- Windows XP (Service Pack 2)
- 2.0 GHz P4 processor or equivalent
- 1 GB RAM
- At least 6.5 GB of hard drive space with at least 1 GB additional space for custom content
- 128 MB Video Card with support for Pixel Shader 2.0
- Supported NVIDIA Geforce cards (I prefer them over ATI Radeon, just based on personal preference)
FX 5900, FX 5950
6200, 6500, 6600, 6800,
7200, 7300, 7600, 7800, 7900, 7950
8400, 8500, 8600, 8800
9600, 9800, GTX 260, GTX 280
I'd over-build to those specs because more than likely if you run the game with the bare minimum, you'd have to dial back all the graphics settings to the lowest level possible. In addition, I'd built to the minimum specs when The Sims 2 first came up and upgraded to the minimum specs after a few expansions came out, and after both times I had to deal with long load times and slow graphics. It got so bad that (in addition to school), one of the main reasons I stopped playing the Sims was because the video card would act up 5 minutes into playing and drop all the graphics, leaving me with only a pixelated floor plan and just weird, random images.
At this point, I definitely have to give a big shout out and say THANK YOU to my IT guys at work. In the midst of their hellish schedules, they helped see what upgrades my current setup could handle (turned out to upgrade to the fastest processor for my board would cost the same as a new quad-core mobo/CPU combo lol) and helped me narrow down my list of parts to purchase. I did a lot of research at Overclock.net and combed through reviews at TigerDirect.com, Newegg.com and a host of other sites.
After a lot of back and forth. Here's the list:
- MSI N9800GT-T2D512-OC V2 GeForce 9800 GT 512MB 256-bit GDDR3 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready SLI Supported Video Card — I actually bought this first to capitalize on a rebate at Newegg.com. It was fun and games getting this installed, I'll probably talk about that in my next post.
Corsair Dual Channel TWINX 2048MB PC6400 DDR2 800MHz E.P.P. Memory (2 x 1024) MPN: TWIN2X2048-6400C4 — In the process of selecting this, I learned a lot about RAM-related stuff like why latency matters - AMD Phenom 9500 Processor HD9500WCGDBOX - 2.20GHz, 4 x 512KB Cache, 1800MHz (3600 MT/s) FSB, Agena, Quad-Core, Retail, Socket AM2+, Processor with Fan MPN: HD9500WCGDBOX
- Asus M3N78 PRO Motherboard - Socket AM2+, Geforce 8300, ATX, HDMI, SATA, Gbit LAN, Hybrid SLI — LOTS research went into this. Initially I was going for a mini-ATX board that cost less than this one, but in every review I read overheating was a major problem, even when the users had full-sized cases. This case has a few extra slots that I don't need right now, but it should definitely handle some future upgrades because it claims to be socket AM3 compatible as well.
- HP HPDVD1060i DVD Writer - 48x CD-R, 32x CD-RW, 20x DVD±R, 8x DVD±R DL, 6x DVD-RW, SATA MPN: HPDVD1060I — I already have a DVD writer, but it's IDE and the new mobo only has one IDE, which I thought would've been needed to support the two IDE harddrives, but I'll get to what happened with this soon.
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