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Field Researcher
Original Poster
#1 Old 8th Aug 2021 at 7:42 AM
Please help
I am looking for help from someone who knows computers and plays sims 3 with all the expansion packs and lots of mods and packages.
It's probably my Autism but I can't relax and enjoy Sims 3 unless everything is working properly and I get frustrated and anxious when the game throws me off.
To save my sanity can anyone recommend a very good laptop with 2 fans that can handle the workload. I am prepared to spend $2,500.00 Australian.
I currently have a:
Device name MSI
Processor Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-5700HQ CPU @ 2.70GHz 2.70 GHz
Installed RAM 8.00 GB
Device ID 2169511E-666C-4D06-B4F1-3871A1BE93F6
System type 64-bit operating system, x64-based processor

Please save my sanity

Thanks
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Scholar
#3 Old 8th Aug 2021 at 12:57 PM Last edited by Moraelin : 8th Aug 2021 at 1:59 PM.
More RAM, as nitromon says, only if you also do other stuff at the same time. Otherwise, TS3 is a 32 bit game. It physically can't use more than 4GB for the game itself. So your 8GB should be enough. If you go 16 GB and above, with only the game running, the ONLY benefit you can possibly see is enabling Windows to use more of that RAM as a disk cache.

I'd also add that it's pretty much a single threaded game, with a lot of the stuttering having more to do with the fact that it can't deal well with the redering and logic threads running other than one at a time. So getting a super-new CPU with more core and SMT threads will not actually do anything to make it run any faster.

And don't set your hopes too high anyway. I can tell you first hand that running it on an overclocked AMD 5800X desktop (pretty much the fastest 8 core CPU in existence at the moment) with 32GB RAM and a RTX 3080 Ti still sees it stuttering at times. It's just how they coded it.

What you probably can do to keep your system cooler, depending on the GPU, is force VSync on in the drivers. Otherwise it will needlessly heat up the GPU, which tends to be a bigger problem for laptops.

You may or may not also want to look into cleaning up the heatsinks. Especially laptops tend to not have a lot of thermal headroom until they start throttling down. Add a few years of dust and cat hair to it, and yeah, you may be throttled down as soon as it finished booting up. (And I swear laptops should be sold as pet care accessories. They're the best thing at vacuuming up cat hair within a mile radius.)
Scholar
#4 Old 8th Aug 2021 at 1:01 PM
Also, if you're buying a new system anyway, personally I would recommend a desktop instead of a laptop. They tend to be cheaper, have faster graphics cards (e.g., there's a 33% or so speed difference between a laptop and a desktop version of the same numbered graphics card from Nvidia in the current generation), have a lot better cooling, and so on.

Unless, of course, you really NEED it to be mobile.
Field Researcher
Original Poster
#5 Old 11th Aug 2021 at 3:37 AM
Quote: Originally posted by nitromon
2 fans? Why 2 fans? Proper airflow doesn't necessarily need 2 fans.

I can only tell you your current system is fine. Your CPU is actually same as mine, except 2 generations newer. You can probably benefit from having more RAM though, especially if you surf while you play. Also, what is the GPU?

Remember TS3 is an old game and most hardware (besides low grade economic for wordprocessing) are more than enough to run TS3. Just make sure you grab the most recent smoothness patch that came out.


It could be because I live in Queensland Australia but in late spring and all of summer my computer gets so hot I can't even touch it. I have a cooling pad already. I was hoping perhaps two fans might keep it cooler.
Scholar
#6 Old 11th Aug 2021 at 4:53 AM
If that's the case, you're probably running thermal throttled down full time.
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