Hardware to run The Sims 2 at its best? At the current time, I'm running on a Geforce 6800 GT, 1 gig of ram, an AMD Athlon 64 (just regular 64) computer, and of course, an Audigy 2ZS to lift the load of sound off the computer. I get good performance, I can push all settings to high, anti aliasing to max, and get 8 party guests...Except in University. Should I attempt to throw any type of party in a University Dorm, the max number of guests is 2. I'm asking, (since this might pertain to the increased number of sims floating around in Night Life) how I can push my computer further (I built it with my own hands, so I'm familiar with it). I see three viable options: 1. Swap out or add a Geforce 7800 GTX for SLI (If you can SLI the 6 and 7 series). So far the Geforce 7800 is the apex of graphics cards, and is so to say, the 700 dollar holy grail of computer gaming. (This is, of course, in violation of the universal 6 month rule. Wait for better technology, less bugs, better deal) 2. Add another gig or 2 of ram. I'm at 1 gig, but my Mobo supports 4, but my loading times are pretty split second anyways. Ram is cheap, you can acquire 1 gig of Kingston or Corsair for about 100-120 if you visit Newegg on a good day. 3. Switch my CPU. I don't actually know how much the Sims 2 relies on calcuation and processing power (In Rome: Total War, it plays a real big part), but I do understand that my Amd Athlon 64 +3500 is going to get on its long days, so I'm contemplating whether or not I should go to Newegg or a computer fair to purchase an FX-55/57 or wait for the all mighty dual core processors to be designed for gaming uses. I'm kind of a perfectionist when it comes to gaming, so any help from someone who has quite a lot of experince with hardware and benchmarks would be appreciated. (Gotta play it the way developers intended, right?)
Um ... wow!! You've lit up some problems big time here. I'm no expert but you Uni experience puzzles me. You can only invite 2 guests to a dorm party? I suspect this depend on the size of the dorm. How many rooms in the dorm you play? The largest drom Maxis supplied was a 14 room job (I think) and that utterly fouled up my mid-range system. There there are other factors to consider, including size of lot and amount of NPC activity (which take up both graphic processing and raw db processing). In short I suspect there's no right answer. My gut feeling is to assert that the game is pretty much rooted in the hardware technology of 2003 and that while hardware improvements will undoubtedly bring benefits they will not do so propotionally. The way I figure the Maxis 'game plan' (now after some considerable reflection) is this. This theory seems to apply both to the original game as well as to the second generation. First release the core game for beta++ testing-in-the-marketplace. That's not a criticism, nor yet a sop to those who criticise the bugginess of gamae franchises like The Sims. I'm pretty sure that my unaltered computer plays University better than it did the core game. Why? Well I suspect that what I have known for an age is being proved. Hardware configurations are practically infinite in variety and the challenge is to make a game perfom on all possible systems. Can't be done. But it does get easier to broaden the baseline once the game is on the market and angry consumers pestering the tech-support geeks do wonders for forcing the issue and proving the adage that necessity is the mother of invention. So much for what we all know. That kind of beta double plus testing is worth its weight in gold (and don't anyone ask why it isn't done before it goes on sale because I'll have to come around to your house with a large angry fish and hit you over the keyboard with it repeatedly until you can say without stuttering: "I am sorry I do understand how software piracy works because I really hadn't thought how quickly a few un-organized and commercially disinterested amateurs can hack into a game's code and start to produce such froody assets as a phone hack (Pescado et al: The Sims 2) or a roll of duct tape (???: Doom 3). There's a hackneyed old adage wedged in someone's floorboards that says: publish or be damned. Very few folks understand what that actually means.
1) having a 7800 may not be all that great for TS2 since the game was never tested on it. Heaven only knows that it had problems with the Radeon x800 card and even with the Geforce 6800 it sometimes indicates (in the EasyInfo) that the card is not registering. (It plays fine, unlike the X800 did before the patch.) 2) having a second gig doesn't always help either. My game is not twice as fast since I put in the second gig of RAM. The holdup is the hard drive interface (despite having a SATA drive which supposedly has the fastest interface with the rest of the system.) And if you do put in the second gig, make sure that you change your page file or the poor computer gets *very* confused as to what to do with that extra RAM. 3) a faster processor will still not speed up the interface of your system with the hard drive. And unfortunately the game goes back to the harddrive a lot, especially when loading. (So the load times if you have a lot in your download files is insane. Too bad I can't live without those clothes or wallpapers or floors, etc.)
SLI Technology requires that the cards be the same. You can't mix and match boards. As for RAM, what sort of RAM are you running? PC3200?
Yeah, I kinda do research when I build my machines :knockedout: . But you know, I could always add another gig (heard that over 1 gig gives a little boost when playing Battlefield 2). But I'm sure Maxis will scale Nightlife so it gives even better performance to more modern technology. (unclear if they're actually addressing any University problems in the EP though).
Um, um, um. . . I'm just sortof of speechless at the intelligence and understanding of computer technology that I read in your question, Random. I have no answer for you, because your computer kicks mine's butt and your knowledge makes me look like a kindergartener trying to spell '"Sims", but please, please, stick around and become a regular poster over here. We can use all the intelligent conversations we can get!
