As we discovered in our many recent video card reviews here at Neoseeker, it doesn't take much cash now a days to get a very solid gaming video card for your home PC. However, for those of you who are on a tighter budget, or don't really game besides The Sims 3, you might be interested to see what kind of performance an inexpensive video card will do for you.

If you are scratching your head right now, wondering if you have a video card at all, then the answer is probably not. If you bought a standard desktop computer from your local hardware store, there is a good chance you are just using integrated graphics, which is a low-powered graphics processing unit built into your motherboard. If this is you, it is probably -- unfortunately -- even a level of performance below the HD 3450 performance at the bottom of the list, in the chart below.

All of the video cards used in our benchmark testing below sell for less than $80. If you look about and have a friend that can install it for you, (or you feel adventurous), you might be pleased to hear that a 8600 GTS, or other entry level (or older) gaming card can be had for $50, and sometimes even as low as $30. 

If you play any amount of games and are only using the integrated graphics on your motherboard, do yourself a huge favor and go right now to your local hardware store and purchase a video card. It will open your eyes to completely new awesome world of PC gaming. And if you need help selecting one, just ask in our hardware forums.

In the chart below, you can see how each video card handled maxed out settings, minimum settings, and our Neo-recommend balanced settings. These video cards were run with a Core 2 Duo E8500 underclocked to run at 2.41 GHz (9 x 226), with 2GB of DDR3 RAM running at 852 MHz in Microsoft Vista (64-bit). 

A quick note on CPU requirements: if you have a dual-core system, or a single machine at around 3 GHz, you should be fine for The Sims 3. If you have less than this, or are only meeting the minimum memory requirements (1GB for XP, 1.5GB for Vista) then you can expect to  suffer subpar and choppy performance at times. 

Summary

E.A was smart to make the Sims 3 accessible to a extremely wide range of hardware. It seems almost an understated part of the The Sims series' massive success: with such low hardware requirements, people who otherwise might not be PC gaming fans have the chance at playing one of the most inventive and fun titles of the year.

We hope this guide, and our recommended settings, will help you have a smooth -- and good looking -- The Sims 3 gaming session.