AMD 8A-5500 APUwith Radeon HD7560D card

I wouldn't do anything until the Richland APU comes out in a week or so. I suspect your HP will support it.

If you have 6GB of RAMs, it would help to know the configuration and speed. If you have 3 sticks, you may be running in single-channel, and by removing one stick, may actually run faster.

The APU 7560D graphics is the little brother of the HD7660D. The 7560D has 256 cores and a lower 760MHz clock speed (as opposed to 384 cores and a 800MHz clock speed for the 7660D).

The OEM HSF on the 65w Trinity APUs are really dinky. Something like the CM Vortex Plus RR-VTPS-28PK-R1 92mm should work just dandy. I'd measure that side vent across from the HSF on the CPU and consider screwing-on an 80mm fan to pull cool air, too.

I'd also try to find a utility like AMD OverDrive and see if you can unlock the HD7560D clock. Even though the Trinity CPU Piledriver cores and clock are locked, the Radeon clock is not. Clock boosts of 200MHz+ are not uncommon.

If you can't clock the Radeon clock, your motherboard is defective and you should purchase an MSI A75MA E35 FM2 as a maintenance replacement, and do a fresh OS install.

6GB of RAMs likely means you have 3x2GB sticks in 4 DIMM slots on the motherboard. An odd number of sticks will not operate in dual-channel.

The 4 DIMM slots are divided in 2 banks of 2. You may try installing 1 stick of RAM in each bank, and see if this improves performance. The graphics on the Trinity APU is highly dependent on memory performance, and dual-channel may provide 5%+ in performance gains in some instances.

Download the AOD utility from above. It will at a minimum provide a platform for you to learn about your computer. If we are lucky, it may allow you to increase the graphics clock rate.

6GB of RAMs likely means you have 3x2GB sticks in 4 DIMM slots on the motherboard. An odd number of sticks will not operate in dual-channel.

The 4 DIMM slots are divided in 2 banks of 2. You may try installing 1 stick of RAM in each bank, and see if this improves performance. The graphics on the Trinity APU is highly dependent on memory performance, and dual-channel may provide 5%+ in performance gains in some instances.

Download the AOD utility from above. It will at a minimum provide a platform for you to learn about your computer. If we are lucky, it may allow you to increase the graphics clock rate.

I wouldn't bother trying to upgrade to the Richland APU as suggested by Wisecracker. You will get better gaming performance simply by installing a graphics card. Note sure how "powerful" the integrated graphics core in Richland will be but I will bet is slower than the Radeon HD 6670. A new Richland APU will also cost more than the Radeon HD 7750 I suggested in my prior post which will give you a significant increase in game performance.

As a comparison, the Radeon HD 7560D in your A8-5500 APU is less powerful than a Radeon HD 5570. So buying a Radeon HD 7750 will be a very significant increase performance; even the cheaper / slower version running with DDR3 VRAM.

Richland APU should offer better CPU and integrated graphics performance than your Trinity APU. But the Sims 3 is not particularly CPU demanding, and as mentioned before, the increase in integrated graphics performance may be significant for an integrated solution, but it does not compare to an actual discrete graphics card.

For example, the Intel HD 4000 in Ivy Bridge CPUs is on average 35% more powerful than the previous Intel HD 3000 graphics core. Sounds impressive, right? However, that is basically going from the performance of a Radeon HD 5450 to a approximately 85% - 90% performance of a Radeon HD 5550. The Radeon HD 5550 is not even considered a "gaming card".

The integrated performance of Trinity's integrated graphics is a little more than a 17% increase over Llano's (Trinity's predecessor) integrated graphics. That is based on a post I made probably around 2 or 3 weeks ago using around 23 game benchmark results. Wisecracker didn't believe that, but all he really needed to was click the link I provided which had all the benchmark results and do some number crunching in Excel. That is not to say that Richland's integrated graphics performance will only increase by 17%, but it will inferior to a Radeon HD 6670 (aka Radeon HD 7670; just a different name).

For reference, Trinity's most powerful integrated graphics is the Radeon HD 7660D and it is approximately 10% - 15% more powerful than the Radeon HD 5570; which is also not considered a "gaming card".

Something else that might be causing your Trinity APU to run bit is that it has been confirmed that even though the games only displays 30 frames per second on the screen max, the game maximizes the number of frames the graphics core can render regardless what is being displayed.

Simply stated, even if the Sims 3 uses the graphics card to it's maximum performance (like say rendering at 70 frames per second), it only display at most 30 frames per second on the screen. An analogy would be putting your car in neutral while parked, and flooring the gas pedal. You are going nowhere, but the car's engine is running at full tilt wasting gas. For the graphics card it will be wasting electricity and producing more heat than necessary.

Click the following link for a solution that will seems to fix that issue.

http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php/topic,15585.0.html

Your chipset is a **AMD Hudson-D3**

I have a 65w Trinity APU. I don't believe your temps are an issue. Remove your side panel, and put a load on your APU. Place your finger on the side of the HSF assembly to check for heat -- it likely will not be warm.

Verify that you are running your memory in dual channel.