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Test Subject
Original Poster
#1 Old 1st Mar 2021 at 1:41 PM
Default Best PC for Sims 2?
Hey all! Looking for some up-to-date advice on this as all the threads I can find are at least 5 years old.

I got back into Sims 2 last year after not having played it for 6 years. I used to play it for honestly 10+ hours at weekends and adored it - ran it on a very old PC, where the graphics card periodically gave out and crashed my computer while I was playing, and the game would crash if I had played for too long. Didn't run any mods at the time either, so have greatly enjoyed this whole new world since rediscovering the game!

My question is, my partner is looking at getting me a decent computer for my birthday at the end of the month, and while I know that Sims 2 isn't as technically demanding as other games, I wondered if anyone has any recommendations for what specs would run the game perfectly? While my laptop runs it fine at the moment, the FPS is pretty poor and the game does lag quite a bit - I suck it up because the game is so good! But if I had a comp that improved this, it would be incredible.

I have the 4GB patch and will definitely get this whenever I reinstall the game on the new PC. I play with A LOT of mods, from visual to gameplay (around 5,000 including CC). Was also wondering if anyone has experience of transferring the game over to a new computer, and if so did you move your whole downloads folder over or did you do a clear-out and reinstall the mods that you wanted?

Bit of side info, I don't need a super-duper gaming PC, as we got my partner a RTX 2060 graphics PC at Christmas, so for any big games I'll use his. The only other thing that I'll be using it for gaming-wise is League of Legends which I'd like to run on high settings too.

Thanks in advance for any and all advice!
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Mad Poster
#2 Old 1st Mar 2021 at 3:29 PM
Default Paradise Regained?
I don't know if I'd quite claim that my new Dell gaming laptop is the best PC for Sims 2, but compared to my old computer (a 2011 Packard Bell netbook) it's Paradise Regained! My mother gave it me for my birthday in October.

I'm surprised you couldn't find any recent threads -- there have been a few here recently. There's JDacapo's Can a Newer (2020-2021) Laptop Support Sims 2 and omglo's Running Sims 2 on modern systems - Questionnaire thread. These contain links to other useful threads including ones describing how, with a lot of help from my friends here, I got my new computer configured to play TS2 well in a matter of days. The specs of my computer are also there. There's also Matt_Y9's Buying new laptop - can I play the Sims 2 on it?.

My Dell gives me fast load times, no lag in playing, and excellent high resolution graphics. I do have a minor "bright CAS" issue which affects a few outfits and hairs in CAS, but most people with newer NVIDIA graphics cards seem to have this problem. The outfits and hairs are OK in game and in Body Shop.

I copied across all my old 'hoods and CC, but I don't think I've got too much CC -- at least not yet! For much the same reason I haven't installed the 4GB patch yet. I just haven't needed it yet.

All Sims are beautiful -- even the ugly ones.
My Simblr ~~ My LJ
Sims' lives matter!
The Veronaville kids are alright.
Test Subject
#3 Old 1st Mar 2021 at 7:04 PM
When you say "decent computer" for your birthday, do you mean a laptop or desktop? Or does it matter?
Field Researcher
#4 Old 2nd Mar 2021 at 5:02 AM
I built a new gaming PC last summer. It took a lot of work actually to get TS2 to run on it, but there are some solid guides out there and it is definitely possible. Some people have got reshade to work although I haven't tried that yet. Someone has redone the interface for the game and some people on here are actually working right now on redoing the bodyshop interface so that it'll work a lot better on a higher resolution monitor. I've also had to be pickier about cc because some of the lower res stuff looks like poop, but there's plenty of stuff that doesn't.
Lab Assistant
#5 Old 2nd Mar 2021 at 6:47 PM
I found out with my old pc just recently if you want to use an old pc with Windows Vista you can not download the Ultimate Collection from Origin, because the latest Origin version will not allow you to download it. I tried using the legacy Or8gin suggested On an EA board, but that did not work either because I guess EA stopped supporting anything related to some older versions of Windowe.. Have not found a work around yet.
Scholar
#6 Old 5th Mar 2021 at 6:34 PM
In general - it's not the matter of hardware (well - it may be for some extend with particular GPUs, though it's manageable; mostly). Software, namely: system and libraries might be a problem. Any machine not older than 12 (that would be SandyBridge generation like i3-xxxx CPUs) years should work just fine, and even most somewhat older ones should do alike - except maybe these "netbooks" and other dead ends of industry.

On modern computers bigger problem may be Windows 10 shenanigans (well: it's a Windows, what you'd expect?) and sometimes discrete GPUs which nowadays ignores Directx 9 calls (theirs programming do not implement old libraries) resulting translation DX9 to DX10/12/Vulcan (depends of the implementation) done by system or drivers. However - rolling back to the integral GPU (these embedded within CPU) usually solves most problems with help of simple editing the game's config files. These iGPUs have got enough power nowadays to fuel much more complicated software than Sims2.

In the case of Linux running systems, if the GPU is not particularly weird, problems does not exists at all.

Happy Simming.


favorite quote: "When ElaineNualla is posting..I always read..Nutella. I am sorry" by Rosebine
self-claimed "lower-spec simmer"
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