SIMS 3 Video Card

[davetuc]

Hi, my daughter has just bought SIMS 3 but it fails to start due to our PC video card not supporting 'Pixel Shader 2.0'. We have a Dell Dimension 2400 series. Do we need to buy an additional video card or is it something that can be downloaded? None of us are PC experts, so would appreciate some advice. Cheers.

[daffy654]

Your PC is nowhere near powerful enough to run the game. The minimum requirements are:

CPU: (XP) 2.0 GHz P4 processor or equivalent; (Vista) 2.4 GHz P4 processor or equivalent [If built-in graphics chipsets then 2.6 GHz Pentium D CPU, or 1.8 GHz Core 2 Duo, or equivalent.]
CPU Speed.2GHz
System RAMXP)1GB RAM,(vista) 1.5GB(if built in graphics add 0.5 additional RAM)
Operating System:Windows XP (Service Pack 2) or Windows Vista (Service Pack 1)
Video Card Minimum: 128 MB Video Card, with support for Pixel Shader 2.0 (NVIDIA GeForce FX 5900 or above / ATI Radeon 9500 or above / Intel GMA 3-series or above
Video Card Features - Minimum attributes of your Video Card Video RAM: Required - 128 MB , )
Video Card 3D Acceleration: Required - Yes
Pixel Shader Ver.: Required - 2.0
Free Disk Space
Minimum: 6.1 GB of hard drive space with at least 1 GB of additional space for custom content and saved games

Your system is lacking in RAM and graphics capabilities. You would need to see if there is space to install more RAM and a new graphics card but it hardly seems worth it for just one game.