Buying a new laptop for Sims 4

[FatTribble23]

Hey everyone I have a question to ask. 

I have wanted a new laptop for a long time now - mine is 7 years old - and I've found these 3 that look promising.

HP Pavilion Gaming Laptop 17-inch, Intel Core i7, NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660 Ti with Max-Q, 16 GB RAM, 256 GB SSD, Windows 10 Home

Acer Nitro 5 Gaming Laptop, 9th Gen Intel Core i5-9300H, NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650, 15.6" Full HD IPS Display, 8GB DDR4, 256GB NVMe SSD

MSI GF63 THIN 9SCX-005 15. 6" FHD Gaming Laptop Intel Core i5-9300H GTX1650 8GB 256GB NVMe SSD

The bottom two are both roughly $700 at Amazon US, which is where I live.  The top one is $1100.  Is the top one overkill?  I would love, for once, to be able to play a Sims game with all expansions if I wanted to, on ultra settings.  I suffered and struggled with Sims 3 for years with my current laptop, which has a dedicated NVidia card, but not much else exceptional about it.  I finally gave up and moved to Sims 4.  I have about half the packs and most of those are stuff packs, honestly, plus 417 mb of mods and it runs well on medium settings. But I don't want medium settings anymore.  Could someone give me some advice?  I'd love the top one, but honestly I'm just going to be playing Sims 4, no other video games, and surfing, watching videos, etc.  Nothing demanding.  Is the top one worth it, and will the bottom two give me what I'm looking for?  Thanks in advance.

[puzzlezaddict · Accepted solution]

@FatTribble23  I think the HP should be more than fine for Sims 4, all packs, ultra graphics settings, now and in all likelihood for the entire run of the game.  While anything is possible in theory, the way the game has developed up to this point suggests that is requirements for ultra settings won't rise to the point where a 1660 ti would struggle.  It's something like 50% faster in gaming than a 1650, even more on very new games, and up to 3 times faster than a 1050, although the gap will be somewhat smaller for Sims 4.

Technically, you don't even need to upgrade the memory for Sims 4 alone, but since RAM is cheap and a lot of people like to multitask while playing, I figured it was worth mentioning.  The difference would be seen in a temporary slowdown when switching between tasks or when having a lot of programs open at the same time.

The graphics card is almost always the limiting factor in determining how well a given computer will run Sims 4, as is true for most games.  The processor certainly matters, but for practical purposes, the way components for laptops and most prebuilt desktops are chosen these days, any CPU paired with a sufficiently fast graphics card will be more than sufficient.  I might recommend the stronger processor if you wanted to play something like Planet Zoo or Cities Skylines on ultra settings, but even then, the slower CPU should still be fine overall.  The load Sims 4 places on the CPU is much lower and shouldn't be an issue for the HP.

[puzzlezaddict]

@FatTribble23  The first laptop's hardware is overkill for Sims 4, and the other two are more than fine for ultra graphics settings now, even with all packs.  However, that may not be true by the time the game is out of development; we don't know how demanding future expansions will be.  High poly (high-resolution) custom content will further increase the load on the graphics card.  So if you have the money to spend and don't ever want your game to be limited, paying extra for better hardware may be worth it.

However, you don't need to go all the way up to $1,100 to get a 1660 ti, and in fact you can do better in a way for significantly less.  All three of the laptops you've listed have only a 256 GB hard drive, which is more than fine for just Sims 4.  But if you wanted to go back to Sims 3, or try another large game, or store a lot of data (e.g. a photo or music collection), you might run out of space.

As a couple of examples, these are $850 and $950, respectively; the difference is the second one has a significantly stronger processor and gets better reviews, although the first is very good too.  The extra processor power won't matter to Sims 4 though.  They do only have 8 GB RAM, but you could add another 8 GB for maybe $30.

https://www.bestbuy.com/site/hp-pavillion-16-1-gaming-laptop-intel-core-i5-8gb-memory-nvidia-geforce...

https://www.bestbuy.com/site/lenovo-legion-5-15-gaming-laptop-intel-core-i7-8gb-memory-nvidia-geforc...

This one should also be mentioned: it's a very highly rated laptop, one of the best in the "budget" gaming category.  Its Nvidia 2060 is a bit faster than a 1660 ti, so it's even more overkill, but it's $1,100 with an additional $100 rebate, and it has the more powerful processor and 16 GB RAM.

https://www.newegg.com/p/N82E16834725086?Item=N82E16834725086

I can look for other options too if you want; this is only from checking a few sites.  The point is, there's a middle ground between spending $400 extra and potentially compromising a bit on graphics settings or performance down the road.

If you have more questions, please feel free to ask.

[FatTribble23]

Ah, thank you so much for the help and the suggestions for alternatives, I'm leaning toward the $850 one from Best Buy; my current computer has 512 gb HD and it's more than half full.  I think I need to start deleting stuff LOL.  But I definitely don't think a 256 gb HD would be enough for me.  My current computer has only 8 gb of RAM, but knowing I could upgrade to 16 for so cheap on the new one is encouraging. 

So just checking because all of this does NOT come naturally to me, you think the HP Pavillion would be a good choice, maybe with upgrading the RAM to 16gb of memory?  And otherwise it would be fine for the Sims 4, now and in the future, even if they start releasing more demanding packs?  I don't use much CC, mostly mods, and the CC I use is Maxis Match because the alpha stuff kind of freaks me out tbh haha.  Is it the processor speed or the graphics that's more important for running this game?  My current processor is an Intel i5 and my card is nvidia GeForce 1050.  Which is know is kind of not the best for gaming.

[puzzlezaddict · Accepted solution]

@FatTribble23  I think the HP should be more than fine for Sims 4, all packs, ultra graphics settings, now and in all likelihood for the entire run of the game.  While anything is possible in theory, the way the game has developed up to this point suggests that is requirements for ultra settings won't rise to the point where a 1660 ti would struggle.  It's something like 50% faster in gaming than a 1650, even more on very new games, and up to 3 times faster than a 1050, although the gap will be somewhat smaller for Sims 4.

Technically, you don't even need to upgrade the memory for Sims 4 alone, but since RAM is cheap and a lot of people like to multitask while playing, I figured it was worth mentioning.  The difference would be seen in a temporary slowdown when switching between tasks or when having a lot of programs open at the same time.

The graphics card is almost always the limiting factor in determining how well a given computer will run Sims 4, as is true for most games.  The processor certainly matters, but for practical purposes, the way components for laptops and most prebuilt desktops are chosen these days, any CPU paired with a sufficiently fast graphics card will be more than sufficient.  I might recommend the stronger processor if you wanted to play something like Planet Zoo or Cities Skylines on ultra settings, but even then, the slower CPU should still be fine overall.  The load Sims 4 places on the CPU is much lower and shouldn't be an issue for the HP.

[FatTribble23]

@puzzlezaddict Excellent, thank you so much! I'm pretty sure you just saved me $250 lol. Now I can get a really good cooling pad and the extra RAM and still come out ahead. Thank again!

[GEEKYGA]

Acer Nitro 5 Gaming Laptop, 9th Gen Intel Core i5-9300H, NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650, 15.6" Full HD IPS Display, 8GB DDR4, 256GB NVMe SSD

This laptop is really a good one with its top-notch gaming performance. Me and one of my friend bought the same model from Amazon. It can handle any type of game maintaining well with its FPS.