The Sims are finally back , five long years after the last main game in the series. The Sims 4 looks to make the series more in-depth and involving than ever before, offering up some of the most powerful creation tools the franchise has ever seen.

In The Sims 4 you can grant your sims deeper, more realistic personalities that opens up a whole new world of possibility for their interactions, while budding architects can get to grips with the impressive-looking new tools at their disposal, allowing them to tweak every aspect to piece together their dream house. All these new features come at a cost though, and of course The Sims 4 is a little more demanding than its predecessor. To find out how much more read on to check out the official Sims 4 system requirements...

The Sims 4 Minimum System Requirements

• OS: Windows XP SP3 64-bit
• CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo E4300 1.8 GHz or AMD Athlon 64 4000+ 2.1 GHz
• RAM: 2GB System Memory
• GPU RAM: 128MB Graphics Memory
• GPU: Nvidia GeForce 6600, AMD ATI Radeon X1300, or Intel GMA X4500
• HDD: 9GB Free Hard Drive Space and at least 1GB additional space for custom content
• DX: DirectX 9.0c
• Audio: DirectX 9.0c Compatible Sound Card

Now there's a sight for sore eyes! In keeping with the rest of the series The Sims 4 system requirements are very low, offering only a marginal increase on The Sims 3. The processor is going to be one of the more demanding aspects for some, with The Sims 4 making the leap to a dual-core processor requirement. Luckily this is only an Intel Core 2 Duo E4300 or AMD Athlon 64 4000+, both now very low-end dual processors that are close to a decade old, so nearly all new PCs and laptops bought in the last few years should easily exceed this requirements for The Sims 4. 

The Sims 4 runs on a modified version of The Sims 3 graphics engine, and Maxis has previously claimed that it has optimised the game on ensure it works on as many player's rigs as possible. The graphics card requirements for The Sims 4 have remained the same but the RAM has doubled up to 2GB, while you'll need a little extra storage space for the 9GB minimum install. Luckily RAM is one of the cheapest and easiest components to upgrade on a tower PC, so if you've still got 1GB of RAM then it should be a simple process to upgrade.

One thing to bear in mind with The Sims 4 is that it will inevitably have a lot of add-on content and expansions packs. While these base requirements are very low they will increase as developer Maxis release new content. The Sims 3 ran noticeably slower when all of the expansions were installed, so if you are only just hitting The Sims 4 minimum system requirements then it's something to bear in mind. Luckily it should be some time until these start arriving! 

Remember, you can always check out how well your PC can run the The Sims 4 System Requirements here, where you can check benchmarking and performance from other users.

Compare your graphics card to the The Sims 4 benchmark chart.

What do you make of The Sims 4 system requirements? Are you impressed with how low Maxis has got them? Let us know! Cheers to simfulsimmer for the heads up!