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Sims3 on Blackbook?

S

Slayerboym88

macrumors regular
Original poster
Jun 9, 2007
140
0
So the "kind" folks over at EA finally released the minimum specs for The Sims3 earlier and I'm just wondering what I can expect to see when/if I bother to buy it in February? Again, this is for a final model Blackbook. Will I even get this damn thing to work? I am somewhat concerned already since my Sims2 game renders its water bodies horribly. Where they should be smooth and reflecting the surface, they are actually just blue shaded blocks and the edges are actually square-like.

Windows Vista on Laptop:
- Processor: Pentium IV 2.4 GHz / Athlon XP 2400+
- Memory: 2 GB
- Graphics: GeForce Go 6200 / Radeon mobile 9600 125 Mb.

Say what you want about the way EA has decide to (mis)manage the game, but the game itself is definitely satisfying to my god-complex!

PS: I should mention, I've upgraded the RAM to 4GB.
 
Slayerboym88 said:
So the "kind" folks over at EA finally released the minimum specs for The Sims3 earlier and I'm just wondering what I can expect to see when/if I bother to buy it in February? Again, this is for a final model Blackbook. Will I even get this damn thing to work? I am somewhat concerned already since my Sims2 game renders its water bodies horribly. Where they should be smooth and reflecting the surface, they are actually just blue shaded blocks and the edges are actually square-like.

Windows Vista on Laptop:
- Processor: Pentium IV 2.4 GHz / Athlon XP 2400+
- Memory: 2 GB
- Graphics: GeForce Go 6200 / Radeon mobile 9600 125 Mb.

Say what you want about the way EA has decide to (mis)manage the game, but the game itself is definitely satisfying to my god-complex!

PS: I should mention, I've upgraded the RAM to 4GB.
Click to expand...

I wouldn't count on it.

The GeForce Go 6200 and Radeon Mobile 9600, while being around 4-5 years old each, are still significantly more powerful than the Intel GMA X3100 or GMA 950 found in the plastic MacBooks. I wouldn't even put the X3100 or GMA 950 on the same level as the old original GeForce 256 DDR.
 
mosx said:
I wouldn't count on it.

The GeForce Go 6200 and Radeon Mobile 9600, while being around 4-5 years old each, are still significantly more powerful than the Intel GMA X3100 or GMA 950 found in the plastic MacBooks. I wouldn't even put the X3100 or GMA 950 on the same level as the old original GeForce 256 DDR.
Click to expand...

They aren't more powerful... the drivers for the X3100 GMA just suck horrendously.
 
Thanks for the feedback folks. Maybe I'll just wait until Aspyr ports it over to Mac. Does anyone know how much it would cost to upgrade the graphics to support it, if it can be done at all?
 
Stachelsk said:
They aren't more powerful... the drivers for the X3100 GMA just suck horrendously.
Click to expand...

Yes they are more powerful in a way that "significantly" or "amazingly" doesn't even describe how much more powerful the 6200 and 9600 are.

The Intel GMA 950 doesn't even have support for hardware T&L, something the original GeForce 256 brought us back in 1999.

The X3100 has hardware support for it. But, even though it looks better on paper, in the real world it performs worse than the GMA 950.

If you don't believe me then go rig up a system with at least an Athlon64 X2 and a Radeon 9600 and play some games that the X3100 is actually "good" at playing, like UT2k4 or Half-Life 2. The Radeon 9600 will be able to play it at higher resolutions with full detail settings and 60fps while the X3100 will choke at any resolution above 800x600 mid settings. Yeah I know some people on youtube posted videos of Macs with Intel GPUs running HL2, but I'm not content with ~15 fps at native resolution like some are.

I also had a Radeon 9550 (downclocked Radeon 9700) and a Celeron running at 1.2GHz back in the day and it played UT2k4 and HL2 BETTER than my plastic MacBook with a Core 2 Duo at 2GHz and Intel GMA 950.

The Intel GPUs are terrible and Apple should be offering upgrade paths, significantly discounted, for all who own one.

Slayerboym88 said:
Thanks for the feedback folks. Maybe I'll just wait until Aspyr ports it over to Mac. Does anyone know how much it would cost to upgrade the graphics to support it, if it can be done at all?
Click to expand...

Yeah about $1299 for a new MacBook or around $1,000 for a PC notebook with a GeForce 9600M GT 512MB ;)
 
I know this is the MB forum but I just bought a 2.4 ALU MBP... It should be able to run it right?
 
MysticMage said:
It will probably play, but not very well.
Click to expand...

Actually, after I did some more research, it seems like you're the most on point. EA has now posted this on their website:

For computers using built-in graphics chipsets, the game requires at least:
Intel Integrated Chipset, GMA X3000 or above.
2.6 GHz Pentium D CPU, or 1.8 GHz Core 2 Duo, or equivalent
0.5 GB additional RAM (to the base 2GB required)

So it looks like I'll only be scraped by the bullet instead of it completely killing my hopes for Sims3 during long boring lectures :(! Glad I bought the extra power cord!
 
I'm hoping Sims 3 will work on my Blackbook over bootcamp, we'll see. If not, might be an excuse to sell and get an Alu ;)
 
Slayerboym88 said:
Actually, after I did some more research, it seems like you're the most on point. EA has now posted this on their website:

For computers using built-in graphics chipsets, the game requires at least:
Intel Integrated Chipset, GMA X3000 or above.
2.6 GHz Pentium D CPU, or 1.8 GHz Core 2 Duo, or equivalent
0.5 GB additional RAM (to the base 2GB required)

So it looks like I'll only be scraped by the bullet instead of it completely killing my hopes for Sims3 during long boring lectures :(! Glad I bought the extra power cord!
Click to expand...

Awesome :) I'm a big sims fan as well.
 
First gen MacBook Pro?

So would a first generation MacBook Pro with the ATI Mobility Radeon X1600 w/128MB work very well?
 
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