What's your current PC? Perhaps a simple upgrade would suffice.

Hi AeryFaery,

The Pixel Shader is a hardware function of 3D graphics cards which was gone through a large number of iterations over the last few years. The easiest way of dealing with this is to find the associated version of DirectX that is supported by the graphic card/chip. Have a look at this link:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pixel_shader

For Sims 3, any graphics card that supports DirectX9 or higher will support Pixel Shader 2.0. The game is not very graphics intensive, so you don't need anything fancy. The Intel GMA 3100 graphics chipset on the motherboard IS DirectX9 compatibile so it should be fine.

But, as someone has already pointed out, if the only thing holding you back is the graphics. A low cost (<$50) graphics card upgrade may be all that you need.

Masi_GC

Well I'm not exactly sure what model of desktop I have but it says on it Dimension 3100.

You could update to one of these for a modest price.