This a good computer for The Sims 2?

[Lady Shay]

I play The Sims 2 and I should be receiving a computer next week. I can't wait to test it. I was wondering if it will play The Sims 2 with no slowdown. I was also wondering if I should have gotten more RAM instead of an extra video card. I'm not sure which would do better for graphics. I'm going to have to stick with one of my old VGA monitors, I'm not sure how a monitor would affect things. So how well can these specs run TS2? I previously had a gaming laptop with an ATI Radeon X600 video card w/128MB, 1GB RAM, 3GHz processor w/HT and it ran TS2 pretty well, but I sold it. It ran so hot that it would burn my hands. LOL. Here's the pc I'm waiting to receive:
420watts power supply Asus A8N SLI motherboard

1 GB Corsair SDRAM DDR 400 (PC 3200) (upgradeable to 4GB)
AMD Athlon 64 4200+ X2 Dual Core 2.2Ghz Processor with 1GHz FSB.
160 GB Western Digital Caviar 7200 rpm Hard Drive with Serial ATA 2 3.0GB
LITE-ON Black 16xDVD drive.
2 Leadtek Geforce 6800GT 256MB x16 PCI Express video cards in SLI

What should my next upgrade be: a hard drive run in RAID mode or 1GB more RAM?

 

[slick_tech15]

Um that computer kills the other laptop you had. It is way more powerful, so you will be able to play things on the highest it can go. I would get 1 gb of more ram next time.

 

[cyrax]

That should be able to play Sims 2 on high. My sisters laptop can, and it's a 3.2GHz, some Radeon onboard VGA card, and 512 ram.

 

[Dr.Gootch]

i play sims 2 on high on my 2.2ghz 1 gig ran 64mb card no hiccups

 

[Lady Shay]

I've been playing TS2 on this computer for 2 weeks now. Everyone here is right. I play with everything on high settings with no problems. On my laptop I had to turn the smoothing all the way down in order to record the action and everytime my sims went to college or a lot with a lot of sims the slowdown was tedious. Now I don't worry about such things. I can record video with everything on high without getting a message that I can't record video unless I turn smoothing down. The video is slow but at least it's doable. I can play with as many sims as I want without a problem. In "Open for Business" tons of customers visit my shop at a time and nothing slows down. With my laptop I was always peeved that I had to turn smoothing completely off in order to do videos and now I'm amazed that I don't have to. What do you think I need to do to record video at normal speed with high settings? Buy more RAM?

 

[TheOtis]

I'm not exactly sure, maybe, im just saying maybe because I dont know the requirements for the game, but it sounsd like the recording videos or whatever w/ sims2 would be quite depending on high.

my best guess would be the memory. I'm positive atlast another 512 would help, and if you could afford it get another gig.

plus even add a single 7800gtx and im sure thatd help also. if you could a 7900gt would definetly help.

but im guessing you would see the most improvement with more RAM.

 

[hmammen]

I'm not exactly sure, maybe, im just saying maybe because I dont know the requirements for the game, but it sounsd like the recording videos or whatever w/ sims2 would be quite depending on high.

my best guess would be the memory. I'm positive atlast another 512 would help, and if you could afford it get another gig.

plus even add a single 7800gtx and im sure thatd help also. if you could a 7900gt would definetly help.

but im guessing you would see the most improvement with more RAM.

dude, another gig of ram or a 7800gtx is not neccessary at all. sims 2 is not that demanding of a game and that setup can play todays games on med-high settings. just mess with the shading and fine tuning in the options menu.

 

[dhw200]

Shay, you've got a very nice friggin computer! Sims 2 is a pretty easy game to run. Worst case scenario, dial down the AA in the settings and it should run fine. You'll barely even notice the difference. Recording video by its very nature is demanding, and it's gonna hog system resources. Your desktop is dual core, it will be able to handle it. Your laptop is not dual core, its gonna have some trouble doing both video and a game. Basic rule of thumb: when you are doing intensive media applications, i.e. recording video, turn everything else off for optimum performance.

 

[Lady Shay]

Thank goodness I don't need a higher end video card. 6800 is the best I could afford. On the TS2 website 6800 is the highest card listed on the compatibility page, so I'm not sure I could even play with a higher card. I'll try turning the shadows off, shadows are pretty worthless. I used to always play on my laptop with graphic detail on Medium, I'll try that too, the grass is a little too happy with the texture. lol

 

[dhw200]

You could play it with a higher card, the other cards simply weren't released at the tiem the Sims 2 came out. It would work fine with a 7800/7900, and X1800/X1900