budget desktop for playing the sims 2 and expansion packs

[Thorsson]

My daughter runs Sims2 fine on my 4th generation PC - that's a Barton too. She has piles of expansions, but I don't know anything more, except that she obviously doesn't have problems or I'd hear about it soon enough.

[j.o.s.h.1408]

well does she run these types of mods that allow you to play in a big massive mantion that i just linked to in my last post?

i had tons of mods on my sims 2 game but it ran very slow on my p4 3.2ghz processor.

[Agent]

try running this property mod the sims 2 - Majestic European Castle on a single core and see if u can get over 10fps

have you ever played the sims 2 with properties like this?

I can find absolutely nothing online that suggests Sims 2 can support dual core, never mind quad core.

Giving a program more cores won't make them use them unless they are coded for them. Its only recently with the likes of Unreal Engine 3 that dual core has even started to make a difference.

Do you have any links to suggest that the Sims 2 can use anything other than one core?

[Thorsson]

Perhaps Josh and others are running multiple programs (like Messenger and equivalents) in the background? That might account for why dual cores make a difference...

[Agent]

Perhaps, but suggesting a quad core for a thread titled "budget desktop" to play Sims 2 seems a tad over the top.....

[j.o.s.h.1408]

I can find absolutely nothing online that suggests Sims 2 can support dual core, never mind quad core.

Giving a program more cores won't make them use them unless they are coded for them. Its only recently with the likes of Unreal Engine 3 that dual core has even started to make a difference.

Do you have any links to suggest that the Sims 2 can use anything other than one core?

more cores will make some games better especialy games that are cpu bound like the sims 2 and supreme commandeer. there is a thread in that same forum where people have recomended a dual core to run properties of that size that i linked too. go try and run cod4 at high settings at 1680 on a single core p4 3.2ghz processor with a 3850 agp card and you will struggle at 20-30fps. now get the eqivalent pci card and stick in a standard core 2 cpu such as umm a e6550 and the difference is like night and day.

edit: you can buya quad core system for around £400-£600 down tesco's so quad core is easily affordable has a budget pc. dual core cpu such has a e6600 is good enough also. now a p4 3.2ghz? god luck with that mate

[Cistron]

Well, only that the netburst architecture is less efficient per tact than the core architecture. Thus, this is a lame allegory.

[Hicks12]

more cores will make some games better especialy games that are cpu bound like the sims 2 and supreme commandeer. there is a thread in that same forum where people have recomended a dual core to run properties of that size that i linked too. go try and run cod4 at high settings at 1680 on a single core p4 3.2ghz processor with a 3850 agp card and you will struggle at 20-30fps. now get the eqivalent pci card and stick in a standard core 2 cpu such as umm a e6550 and the difference is like night and day.

edit: you can buya quad core system for around £400-£600 down tesco's so quad core is easily affordable has a budget pc. dual core cpu such has a e6600 is good enough also. now a p4 3.2ghz? god luck with that mate

More cores doesnt normally = better, same with more gfx's cards doesnt always =better. A decent single core can beat an ok dual core same with a decent gfx card and then some ok cards in sli/crossfire.
If the program doesnt use all the cores properly then its pointless and will actually make it run slower compared to a good single. And you do know that fps games are more graphic hungry and the bottleneck is normally the graphics card, shove an 8800GT/S and it should work flawlessly.

A quad core for 500-£600 isnt a budget system, hardly affordable to the average user e.g. not huge gamer or huge programmer. A £200-£300 system is much more of a budget, try the pc at bigpockets they are selling it for £150(i think) and it should be fine.

Also a 3ghz single core will normally beat a 3ghz dual core if running a single task.

[Agent]

more cores will make some games better especialy games that are cpu bound like the sims 2 and supreme commandeer.

To reiterate exactly what I said previously.
More cores will only make games faster that are programmed to do so. You may get a small gain by offloading some of the OS stuff onto the other cores, but this gain is not huge.

Supreme Commander was coded from the ground upwards to support multiple cores. In fact, multiple cores are recommended in the offical system specs to play the game.

The Sims 2 was released in 2004, the first (slow and very hot) dual cores, the Pendum-D didn't even have the launch till the middle of 2005 (and it was more of a paper launch). Even then, the uptake of them was extremely small. For this reason alone, I really do not expect that it will be multi-core aware.

I have looked through shed loads on Google, and Sims 2 change-logs, and there is a lack of anything mentioning multiple core ability. So I ask again: Do you have any information, links to benchmarks, or anything that shows that more cores = better in The Sims 2.

Simply saying more cores = faster games is wrong.

there is a thread in that same forum where people have recomended a dual core to run properties of that size that i linked too.

So if other people recommend it we should take their word for it without actually looking into it?

go try and run cod4 at high settings at 1680 on a single core p4 3.2ghz processor with a 3850 agp card and you will struggle at 20-30fps. now get the eqivalent pci card and stick in a standard core 2 cpu such as umm a e6550 and the difference is like night and day.

COD 4?!?!?!
The same COD4 that was released this year?
You wouldn't be able to do that on PCI because the bus would be saturated....but ignoring that for a second, it has nothing to do with what we are talking about.
COD4 supports multi-core and will take advantage of it as its been programmed to. Its recomended in the official system specs.
All you have said is that you will have a better gaming experience with COD 4 on a system that has a faster CPU than a slower one. Pretty obvious - It does nothing what so ever to illustrate the differences in performance between a multi-core system and a single core in the Sims 2.

So, again I ask of you: What proof do you have that The Sims 2 can take advantage of a quad core processor, and how much is this gain exactly? I'd love you two post a link showing that The Sims 2 has a huge boost from Quad-core, simply because I'd like to think EA have taken the time to give people a better gaming experience

However, I have been unable to find any evidence that it can take advantage of a multi core system.

edit: you can buya quad core system for around £400-£600 down tesco's so quad core is easily affordable has a budget pc. dual core cpu such has a e6600 is good enough also. now a p4 3.2ghz? god luck with that mate

I did not mention a 3.2ghz processor in any of my posts, and I'm at a loss as to why you are using it as an example. A single core P4 is going to be slower than a quad-core running on a single core due to the huge architectural differences between the two.

If you have the budget to afford a quad-core, yes, go for it. If budget is an issue (which I'm assuming due to the nature of the thread title) it only makes sense to go with quad core on a PC that will make use of it.

Josh - There is only one thing I am looking for, and thats evidence that The Sims 2 can use Quad-core to its advantage (excluding the small OS gains by offloading some of the info there). If it can't, as I suspect, its a waste of money. There is still a gap between a base entry quad and a dual core CPU. Heck, it would make more sense to go with a faster dual core as it has a higher clock speed for a single core, than a slower clock speed quad and for it not to be used if it is not multi processor aware.

[j.o.s.h.1408]

Even though apps are not designed for dual and quads how come the load is spread across all 2/4 cores in apps then? why aint one core being used while the others is on idle?

you do make some very good points but im just talkingf rom my experience and whenever i play sims 2 on a big property like the one i linked above. my fps falls terribly low and my cpu being at 100% full load with nothing runnning in the background whatsoever. my card is a 7800 gainward bliss which is OC to a 7900 so its fully acceptable for sims 2.

[Thorsson]

IIRC the one thing Sims2 needs is a decent GFX card (lots of people had problems trying to run it on a laptop) and a fair amount of memory, although 1Gb should be fine. Don't recall anyone complaining that their CPU needed upgrading. Even if it was surely it would be all about the speed of the core, rather than how many.

[j.o.s.h.1408]

edit: here is the property i tried and it caused huuge lag as thats one of the biggest properties ever developed!

mod the sims 2 - Million Dollar Mansion - one of a kind

[staffsMike]

Given that the OP suggests the spec he is looking at which is capable of playing this game, I think the spec's mentioned would be more than enough.

The motherboard has a great IGP solution and I think will be plenty enough,

[lodore]

the spec posted on page 1 amd single core 3200 amd,1gb of ram and ATI 9800 radeon AGP is capable of playing the sims 2 with 3 expansion packs. it also has the person limit hack to allow more than 8 people per house and it works fine. yes it is a bit slow but my sister is happy.
i have got the sims 2 and 3 expansions packs installed on my main system with quad core and 2gb of ram does anyone wanna know how many cores it uses?
im guessing one like agent said.

[-iceblade^]

i ran the sims 1 with all expansions on a integrated graphics, p3 700mhz, 64mb ram pc and that was slow

move to a 3400+ at 2.2ghz (stock) with an X600 and a gig of ram and that handled perfectly. so did the sims 2. The most i would say the sims 2 needs is something like an E2140... heck, even the new, el-cheapo Celeron-L thing will work fine.

saying the sims 2 needs a quad is ridiculous... even crysis does not need a quad. the only game i can think of that would need a quad is SupCom. upgrade the gfx, and even the you'll be laughing - an X1650 or even X1550 will do you fine...