Card for sims 3

[Witcher1979]

Hey guys

My daughter has an old P4 @2.6 ghz with 1gb or ram. This is just an internet machine, but she has asked if this will play sims 3. From what I can tell running XP the CPU and ram should be fine, But the onboard graphics will not do. It has an old AGP slot, sitting here I have two old cards.

One is GeForce 6800GT with 256Mb the other is Radeon 9600xt with 128mb.

Which one of these will be best to try it with? I am guessing the 6800 as it has more memory?

Any advise would be great. Its only gaming at 1280x1024 so I hope one of those will run it OK.

Cheers

 

[pumaknight]

I am no expert, but I would just try the 9600XT first and if that is a bit sluggish, try the other. That is what I would do...sry if this a "suck eggs" moment.

 

[Witcher1979]

Hi

No its a good reply I plan on doing this after lunch but getting an answer thats direct makes it easier. Otherwise its a bit of a pain installing two different drivers, then removing them etc.

 

[bru]

well i couldn't find a review that tested those two cards against each other, but here is a review of the NV6800GT vrs the AI 9800XT and the NV6800GT is faster, so it will be much faster than the ATI 9600XT.

here is the specs needed, so yes it should run but no idea how well.

FOR WINDOWS XP
* 2.0 GHz P4 processor or equivalent
* 1 GB RAM
* A 128 MB Video Card with support for Pixel Shader 2.0
* The latest version of DirectX 9.0c
* Microsoft Windows XP Service Pack 2
* At least 6.1 GB of hard drive space with at least 1 GB of additional space for custom content and saved games

FOR WINDOWS VISTA
* 2.4 GHz P4 processor or equivalent
* 1.5 GB RAM
* A 128 MB Video Card with support for Pixel Shader 2.0
* Microsoft Windows Vista Service Pack 1
* At least 6.1 GB of hard drive space with at least 1 GB of additional space for custom content and saved games

For computers using built-in graphics chipsets under Windows, the game requires at least:
* Intel Integrated Chipset, GMA 3-Series or above
* 2.6 GHz Pentium D CPU, or 1.8 GHz Core 2 Duo, or equivalent
* 0.5 GB additional RAM

FOR MAC OS X
* Mac OS X 10.5.7 Leopard or higher
* Intel Core Duo Processor
* 2 GB RAM
* ATI X1600 or Nvidia 7300 GT with 128 MB of Video RAM, or Intel Integrated GMA X3100.
* At least 6.1 GB of hard drive space, with at least 1 GB additional space for custom content and saved games
* This game will not run on PowerPC (G3/G4/G5) based Mac systems, or the GMA 950 class of integrated video cards.


Windows Supported Video Cards
-----------------------------

NVIDIA GeForce series
FX 5900, FX 5950
6200, 6500, 6600, 6800
7200, 7300, 7600, 7800, 7900, 7950
8400, 8500, 8600, 8800
9300, 9400, 9500, 9600, 9800
G100, GT 120, GT 130, GTS 150
GTS 250, GTX 260, GTX 280, GTX 285, GTX 295

ATI Radeon(TM) series
9500, 9600, 9800
X300, X600, X700, X800, X850
X1300, X1600, X1800, X1900, X1950
2400, 2600, 2900
3450, 3650, 3850, 3870
4850, 4870

Intel(R) Graphics Media Accelerator (GMA)
GMA 3-Series, GMA 4-Series

 

[Witcher1979]

Thanks ever so much bru, gt6800 it is. I will report back how it runs just in case anyone is interested with those specs and this game sometime tonight.

It is a big help as it saves me having to install and remove the ATi drivers, now I can do a total fresh install of XP with the 6800gt drivers. Her machine has slowed to a crawl, no idea what she has done but it is just as quick to start again seeing as all it was running was the internet.

Cheers