Need to choose a laptop that will play sims 3 on medium-high

[victoria_bolshey]

Hi,

I would really appreciate if you could help me to choose a new laptop, preferably Toshiba, that I could work on, use for storage of all my pictures, music, documents and MOST importantly be able to play sims 3 on and the expansion packs. I have my eye on something and I was wondering if the laptop could run sims 3 and its expansion packs on medium to HIGH graphics. I currently use Apple macbook late 2009 that can hardly run the sims 3 and i want to buy a laptop that would really do the trick. I am aiming to spend around £600-£900 and would prefer Toshiba brand laptops. The laptop I am currently thinking about getting is this:

Toshiba SATELLITE P855-307

Processor type : 3rd generation Intel® Core™ i7-3610QM Processor with Intel® Turbo Boost Technology 2.0, clock speed : 2.30 / 3.30 Turbo GHz
3rd level cache : 6 MB

Operating System / Platform
Windows® 7 Home Premium 64-bit (pre-installed, Toshiba-HDD recovery)

System memory standard : 8,192 (4,096 + 4,096) MB
maximum expandability : 16,384 MB
technology : DDR3 RAM (1,600 MHz)

Hard disk capacity : 1 TB
drive rotation : 5,400 rpm

Display size : 39.6cm (15.6”)
internal resolution : 1,366 x 768

Graphics adaptor type : NVIDIA® GeForce® GT 630M with CUDA™ Technology and NVIDIA® Optimus™ Technology
memory : 2,048 MB dedicated VRAM. Available graphics memory can be expanded using system memory, through TurboCache™ technology: up to 4,095 MB with 6 GB system memory installed as shown in the NVIDIA control panel, (with pre-installed 64-bit operating system).
memory type : DDR3 Video RAM (resp. Video RAM and system memory combined)

or this:

Processor Intel® Core™ i7-3630QM processor (2.4 GHz (up to 3.4 GHz with TurboBoost), 1600 MHz 6MB Cache)
Operating System Windows® 8
RAM 8 GB DDR3
Graphics card 2 GB NVIDIA® GeForce® GT 640M dedicated memory
Screen resolution 1366 x 768
Screen size 15.6"
Hard drive 1 TB SATA
5400 rpm


I am not very computer savvy so would really appreciate your hellp!)

Many thanks!!

 

[jaguarskx]

The second laptop with the nVidia GT 640m would be the better choice because it is the more powerful laptop of the two.

Both laptops have a quad core i7 CPU and it is basically overkill for the Sims 3 which uses only 1 or 2 cores. Based on the brief description of what you want to do with the laptop you can save some money by dropping down to a dual core CPU like a Core i5-3210m.

 

[victoria_bolshey]

Sounds great) thanks for the help! But i am still worried about the graphics card on both laptops.

 

[Labrynthian]

Yup jaguarskx is right. Why are you worried about the GPU on both laptops? They're both mid-ranged class 2 GPUs and will run sims 3 fine...

 

[victoria_bolshey]

Best answer selected by victoria_bolshey.