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Sims 3 Works GMA 950

N

neosar

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Oct 2, 2008
3
0
Since I spent hours scouring for the answer to this, and did not really know until I bought/installed it. I just wanted to let people know that while Sims 3 does not work on OS X on the older Macbooks (everything prior to early 2008, GMA950 integrated graphics), it DOES work if you use bootcamp and Windows XP. Not the ideal solution, but it does work and it beats not playing or upgrading hardware. For what it's worth, on my macbook (unibody) I just thought I'd mention that the port runs remarkably well in OS X.
 
The supposedly is a "hack" that you can download that will allow you to run it off of un supported computers/ graphics cards. I have not tried it, nor will I, but if someone does happen to try it, please inform people if it works.
 
I have a macbook with the Intel GMA 950 graphics card, with 2gb ram. I run VM fusion on this with the minimum spec.

Will Sims3 work ok, I really want to play this, I have also a advent 2413 netbook running xp but I dont have a cd drive, so this isn't an option.

Is it possible to amend the fusion set up to play this game.

Cheers

Pure
 
Gma 950

Well, now that I've spent $129++ upgrading to Leopard from Tiger, solely so I can play the Sims 3, I realize that my little MacBook with GMA 950 just isn't going to cut it. I've officially gone broke on a game I can't even play. Well... okay, I CAN technically play it, but my sims are either all black (as in they have eyeballs, the rest of them appears to be in shadow), or some kind of camouflage-pixellation nightmare. And, it runs so slow it kind of makes my head burn...

So... any suggestions? What in the world do I do?

I'm so sad about this, I really could cry, and now I'm broke, too. :confused:
 
The GMA 950 is a pretty fast chip, even faster at most games like Warcraft than the GMA 3100 however unfortunately due to lack of shader support the GMA 950 just will not run newer games and these artifact you see with games that do not support it are due to the lack of full shader support.
 
puremagic said:
I have a macbook with the Intel GMA 950 graphics card, with 2gb ram. I run VM fusion on this with the minimum spec.

Will Sims3 work ok, I really want to play this, I have also a advent 2413 netbook running xp but I dont have a cd drive, so this isn't an option.

Is it possible to amend the fusion set up to play this game.

Cheers

Pure
Click to expand...

It will run horrible in Fusion for sure.
Why not use bootcamp, it's alot faster and you can start your bootcamp partition from fusion as well (although you wanna boot in bootcamp for performance)
 
I thought fusion was an alternative to bootcamp. Will I still have the graphic shader issue though even in windows?

Thanks

Pure
 
Thanks for the info. Will take my mac to the apple store at the weekend and see if I can get some sort of sims.
 
I was hoping I could play this on my MacBook in OS X. I suppose I can go into Crapdows :p although I only have 1GB Ram:confused:
 
GMA 950 isn't officially supported for a reason. Its utter crap for modern games.

Atleast apple refreshed the new MacBooks and Minis with the Nvidia 9400 which is good enough to pass as an entry level gpu for modern laptop gaming.
 
I use a MacBook 2,1 with a Intel GMA 950 and Mac OS X Leopard 10.5.7 and I don't really experience any lag. However, I do have that artefact, as in when in CAS (this CAS is Create A Sim and not Create A Style) they're completely black, however, when in play mode, they're not black and it is playable except it's a bit blotchy. I don't have a horrible lag, it slows down at times, but seeing as it loads regions after some time, let it sit for around 10 minutes and it will not have much lag at all. However, if I zoom into a sim, their hair disappears. That and the black sim in CAS is the only things bugging me. The low settings is a shame, but it doesn't matter.
 
It Does Work

The sims 3 plays fine on my macbook 1,1.
Model Name: MacBook
Model Identifier: MacBook1,1
Processor Name: Intel Core Duo
Processor Speed: 2 GHz
Number Of Processors: 1
Total Number Of Cores: 2
L2 Cache: 2 MB
Memory: 1.5 GB
Bus Speed: 667 MHz

And my Graphics

Chipset Model: GMA 950
Type: GPU
Bus: Built-In
VRAM (Total): 64 MB of Shared System Memory
Vendor: Intel (0x8086)
Device ID: 0x27a2
Revision ID: 0x0003
Displays:
Color LCD:
Resolution: 1280 x 800
Pixel Depth: 32-Bit Color (ARGB8888)
Main Display: Yes
Mirror: Off
Online: Yes
Built-In: Yes
Display Connector:
Status: No Display Connected
 
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