Hi all,
I approach players of The Sims 3 or 4 on this matter. I've decided to purchase my first MacBook. I've chosen MBP 13" with Touch Bar+Touch ID. I'm debating between:
- late 2016 model with a 2.9 GHz processor (i5+Intel Iris Plus Graphics 550) RAM: 8GB
- 2017 model with a 3.1 GHz processor (i5+Intel Iris Plus Graphics 650) RAM: 8GB.
Question is, what difference would the 2 graphics cards make? Is the difference relevant?...I'm asking separately for Sims 3 and Sims 4. (I've read that Sims 3 doesn't really work with Iris Graphics.) I'd like to play on
high settigs; worse case scenario - medium.
Which MBP should I buy?
Firstly those are integrated graphics, not graphics cards (Which would be dGPU). So I really wouldn't expect much, although they can suffice for casual games.
Sims 3 should work with medium, or low settings fine (Really going to depend on how much stuff is going on in the game, likely laggy as hell in visually demanding areas, fine with 1 sim in a house thing). As per the recommended specs available via EA:
https://help.ea.com/en-us/help/the-...-system-requirements-for-the-sims-3/#maccards probably not that bad though to be fair, I used to play it on my 2010 13" and it was fine on low settings, it's an old game after all.
Sims 4 is going to be same scenario:
https://help.ea.com/en-us/help/the-sims/the-sims-4/the-sims-4-system-requirements/
The best Mac you want if you want to play games is an iMac, or a 15", just anything with an actual graphics card. Gaming is and always has been a secondary consideration when buying a Mac, buy it for work or what you need, if you can play a game it's a bonus. Otherwise you can get a Windows machine for half the price that'll run games twice as good (Probably).
Edit: one thing to note, there really wouldn't be much if any difference between those two computers, if you're happy with the 2016 then get that one and save a few quid. Or get the 2016 and an external GPU (Costly mind you).
