Base game is fine, but what happens when I go further?

[JesseTheCat]

As usual, I am late for the party, I just got Sims 4 this week.   

The base game flies on my computer, and right now that's all I'm playing with, trying to learn it.  But, I can see expansion/stuff/game packs in my future and custom content.  And I want to know if my computer can handle it.  It's pretty old, but it was top of the line when I got it, and I have done some upgrading.

Processor = AMD Phenom II x4 955 running at 3.20 (This chip was made for overclocking, so I could probably get it up to 3.60, but I would prefer not to. Mostly because the last time I overclocked a chip, even though I had extra fans in my case, so on and so forth, it fried the motherboard, the graphics card, etc. 

Graphics card = EVGA (Nvidia Chipset) Geforce GTX1050TI 4 GB GDDR5

RAM = 32 gig DDR3 1600 Crucial Ballistix

Hard Drive = Samsung SSD 840 EVO (1 TB)

Power Supply (Can't remember the brand name, but I remember the guy who helped me build the computer said it was a very good one) = 750w.

OS = Windows 10 home edition (The free one) kept updated.

Good highspeed internet (Fios)

Keyboard/Mouse Logic tech, standard, nothing made especially for gaming, haven't really needed it.

Case: Coolmaster 3  Fan cool, with 6 fans all in working order.  (after the overclocking disaster of my last computer, I'm a little paranoid about that!)

Forgive me if I'm way oversharing, but it seems like every time I give out stats, I forget the one stat needed, so I just give whatever I can and hope I gave out all the information I needed to. 

Anyway, so, I guess what I want to know is how well will this system hold up with putting in additional content.  Can I put in pretty much all the official content now?  (Game packs, stuff packs, expansion packs)  Can I also add custom content?  Should I limit myself?  (I doubt I'll buy all the EA packs, some don't appeal to me, but I know there will be ones I do want to buy later, such as the Pets expansion pack)  Should I be starting to ponder a better processor?  (And ponder is exactly what I will be able to do, I'm sooo broke right now!) 

My graphics card automatically set everything at high settings except for lighting, that it set to low, which struck me as strange.  I'm going to bump it up to medium and see if the game lags. 


Any and all advice would be appreciated and I thank you in advance. 
 

[HelenP]

Hi @JesseTheCat, welcome to the forum.

In my experience, if the base game works easily on your pc then you will have no problems with adding the packs, but I hope @MrsFlynn will come along and confirm that.  You haven't mentioned the amout of hard drive space available so that could be a limiting factor.

I personally use mods and cc and enjoy the added items but I know others prefer not to as badly made mods can cause crashes and problems and you have to check after each patch that they are all still working correctly.

Hope you have loads of fun with your Sims.

[JesseTheCat]

Thank you for the welcome.   

I did edit in the harddrive/ram information, I guess I was doing that while you were responding, sorry I forgot!  I have a 1TB SSHD.  I'm not an avid gamer, and since I got the new hard drive, the only game I have on it now is the Sims 4 base.  I might put Sims 3 on it, but even if I do, that should still leave plenty of room. 

So as long as the base game runs well, other things should too?  Okay, I hope that turns out to be true.  I remember in 2, usually anything by Maxis/EA worked just fine, but when you started overloading with custom content, real problems could happen.  Like some of those beautiful custom meshes had so many polygons that my system would just scream to a crawl!  I couldn't play Sims 2 for almost a week, then figured out it was because I'd gone crazy putting in some "Extra shiny" floors not realizing each one was a tiny mirror and just hogging up all sorts of system resources. 

Thank you again!   

[MrsFlynn]

The computer should do okay with the game at high settings. Just add 1 or 2 packs at a time to see how the computer will handle it.

As for custom content, yes limit yourself. As you add more content to the game regardless if it's cc, mods or Sims 4 packs it may start having performance issues.

[MrsFlynn]

This statement isn't necessarily true due to the more packs, cc and mods added the more issues will pop up, like lag, freezing and crashing.

In my experience, if the base game works easily on your pc then you will have no problems with adding the packs, but I hope MrsFlynn will come along and confirm that.

[JesseTheCat]

Thank you so much. Mrs. Flynn, I appreciate your help. 

I am curious though, I was looking at processors today on Amazon (Hey, a girl's gotta dream, right?)  and I noticed most of the processors recommended for building gaming systems weren't all that much faster than mine.   I know my chip was pretty high end when I bought it, but that was so many years ago  but that kind of struck me as odd.  I would have thought they'd be up to 12 core 10.00 or something  

Is there something else that makes the newer chips better than the old?  Other than just simple age.

[MrsFlynn]

Newer is not always better, but the newer processors are more efficient and uses less power. Think less drain on power supply. This also applies with the newer video cards like your GTX 1050Ti. Newer video cards use less power.