Upgrades for The Sims 2?

Tony Williams · 21 Nov 2008 at 20:09

I was going to put this in General Hardware however since I am looking for Sims 2'ers I put it here.

Right got a system here;

AMD 2600+ Sempron skt754
512GB RAM PC3200
Onboard video (but can be expanded with AGP)

That's the basic nuts and bolts. I am going to install The Sims 2 and all the expansion packs I can find. For let's say around £60 (less or more is do-able) I was thinking a video card for £40 and another stick of RAM? I don't mind fleabaying for used parts either.

I'll be running it under XP or Vista, probably XP though. Ideally I would like med/high with a good 50+ frame rate.

Indy500 · 21 Nov 2008 at 20:14

Geforce 6600GT or Radeon X700 Pro should be sufficient depending on resolution. You could probably do better for £40 in MM though.

1GB RAM is fine, but you might want to consider a processor upgrade because Sims 2 is quite CPU intensive. Athlon 64 3200 would be a good boost (2.2Ghz\512k oompared to 1.6Ghz\128k).

HangTime · 21 Nov 2008 at 20:25

From the benchmarks I've seen Sims2 is incredibly cpu dependent. An example here: http://uk.gamespot.com/features/6133243/index.html?type=tech&page=4

Essentially while you may see gains from ditching the onboard video, don't spend too much there as the Sempron will be a massive bottleneck. I'd say you haven't got a hope in hell of getting a consistent 50+ framerate on that system.

Tony Williams · 21 Nov 2008 at 20:33

Right cheers mate, I had a Althlon 3000+ skt939, 6600GT (PCI-E) and 1GB RAM and I was able to run games like HL2, Doom 3, Quake 4, etc

I found an Althlon 3200+ skt939 for £22, saw an AGP video card 6600GT for £26 (GPU:500mhz, RAMDAC:400mhz by Aopen), saw a stick of Kingston RAM for £13 should not be an issue mixing with my Corsair VS I'd assume.

Indy500 · 21 Nov 2008 at 20:54

Tony Williams said:
Right cheers mate, I had a Althlon 3000+ skt939, 6600GT (PCI-E) and 1GB RAM and I was able to run games like HL2, Doom 3, Quake 4, etc

I found an Althlon 3200+ skt939 for £22, saw an AGP video card 6600GT for £26 (GPU:500mhz, RAMDAC:400mhz by Aopen), saw a stick of Kingston RAM for £13 should not be an issue mixing with my Corsair VS I'd assume.

Kingston RAM tends not to play nice with Athlon 64 754\939 systems in my experience, I'd suggest something else. £13 for 512MB seems a bit too much as well...

Wasn't the system S754? You'll have to change motherboard as well to use the S939 processor.

Tony Williams · 21 Nov 2008 at 20:57

sr4470 said:
Kingston RAM tends not to play nice with Athlon 64 754\939 systems in my experience, I'd suggest something else. £13 for 512MB seems a bit too much as well...

(it's new) ... probably get something used for a bit cheaper.

But as long as I have Althlon 3200+, 1GB RAM and that 6600GT, I should be able to run all the expansions packs smoothly? (There's like 40 of them or something stupid)

The skt 3000+ I mentioned I am still using so it's probably going to be a 754.

Indy500 · 21 Nov 2008 at 20:59

Tony Williams said:
(it's new) ... probably get something used for a bit cheaper.

But as long as I have Althlon 3200+, 1GB RAM and that 6600GT, I should be able to run all the expansions packs smoothly? (There's like 40 of them or something stupid)

Yeah. But I would just ignore the content stuff like Ikea and get free third party downloads. I could understand buying "University" or maybe one other worthwhile expansion but the rest are a waste of money.