are you using a 32bit windows? because that will limit your max ram to 3.5gb.

If you want to max the sims 3 it would not be unnatural to expierence lag with a Radeon 6490m which is a low end laptop graphics card.

Try to reduce settings to medium or low.

But im afraid you made a mistake if you wanted to go the laptop gaming route and spend less than £1000 you should have gone for this:

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=LT-055-MS&groupid=959&catid=1828&subcat=

OldSoldier123

mh thats better but still pretty crap.

at the end of the day all laptops have a sell by date and go off after a couple of years, rendering your entire investment null. with an outlay of 800 on a desktop you could get something way better and upgrade it gradually to always have something top spec. you arent throwing away a : psu, keyboard, touch pad, graphics card, cpu, memory, mobo, hard drive, disk drive, MONITOR, every time your hardware is a little out of date.

If you want to max the sims 3 it would not be unnatural to expierence lag with a Radeon 6490m which is a low end laptop graphics card.

Try to reduce settings to medium or low.

But im afraid you made a mistake if you wanted to go the laptop gaming route and spend less than £1000 you should have gone for this:

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=LT-055-MS&groupid=959&catid=1828&subcat=

OldSoldier123

[QUOTE="seercirra"]

this is a better board for less money

http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128502

PfizersaurusRex

Whether or not it's a better purchase is debatable (I'd say no), but it's definitely not a better board.

[QUOTE="seercirra"]

this is decent but there is alot more he could save, if he needs a monitor, mouse, kb etc. lets not forget good speakers or a good headset are a necessity for pc gaming. he could get away with spending; (all my prices are from ebuyer.co.uk)

£130 on his graphics card - getting a gtx 560 instead, saving £40

£80 on his mobo - a gigabyte z68 ap d3 instead, savind £20

£60 on his psu - coolermaster gx 650 instead, saving £12

£40 on his case - saving £20. any full atx case will do.

£38 on his ram - saving £7 buy the crucial ballistix 1600 instead

£15 on his cpu cooler saving £10, buying arctic cooling freezer 7 pro instead

£0 on thermal compound - saving £9, the thermal compound on his freezer 7 pro is more than enough.

total savings: £118 with 0 loss in performance. £120 odd is a perfect amount for a 22" flatscreen, or a 128gb ssd.

ionusX

http://www.ebuyer.com/119588-casecom-6630-black-silver-midi-tower-case-kb6630

http://www.ebuyer.com/278341-casecom-cb-341-black-mesh-mid-tower-case-cb-341-black-

http://www.ebuyer.com/278340-casecom-cb-191-black-mid-tower-case-cb-191-black-grey-

http://www.ebuyer.com/251825-xenta-black-mid-tower-case-with-all-black-interior-12cm-blue-pa917

cases are 95% about aesthetics.. people like to spend more because it makes their entire pc look more expensive. manufacturers arent stupid so they provide these un-neccessarily expensive cases and people lap them up. but if you really want to save money you could spend £15-20 on a case and be totally fine for years. nothing can really go wrong with a case. ofc if you treat your desktop like a laptop or if your just a clumsy bstard then you might want something a bit more solid. but still, if you drop it down the stairs everything will break, same as a cheap one. 'cept you have less chance of dropping the cheap one down the stairs because it wont weigh as much.

Thanks a lot guys. 1080p is absolutely fine for me, I have turtle beaches for my Xbox that are pc compatable and a mouse and keyboard that will be fine until I can afford better ones. How does the pc above compare to the ones on the dinopc link I provided and with the money saved would it be worth spending the savings to make it a better machine? I would say im competent with most pc software just the hardware spec side and how they will affect performance especially when combined boggles me!rosko123

Like many people will tell you, BUILT ONE!

I've put together some components for you below.

Grey_Eyed_Elf

£130 on his graphics card - getting a gtx 560 instead, saving £40

£80 on his mobo - a gigabyte z68 ap d3 instead, savind £20

£60 on his psu - coolermaster gx 650 instead, saving £12

£40 on his case - saving £20. any full atx case will do.

£38 on his ram - saving £7 buy the crucial ballistix 1600 instead

£15 on his cpu cooler saving £10, buying arctic cooling freezer 7 pro instead

£0 on thermal compound - saving £9, the thermal compound on his freezer 7 pro is more than enough.

total savings: £118 with 0 loss in performance. £120 odd is a perfect amount for a 22" flatscreen, or a 128gb ssd.

this is a better board for less money

http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128502

i would reccomend going sandy bridge for your cpu/mobo.

in a couple of years those amd chips will be out of date so to upgrade youll probably want a new mobo too. with sandy bridge their best cpu's now are alot better than amd's, so in a couple of years you could pick one of those up and keep the motherboard for another couple of years. for example if you get an i3 now you could afford a better graphics card perhaps, and then in a year sell your chip and just put a new 2500k in this will probably cost you a net of ~$75. then the 2500k would last another year or two comfortably. this would be much more balanced for now and probably save you money in the long run.

as for graphics, no, you dont have to keep your old card in there, keeping up a slot. you just take the old out and put the new in.