Good laptop for Sims 3+expansion packs

[MollyMoon216]

Hi there, I’m new to playing Sims 3 and am also feeling out how many expansion packs to run. I just purchased an entry level gaming laptop back on Black Friday. Would you be able to give me a recommendation as well if I run a dxdiag?

[MollyMoon216]

If you can help, here is a dxdiag attached!

[puzzlezaddict]

@MollyMoon216  You should be able to run all the packs together without any issues, and on mostly ultra graphics settings.  There are two settings—water and high-detail lots—that need to be turned down a bit because of the high demands they place on the game engine regardless of how powerful someone's hardware is.

You'll also need to manually limit your in-game framerates, since your graphics card is powerful enough to generate excessively high fps if not capped.  Let me know if you need help with this process.

[MollyMoon216]

@puzzlezaddict Thank you for analyzing my laptop’s Sims 3 performance!

And wow - I’m surprised! I currently have Late Night, Generations, World Adventures, and Ambitions. Even with so few EPs, I’ve had 3 or 4 crashing incidents already and a few very long loading screens. Therefore I figured the laptop might not be able to handle all EPs at once, especially the heavier ones.
I have my graphics mostly at medium, some at high. Good to know I can increase most of them, but I’ll be sure to keep water and high detail lots at medium.

I’m not familiar with framerates. Would you be able to explain more? Do you mean the game speed (1,2,3, or 4)?
(Sorry I’m such a newbie!!)

[puzzlezaddict]

@MollyMoon216  You don't need to apologize for not knowing these things; that's most of the point of this forum.  Your framerate is the number of frames per second that the graphics card renders.  More frames per second means a higher workload for the card, which means more heat generated, and at very high framerates, probably higher than what you're seeing, it's not good for the long-term health of the card either.

Your laptop's screen has a 60 Hz refresh rate, meaning it can only display 60 frames per second, so there's no point in having fps higher than that, since you won't see it.  It's just extra work that your card doesn't need to be doing.  High fps can also cause crashing, in addition to graphics glitches and some other unwanted side effects.

To see your in-game framerates, bring up the cheats console (crtl-shift-C) and enter "fps on" without quotes.  A number will appear in the upper right corner of your screen.  If it's too high, which it probably is, you'll need to use an outside tool to lower it.  (The fps limiter built into Sims 3 doesn't work.)  The easiest one to use is the built-in Nvidia Control Panel.  Right-click on the desktop, open it, click Manage 3D Settings, then Program settings, and you'll see this:

In the green box, choose TS3.exe, not TS3W.exe, because you have an Origin install.  Then enable Vertical sync and Triple buffering (red box), and click Apply to save the change.

If you ever use windowed mode, or if the above setting doesn't help, you'll need to explicitly set a framerate limit, which you can do under Manage 3D Settings > Global Settings:

Check your in-game fps to make sure it's properly limited to 60.

This alone may help with the crashing, but if not, please let me know what world(s) you're playing in and whether you use mods or custom content.

[MollyMoon216]

@puzzlezaddict THANK YOUUU so very much! For some reason, TS3.exe nor TS3W.exe showed up... only Sims3launcher.exe showed up. I followed your instructions for sims3launcher.exe but then also adjusted the global settings just in case.

We will see how the performance improves!

Thank you again so much for your time and your knowledge. You’re very much appreciated.

[puzzlezaddict]

@MollyMoon216  You may need to search for TS3.exe separately.  Sims3Launcher.exe is just for the launcher; limiting fps for it won't help with the game.  The global setting should stick; it's just that enabling vertical sync is useful for a few reasons, so it's better to use that if possible.  Not doing so won't damage your computer though, so don't worry about it too much.

[MollyMoon216]

@puzzlezaddict Thank you again for your help - it's much appreciated! I have another question for you if you're able to help. I'm only running Sims 3 on my laptop, but I'm using most of my RAM. Do you know why this could be? Attached is a screenshot.

[puzzlezaddict]

@MollyMoon216  It would be more illuminating to check the Task Manager for a report on how much memory each app is currently using.  Sims 3 won't use more than ~3.5 GB normally, even with an overstuffed save; more than 3.7 GB, and it crashes.  Windows probably takes 2 GB for itself, and other apps will use some, or maybe a lot in the case of certain browsers.  If you see an app using more than you want it to, you may not want it running while you play.

To be clear though, this is not a real problem until you get very close to the 8 GB installed RAM you have.  In theory, you should be fine even above that, because Windows will use the page file to swap data between physical memory (RAM) and a reserved space on the hard drive.  In practice, Sims 3 doesn't respond well to this, although your other apps are likely fine.

[younglor]

Hi what about this laptop ?

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B09BFMC29Q/ref=ox_sc_act_title_1?smid=A36Z5LD0I1SDUN&psc=1