User blog comment:LostInRiverview/The Sims 4 has been announced!/@comment-203.218.22.207-20130508084908/@comment-2201555-20130508175138

Given the playerbase of casual games, like The Sims, and how Moore's Law is slowing down, I'd say TS4 would have to be geared towards at the very least the Intel HD 3000 as it's the single most popular video card around at the moment amongst PC gamers though I can imagine you'll need at least a high-end Core 2 Duo or a stock Core i3 to process the game efficiently given all of TS3's shortcomings.

TS3 is more CPU-bound than GPU, which accounts for a lot of the performance issues. By today's standards, I can't imagine TS4 being too demanding, especially given that from what I've heard that SimCity runs somewhat better than TS3 on the same system.

I personally would like to see Maxis implement deferred rendering into the TS4 engine given that a lot of games use it now (even the Source engine does) though I doubt it'll happen.