I just bought The Sims 3. I was wondering what was ABSOLUTELY required to play the Sims. Because I could definitely live with a slow Sims. Well, not really, but I'm really depressed. I went to Can You Run It.com and it said I couldn't. There are three things I failed on: RAM, Video Card RAM, and Pixel Shader 2.0 (I'm going to get it soon hopefully) Which one of those absolutely requires it when you install The Sims 3? I'm sure RAM is just to speed it up. I'm not sure about Video Card RAM and Pixel Shader 2.0 yet though. I was wondering if you guys knew any sites with free Video Card RAM and free RAM booster. Thanks!

CanYouRunIt is notoriously unreliable. Please don't use it as a guideline.

The system requirements for the game are here: http://www.modthesims.info/wiki.php...em_Requirements ... there's also info there on finding your system specs so you can compare. If you can get us your system specs then we can help you decipher what all of it means. Please fill in the list down at the bottom of that page and let us know what you've got so we can tell you whether it'll work or not - you can, of course, compare it yourself, but it sounds like you're not all that tech-savvy.

ALL of the components are necessary - if you fail on one but are fine on the rest, it's likely the game won't work at all, and if it -does- work at all, it won't work well.

There's no such thing as "free video card RAM and free RAM booster" - I think you're a little confused. A video card is basically like the visual processor of your computer - it's what lets it make pretty pictures. RAM is like its short-term memory. Both of those are physical devices - little bits of metal and plastic and suchlike that live inside your computer. You can't download them - you have to buy them.

OKay, thanks. I was told by someone at GameStop yesterday to check CanYouRunIt, so I'm kind of glad that it's unreliable. Just wondering - how many MB in 1 GB?

Err, there's 1024 MB (megabytes) in 1 GB (gigabyte). Why?

And can you get that list of system specs for your system, please? It's quite easy to get with dxdiag as described on the link I gave, and we can give you a detailed and personalized recommendation on whether the game will run well/at all based on your system.

My computer tells how many MB in a GB, so I was just wondering because I checked.

-Generally- gigabytes will only be displayed for things like hard drive space. Which, while you do need to have enough space for the game and then some, most people have plenty. Technically RAM can come in gigabyte amounts but it's usually listed as 1024 MB or 2048 MB for 1 GB and 2 GB RAM, respectively.