monitor?
Paging some colleagues.
@phoebebebe13
@chesterbigbird
NRaas has moved!
Our new site is at http://nraas.net
If I can keep it under $1,000 I would be very happy so a pre-made PC would be enough. I do need a monitor and I am in the US. It's Steam the platform. I have yet to play anything from it so I wasn't sure how to refer to it.
@phoebebebe13
I haven't started playing anything since I have a Mac Air and don't want to strain it. What I've been considering is: My Time in Portia, Farm Folks, and Stonehearth. I hope those aren't super demanding?
Lenovo IdeaPad 330 15.6 Inch
AMD A6
4GB 1TB Laptop
Lenovo Ideapad 320
Processor: Intel® Pentium™ N4200
Operating System: Windows 10 Home
Hard Drive: 1TB HDD
Graphics: Intel® HD Graphics 505
Memory: 4GB
The TS4 Help Center area on this forum is closing in a few days. Players needing such assistance are advised to post on EA's Answers HQ board (in the correct section for TS4) since otherwise there might not be enough time for a proper conversation.
NRaas has moved!
Our new site is at http://nraas.net
@Helitorian I would ask @chesterbigbird she is the desktop expert. I was asking what you play so she can get an idea of what specs you need in a computer. Some people play heavy games on steam that require a more powerful computer
What I was really wondering though is, what is better: a desktop or a laptop? Can I get the same performance with a laptop? Also, would it make a difference to just buy a desktop or build one?
I keep going around in circles as to which computer is best, please give me some guidance :) Thanks!!!!!
Custom configurations are recommended over a certain budget amount ($1,200 USD certainly qualifies) because you get to choose exactly the components you want, with some help as needed, and you get higher quality parts than off the shelf.
Some basic guidelines for TS3 with all EPs (what we call "the entire game"), it's not all that different for TS4.
Processor - i5 quad core or higher, i7 would be better (especially for TS4), or the AMD equivalents. At least 2.4 GHz but most desktop level i5s and higher are already there. TS4 might need more power than that, but the game isn't "finished" yet.
Memory (RAM) - At least 8 GB. I wouldn't buy a new computer today with less than 16 GB, but the games don't need that much. That would be more for future-proofing and running programs alongside of the game at the same time.
Graphics Card - Definitely a dedicated Nvidia or AMD card of sufficient capacity. On the current series, at least an Nvidia GTX 1050/1050Ti, a 1060 would be ideal, or again the AMD equivalents. Older cards are fine too if they are of sufficient strength within their own series, but they don't tend to make new mid-to-higher range computers with older cards. Lower end cards will cause problems.
Hard Drive - At least 512 GB, multiple internal drives are fine as long as the one the games are installed on and the user Documents folder resides on is at least that. Solid State Drives (SSDs) are great, TS3 can certainly benefit from those (for TS4 these don't matter), but ones of sufficient size can drive the price tag way up.
The case must have sufficient cooling and there must be an adequate power supply to run all of these components efficiently.
NRaas has moved!
Our new site is at http://nraas.net
I'd read that the 1050/1060 graphics cards have issues with TS3. Like the game doesn't recognize the card or something. (also thanks for the speedy reply)
Not recognized does not mean the card isn't used properly (that would be not detected). It only means the game doesn't know which default profile to associate with it, so it gets a generic one. That can be changed and formal recognition for today's cards can be achieved with some one-time edits to the base game's sgr files. Not everyone really needs to do this, though.
Any time anyone says anything about TS3 that begins with "I've heard/read that..." you can probably dismiss the rest as nonsense. Uhm, unless they heard or read it from a tech responder here, of course. Okay, I don't really mean that but there's a lot of "bad" information out there provided by players who unfortunately don't really know what they are talking about or are assigning blame for something not great they are experiencing to an incorrect cause.
NRaas has moved!
Our new site is at http://nraas.net
https://forums.thesims.com/en_US/discussion/comment/16760573/#Comment_16760573
NRaas has moved!
Our new site is at http://nraas.net
> So I have a GTX 1050 Ti and my pictures always look really bad in the sims. It is driving me kind of insane and I was wondering if there is anything I could do about it. I have seen others play with my card and it looks much better. What do I do?
My DeviceConfig says that my card is found and matched but it looks the same without it recognized :(
Are you on a laptop or desktop? Make sure you game in the launcher is set to 1929 X1080p 60 hz. This is the resolution your card can handle and should be running
If your on a desktop what is the resolution of your monitor ?
- Are you sure graphics settings are set to high/ultra?
- Could you be more descriptive about the graphics issue you're experiencing? Jagged edges, blurriness, etc...
- The Sims 3 shouldn't have this card already recognized since it's not technically in the card database unless you've taken the time to edit the SGR files yourself. If you have done so, it may be worth a shot putting the original SGR files back in place (if those were backed up beforehand).
- Make sure the graphics driver is up to date; *especially if this is about The Sims 4.
- If you're using Nvidia GeForce Experience with the game optimized, try reverting the optimization.
S3 simblr: http://simplysimming.tumblr.com/
S4 simblr: http://simlogic.tumblr.com/
Could we also please see your DeviceConfig.log? It's a file that will be in your TS3 user game folder in Documents, it might show up as just DeviceConfig if you have Windows set to hide file extensions. It's not very long, you could just copy/paste that in here, and we only need the first 40 lines or so and not the lists of game options that follow. We may need to see a full dxdiag report also, but this is a good place to start.
NRaas has moved!
Our new site is at http://nraas.net
Name: Sims3
Version:
Build: Release
=== Rating info ===
GPU: 5 GPU Memory: 1 CPU: 4 RAM: 4 CPU Speed: 3394 Threading: 3
Adjusted CPU: 4126 RAM: 16334 Adjusted RAM: 15822 Cores: 16
=== Machine info ===
OS version: Windows 7 6.1.7600
OS prod type: 0
OS major ver: 6
OS minor ver: 1
OS SP major ver: 0
OS SP minor ver: 0
OS is 64Bit: 1
CPU: AuthenticAMD
Brand: AMD Ryzen 7 1700 Eight-Core Processor
Family: 15
Model: 1
Cores: 16
HT: 0
x64: 0
Memory: 16334MB
Free memory: 12841MB
Computer: DESKTOP-632T89K
=== Graphics device info ===
Number: 0
Name (driver): NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050 Ti
Name (database): GeForce GTX 1050 Ti [Found: 1, Matched: 1]
Vendor: NVIDIA
Chipset: Vendor: 10de, Device: 1c82, Board: 37641458, Chipset: 00a1
Driver: nvldumd.dll, Version: 23.21.13.9101, GUID: D7B71E3E-5FC2-11CF-6554-69171BC2DA35
Driver version: 9101
Monitor: \\.\DISPLAY1
Texture memory: 32MB <<OVERRIDE>>
Vertex program: 3.0
Pixel program: 3.0
Hardware TnL: 1
This picture shows my problem really well.
Note that going through this procedure might not help, but it certainly shouldn't hurt or make things any worse. I don't think you are getting as much performance out of that card as you could be.
NRaas has moved!
Our new site is at http://nraas.net