hey all, Had my Dell Dimension 5150 for a while now, just recently got into the Sims again (wicked game ) and bought Sims 2 and the expansion packs. However, I've noticed it runs poorly, well, like a bag of **** really. It's really slow sometimes and loading times are pretty bad, but I think that's just a characteristic of the game. The specs are: P4 3GHz (HT & EMT64) 1GB DDR...something 160GB SATA HDD Supermulti DVD Burner Radeon X300 Hypermemory My question is really is what's the bottleneck? I'm assuming it's the graphics card, as it's hypermemory based? Though it's meant to have 128MB on board RAM... or something like that, details seem to be pretty sparse. Either way it's a PCI Express card. The game also makes a note about the card needing to support hardware T&L - which I've no idea if this card supports. Any ideas guys? A machine of this spec surely should be able to cope with the sims 2!!
Thats pretty much identical to my old PC, and while it didn't run it fantastically, it still ran adequately. Just try turning down the settings, I found I got bad performance on the fly by of the neighbourhood screen when you start up the game but the rest of it was fine.
I've tried that but it's still pretty crappy really, especially considering the large gap between minimum system requirements and the specs of mine.
Videocard, Processor and Ram are bottlenecks here. Turn the visuals down to 8x6, and you should be fine
You're kidding, right? The minimum specs are like... 2GHz slower than my processor! And 1GB RAM? The minimum is 256...
How can all three of those be the bottleneck? The whole point behind bottlenecking is that the RAM, CPU, or GPU, limits the other two. Yes there's occasionally factors like HDD's involved but for the most part it is only those three. I think you'd probably get most benefit out of buying a new GPU M3G4, the one you have isn't up to much. However if the Sims 2 is anything like I think it will be, it probably does also like 2GB of ram. Just my thoughts.
I managed to run the sims pretty well with only a 128Mb X300 and 512Mb of ram so I'm not sure why you're having problems with it, it could actually be your HDD is a bit too full and fragmented so it takes longer to find things like textures. If that doesn't work then it's likely to be your GFX card or RAM, although I would've thought 1Gb would be enough for the sims 2.
It runs allright on my system (Single core 3800+, 1gb DDR, x800xt), so I think that you would most benefit from getting a new video card. The processor and ram aren't that bad, it seems to run fine on 1gb on my system.
Another vote here for video card - Sims 2 ran fine on my previous rig, an Athlon XP 2000 (1.67GHz), 512mb RAM and a GeForce 4 Ti4200 - so it looks like your GPU is holding you back. Sims 2 runs pretty well on a 2.6GHz Celeron, with 1GB RAM and an FX5200 - though again it appears that the GPU is the bottleneck.
The reason why i listed all 3 is watch how much your game will slow down when you go to a public area...
My sims are like me, they sit inside all day But unlike me they actually do work since I'm an evil taskmaster. Free will? Pah! You WILL learn cooking 10! Even if you do starve to death!
Add yet another vote for the video card. My wife is running Sims 2 with almost all the expansions on an Athlon 64 3000 (I think - can't remember anymore), 1 GB of RAM, and a GeForce 6800 video card. Runs pretty smooth with mid-high settings, even in crowded areas. After some very basic research it looks like the Radeo X300 Hypermemory video card is the 2004 version of the Radeon 9600 (apparently it uses a nearly identical chip, just with PCI Express interface). Sims 2 would definitely run poor with that video card, as the Sims games require surprisingly high graphic standards. -monkey
Thanks for the spec reports guys I didn't think my CPU/RAM would be much of a bottle neck, considering it runs After Effects with ease Any ideas what sort of card I should feed this thing when the warranty runs out? (next month )
Based on my experience I would recommend a GeForce 6800 (or ATI equivalent) or better. Sims 2 should be well-playable with that. -monkey
I would agree with supermonkey there, the 6800 cards are great little beasts, however, an x800 series card would be suitible, but it depends on the size of your wallet, and also your PSU, would it be powerful enough for a 6800 or x800, there pretty power hungry. Hope this helps a little www.overclockers.co.uk for the graphics and potential power supply Sam
mmm you may need a new PSU as OEM builders like dell rarely give any spare power connectors. Unless you manage to find a half decent card that doesn't need extra power, there are a few out there.
i play this game at the highest levels with only a plain 6600. my system is: sempron 3100 @ 2.5ghz 512mb ram geforce 6600 @ 550/630 so in theory if you just got a alright card like the 6600 or 9800 you shouldnt in theory have a problem. admittedly i do only play at 1024x768 tho as my pc monitor is a pos
Try turning reflections off in the gfx settings. I'm pretty sure it's that which kills Sims 2 on my laptop (P4HT@3ghz, Mobility 9700).
M3G4, do you know what frames per second you are getting? Or are you just complaining about load times? Load times are frankly terrible on Sims 2 based on the type of game, and these days not bleeding edge graphics. But seeing you have Nightlife installed that tends to take forever to load, and the whole Downtown area is quite laggy, normally because of the disco. Just to tell you aren't on your own with slow loading times, not that I play it often but I know somebody who plays it regularly. Good Luck.
