The Sims 3 System Requirements

[Jay]

The Sims 3
Publisher: EA Games
Developer: Maxis

Minimum System Requirements
OS: Windows XP SP 2/Windows Vista
Processor: Pentium 4 @ 2 GHz/Athlon XP 2000+
Memory: 1 GB (1.5 GB for Laptops)
Video Memory: 128 MB (GeForce FX 5900/Radeon 9500)
(GeForce Go 6200/Radeon Mobile 9600 for Laptops)
Sound Card: DirectX Compatible
DirectX: 9.0c
Keyboard & Mouse

For computers using built-in graphics chipsets, the game requires at least:
Intel Integrated Chipset, GMA X3000 or above.
2.6 GHz Pentium D CPU, or 1.8 GHz Core 2 Duo, or equivalent
0.5 GB additional RAM

SUPPORTED VIDEO CARDS
NVIDIA GeForce series
FX 5900, FX 5950
6200, 6500, 6600, 6800,
7200, 7300, 7600, 7800, 7900, 7950
8400, 8500, 8600, 8800
9600, 9800, GTX 260, GTX 280
ATI Radeon series
9500, 9600, 9800
X300, X600, X700, X800, X850
X1300, X1600, X1800, X1900, X1950
2400, 2600, 2900
3450, 3650, 3850, 3870,
4850, 4870

Intel Extreme Graphics
GMA X3100 series

Laptop versions of these chipsets may work, but may run comparatively slower. Standalone cards that are installed in vanilla PCI slots (not PCIe or PCIx or AGP), such as some GeForce FX variants, will perform poorly. Intel integrated chipsets featuring underclocked parts will not perform adequately.
Integrated chipsets such as the ATI Xpress and the NVIDIA TurboCache variants will have low settings selected, but should run satisfactorily.
Please note that attempting to play the game using video hardware that isn’t listed above may result in reduced performance, graphical issues or cause the game to not run at all.
The NVIDIA GeForce FX series is unsupported under Vista.