Acer vs. Asus vs. Dell (TS4)

[Mei_Little_Bell]

Hi Gaming Experts ,

I am purchasing a laptop soon. For the past three months I've been doing research on the best budget laptops for TS4. I know what the recommended system requirements are, but would like an opinion beyond TS4 requirements. I don't mind playing TS4 on low settings, the laptop must just be good enough to prevent the game from lagging or crashing. I have found the following laptops: 

Acer:

https://www.takealot.com/acer-aspire-3-core-i5-1035g1-10th-gen-8gb-1tb-notebook/PLID70980324

Asus:

https://www.takealot.com/asus-vivobook-15-x512fa-core-i5-8gb-512gb-ssd-15-6-notebook-silv/PLID711070...

Dell:

https://www.takealot.com/dell-inspiron-core-i5-1035g1-8gb-256gb-ssd-15-6/PLID60868971

These are the three laptops I have found. All brands build their products differently. For example, gamers say that Dell is not a good gaming laptop, despite it having all the necessary requirements. Therefore, I just need someone's expertise to help me choose one for TS4, its expansion packs and mods. Upgrading the laptop in the future is a possibility as well.

Please Help!

Thanks in advance

[puzzlezaddict · Accepted solution]

@Mei_Little_Bell  All three laptops have integrated graphics chips that share memory.  How the product pages describe this setup might vary, but the setup itself is the same: the graphics chip is integrated into the CPU and borrows from main memory (RAM) rather than having its own, as dedicated cards do.

Playing on an integrated chip is going to negatively impact performance relative to a laptop with a dedicated card, but laptops with dedicated cards are more expensive than the ones you found.  Within the category of integrated chips, what matters is the speed of the chip, and the G1 chip is faster than an Intel UHD 620.

It looks like the Acer has an empty NVMe slot, which would mean you could add a solid state drive later if you wanted.  But the product page doesn't list the model number, so I can't be completely sure—I'm just going on the overall model and year, and guessing that this particular model only has one motherboard and overall layout.  If you want to be absolutely sure, contact the seller and ask for the model number, then find the model on this list:

https://www.crucial.com/upgrades/acer/aspire-a3

and see whether there's an NVMe SSD upgrade offered.  (You don't have to buy from Crucial, it's just the best site to check for compatiblity.)

Anyway, if you did install an SSD, you'd also want to reinstall Windows on that drive, which would be extra work.  It would also likely void the warranty, so you may want to wait until the warranty runs out on its own.  But you should then get the same performance, plus or minus some minor differences in speed, as you'd get on the Dell.  Whether that's worth the extra cost of the SSD and the extra effort to install it and Windows is up to you.

I will say though that having an SSD is a (usually significant) quality of life upgrade.  It doesn't make programs more reliable; Sims 4 wouldn't crash more often if installed on an HDD.  Computers are just a lot faster when they have an SSD, so there's much less waiting around while everything loads.

[EA_Darko]

Hey @Mei_Little_Bell the best thing to do is to look at the specs for The Sims 4 and any add on packs you want to use and then compare them against the system specs of the machine you are looking at: https://help.ea.com/en-us/help/the-sims/the-sims-4/the-sims-4-system-requirements/

Darko

[puzzlezaddict]

@Mei_Little_Bell  Among the three, I would skip the Asus because its graphics chip is older and somewhat slower than the chip in the other two.  The graphics chip will be the limiting factor in determining how well any of these laptops run Sims 4.  While the gap isn't particularly large, it might mean the difference between being able to turn up a certain graphics setting and not, so all else being equal, it's an easy decison.

To be clear though, these laptops could probably only handle Sims 4 on medium graphics settings overall, maybe with some adjustments up and down to suit your tastes.  If you don't end up installing all the demanding packs (most expansions and the newest game packs), you may be able to turn up the settings a bit; this will also depend on how high you want your in-game framerates to be.  It's fine to experiment a bit, I'm just saying don't expect smooth performance on high or ultra settings.

The only meaningful difference between the Acer and the Dell is that the Acer has a large but much slower hard drive.  If you really need the extra storage space, you may want the larger drive, but the smaller solid state drive in the Dell will run almost everything, including Windows, much faster.  So unless drive space is crucial, I'd definitely go with the Dell.  While 256 GB isn't a lot of storage, it's more than enough for Sims 4, lots of custom content, and plenty of other small apps like browsers.

I looked at the Takealot site and didn't see any better laptops for under R 12,000, so these may be your best options.  If you'd like me to look at other sites instead though, feel free to link them.

P.S.  Sims 4 lags in certain situations now on almost any system, so that part is unavoidable.  And sometimes it crashes too, although usually only due to in-game bugs that get addressed soon enough.  I'm just saying, getting a good computer doesn't mean the game will run well all the time, because the game has its own issues.

[Mei_Little_Bell]

@puzzlezaddict I've seen some of your answers to other gamers' questions and I'm not gonna lie, I was hoping to get your opinion. Will the graphics card with shared memory in the Dell have a negative affect on my gaming experience, or overall performance of the laptop compared to a normal integrated graphics card? And if I upgrade the Acer to an SSD in the future, will that help? 

[puzzlezaddict · Accepted solution]

@Mei_Little_Bell  All three laptops have integrated graphics chips that share memory.  How the product pages describe this setup might vary, but the setup itself is the same: the graphics chip is integrated into the CPU and borrows from main memory (RAM) rather than having its own, as dedicated cards do.

Playing on an integrated chip is going to negatively impact performance relative to a laptop with a dedicated card, but laptops with dedicated cards are more expensive than the ones you found.  Within the category of integrated chips, what matters is the speed of the chip, and the G1 chip is faster than an Intel UHD 620.

It looks like the Acer has an empty NVMe slot, which would mean you could add a solid state drive later if you wanted.  But the product page doesn't list the model number, so I can't be completely sure—I'm just going on the overall model and year, and guessing that this particular model only has one motherboard and overall layout.  If you want to be absolutely sure, contact the seller and ask for the model number, then find the model on this list:

https://www.crucial.com/upgrades/acer/aspire-a3

and see whether there's an NVMe SSD upgrade offered.  (You don't have to buy from Crucial, it's just the best site to check for compatiblity.)

Anyway, if you did install an SSD, you'd also want to reinstall Windows on that drive, which would be extra work.  It would also likely void the warranty, so you may want to wait until the warranty runs out on its own.  But you should then get the same performance, plus or minus some minor differences in speed, as you'd get on the Dell.  Whether that's worth the extra cost of the SSD and the extra effort to install it and Windows is up to you.

I will say though that having an SSD is a (usually significant) quality of life upgrade.  It doesn't make programs more reliable; Sims 4 wouldn't crash more often if installed on an HDD.  Computers are just a lot faster when they have an SSD, so there's much less waiting around while everything loads.

[Mei_Little_Bell]

@puzzlezaddict Thank you SO MUCH. No one was able to give me such answers. From the graphics card explanations to the SSD and model number explanations, I appreciate it all.

Thank you!