Processor- and Memoryuse test, The sims 3 demands quit a lot of your pc To control what kind of influence The Sims has on your pc you can do a small test. Vista and Windows 7 offer a special gadget (you can find it by rightclicking on your desktop and choose "Gadgets") The front meter (processor usage) tells us 0,2% (there are always some windowsprograms running in the background) The back meter (memory usage) tells us 29%. So only starting up Windows + networkcard + part of it used for my graphic card, cost 29% of the 4GB memory i have. (1,16GB) When i start up Sims 3 including Fast Lane then i can see what the program does to my system. Now 34% of my processor is being used en 64% of my memory (2,56GB) So Sims3 is using 2,56 - 1,16 = 1,4GB of memory With for example an Intel(r) Core(TM) i3 CPU 530 @ 2,93GHz (4 CPUs), ~2,9GHz = 5.274GHz. 34% is being used = 1.79GHz Sims3 including Fast Lane stuff is using 1,79 GHZ of the CPU and 1,4GB of the memory Check this with the system requirments: For Windows Vista (Service pack 1 or higher is required) and Windows 7 * 2.4 GHz P4 processor or equal * 1,5 GB RAM * A 128 MB Videocard with support for Pixel Shader 2.0 * The latest version of DirectX 9.0 So i really don't understand how Sims will work under windows 7 with only 1,5 GB RAM, i already need 2,56 GB