Hi,
Im planning to update my PC.
My current specs being...
Intel Core 2 Duo E4500 2.20Ghz
2GB DDR2 RAM
Win 7 64 Bit
Nvdia Geforce 440GT
To this...
Intel i5 starting model
4GB DDR3 RAM
the rest being the same.
I read somewhere that our game and population scales itself according to our comp specs...
My question is how much of a visual and gameplay difference would that bring if i played it with my old computer or my updated one?
Also would using 8GB bring a lot of difference opposed to just 4GB?
Thanks in advance 
Hi, sibi.
4 GB will help. 6 GB to 8 GB would be better (depending on your budget). You may also want to look at a better video card. The nVidia GT series cards are generally not good cards for gaming. The GTS and GTX series cards are much better for gaming (GTX being the better of the two). Two things to look for:
- The card uses GDDR5 memory.
- The card has 1 GB or more memory.
Try not to spend more than $150 (US) for a graphics card. Above that amount, the returns are not that great for the price - at least not for playing Sims games. Also, avoid the GTX 610 and GTX 620 cards. They are actually re-branded lower-end models that don't perform as well as their model numbers would suggest.
I think 4 gb would be a good upgrade.
On a related note:
Which is better: To have a video card with 1gb dedicated RAM or shared RAM?
Dedicated graphics memory is
always better then shared graphics memory. The reason being that system memory (which shared memory uses) is slower than dedicated graphics memory. This also leaves less memory available for The Sims, Windows and anything else you may be running.
Say you have a system with 4 GB memory and 32-bit Windows 7. The system (due to being 32-bit) can normally see about 3.75 GB of that memory total. Now, your graphics card takes 1 GB of that for it's use, and Windows usually takes 1 GB or more, depending on what you're running in the background. Now, you run The Sims 3. In 32-bit Windows, the game normally can take up to 2 GB of memory. So, you're now you have a memory deficit of .25 GB. Windows will start swapping things to the hard drive in order to free up memory to run the game, causing the game to slow down.
Hope this helps.
Flynn
