Gaming Laptop Help!

[rotiandchana]

The old laptop I used to play The Sims on finally gave out on me and while I’m sad about it, I’m taking this as a new opportunity to purchase something new and better. I used to play on ole’ faithful with medium settings, all the packs and the mods you can think of and it would lag quite a lot (keep in mind, the laptop was not intended for gaming). I was gonna just purchase the newer version of it, but I have some money in my savings and wouldn’t mind putting it to something more expensive that’ll be worth the while. I’ll only be using this new laptop for playing the Sims 4 on high settings with all the packs and lots of mods/cc (my old folder had about 5 GB worth of mods). I already have a MacBook that I use for everyday and school related things. I‘m debating between these two:

HP 15.6” Gaming Pavilion

AND

Acer Nitro 5 15.6” Gaming Laptop:

I was wondering if either of these would essentially be a good choice to play on. If not, would anybody have anything else to recommend? Preferably anything under  $900. Once again, please keep in mind that I will ONLY be using this laptop to play the Sims 4 on (hopefully) medium-high settings, all the packs, and lots of mods/ custom content. Thank You! 

[puzzlezaddict · Accepted solution]

@rotiandchana  Both of those laptops would run all current Sims 4 packs together on ultra graphics settings.  But the Acer's graphics card is significantly faster, maybe 40% in games, although it depends somewhat on the game.  So the Acer would have a larger margin to accommodate your high poly custom content, plus the increased demands of future expansion packs.

We don't know what those future EPs will look like, but at the very least, the cumulative effect of running all packs together is going to take its toll.  An Nvidia 1650 may or may not quite be able to run all content combined on ultra by the time Sims 4 is out of development, but a 1050 would probably only manage high settings.

If you're looking at Best Buy and are willing to spend $20 more, this Acer is a better option.  Instead of a combination 128 GB SSD/1 TB HDD, it has a single 512 GB solid state drive.  With the smaller SSD, you'd likely need to install Sims 4 and any other games you might play on the larger, slower mechanical drive, which would increase loading times.  (The game would still run fine once loaded.)  If you have a lot of cc, you might need to move Documents to the HDD as well.  With a single 512 GB SSD, you wouldn't need to worry about drive space, plus you wouldn't have to manage two drives.

https://www.bestbuy.com/site/acer-nitro-5-17-3-gaming-laptop-intel-core-i5-8gb-memory-nvidia-geforce...

But the Acer you linked will still be more than fine, if you'd rather stick with that instead.

[puzzlezaddict · Accepted solution]

@rotiandchana  Both of those laptops would run all current Sims 4 packs together on ultra graphics settings.  But the Acer's graphics card is significantly faster, maybe 40% in games, although it depends somewhat on the game.  So the Acer would have a larger margin to accommodate your high poly custom content, plus the increased demands of future expansion packs.

We don't know what those future EPs will look like, but at the very least, the cumulative effect of running all packs together is going to take its toll.  An Nvidia 1650 may or may not quite be able to run all content combined on ultra by the time Sims 4 is out of development, but a 1050 would probably only manage high settings.

If you're looking at Best Buy and are willing to spend $20 more, this Acer is a better option.  Instead of a combination 128 GB SSD/1 TB HDD, it has a single 512 GB solid state drive.  With the smaller SSD, you'd likely need to install Sims 4 and any other games you might play on the larger, slower mechanical drive, which would increase loading times.  (The game would still run fine once loaded.)  If you have a lot of cc, you might need to move Documents to the HDD as well.  With a single 512 GB SSD, you wouldn't need to worry about drive space, plus you wouldn't have to manage two drives.

https://www.bestbuy.com/site/acer-nitro-5-17-3-gaming-laptop-intel-core-i5-8gb-memory-nvidia-geforce...

But the Acer you linked will still be more than fine, if you'd rather stick with that instead.

[rotiandchana]

@puzzlezaddict Awesome! I'm definitely going to order the one you linked, $20 dollars extra won't hurt. Thank you so much!