t6410 radeon x200 and Sims 2

[oopers]

Hi all,

I've picked this machine out for my little cousin who likes to play the sims 2 and will more than likely be growing up with this machine from a while. They like the price (grandmother and mother), and they are moving up from a 133 with 64mb ram... I know that this is going to be much better but I was wondering if the 128mb of shared ram and not having hardware t&l is going to wreck the performance on the sims. I've heard that this game can pack a punch on systems, I wouldn't know because I've never played it.

Any help is welcomed; thanks for your insight

 

[oopers]

I apologize, I just realized this was posted in Gen Hardware and should be in video or the like...

 

[MobiusPizza]

I don't get your post. Moving up from 133 w/ 64MB RAM?

Sims 2 is more CPU taxing than it is GPU taxing
Make sure CPU is at least 2Ghz
Memory would better be more than 256 MB, in 384 - 512MB range.
I am not sure whether Radeon 200 can handle this game though. Have you even got PCI-Express slot in that computer? You can get Radeon 9600/9700 or even 9800 in AGP very cheap these days. And they are great performers.

 

[oopers]

T6410 is an emachine (3200+ A64 with 512 ram) She's moving from a Pentium 133 so ANYTHING is an improvement. I wanted to make sure that the onboard gfx will be able to run Sims 2 decently well. Since the 128mb from the Radeon x200 is shared that takes away from the system. The min requirements are 2ghz when you don't have hardware T&L, but the minimum ram is 256mb. Don't know much about the game but I'd figure only having 384mb of ram available to the computer would be a pretty big dent in the performance. I apologize for not explaining the name of the computer out front.

 

[MobiusPizza]

384 MB ram should be enough...

I am not sure how the game can perform well without hardware T&L either...
Pretty sure Radeon X200 is the bottleneck here... It's the core performance rather than the amount of memory allocated to it.
Well if it is a bundled machine, you can try to play the game first, then you can either RMA the game or upgrade the graphic card if things go wrong.

 

[oopers]

I guess I'm kinda hosed now because they are really into this system. I suppose I could give them my 5200 ultra if the "card" (gfx chip) is going to be this unmanageable. I'm wondering if the GF 4 MX onboard video had T&L because my sister is playing Sims 2 with only 64mb, just not sure if it's on the board or shared... (Her machine is also an emachines)