Good evening,
I am somewhat concerned that sims 2 may damage my graphics card.
My laptop in the past has played Sims 4 no problem-but I have read articles stating that Sims 2 might damage a graphics card.
My laptop is the Asus F55la:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B01L..._ob_neva_mobile
Do I have a reason to worry?

That processor comes with Intel HD 520 graphics processing, which is fine for TS4 as long as you haven't got your graphics settings on max (source), and is more than sufficient for TS2 even on max settings - though you should limit the number of ridiculously high poly CC hairs you use. I don't know if you also play TS3, but if you do that laptop should be fine, though you'll have to turn down the graphics settings for later EPs.

Generally speaking, TS3 is far and away the most demanding of the sims games; TS4 is second and TS2 is third. Although it used to be true that integrated graphics were never suitable for gaming, they've improved significantly in the last few years; you still need to check, but for sims especially, you'll normally be okay with a new model. And TS2 is 13 years old, so most hardware can handle it nowadays.

I would be a little concerned about the amount of RAM on that laptop; integrated graphics will be using some of that RAM, the OS also needs some, so you may find you have some lag and/or slow loading. Unfortunately it's not that easy to upgrade laptop RAM after you've bought the laptop, so you may be stuck with it.

However, the difference in performance is quite noticeable. I have two graphics cards, one integrated (Intel HD Graphics 4600), and one dedicated (NVidia GeForce GTX 860M with 4 GB memory). I can’t run Castaway Stories with my dedicated card, which I think is related to the fact that CS has built in windowed mode option possible to activate in game settings (if I try to run TS2 in windowed mode I get the same error, so I’m stuck with fullscreen), so the only way to run it is use my integrated card, and performance is nowhere as good as in TS2 ran with my GeForce, especially given that I’m obsessed with dense gardens and place plenty of plants everywhere. One of my lots in TS2 has about 8 FPS when zoomed out because of how big it is and the amount of things on it, and that is with the NVidia card – I prefer not to think what would happen if I ran it with the Intel card

What I’m trying to say is don’t go crazy. Play on small lots (or if big, there shouldn’t be many things on them), don’t build extremely dense gardens, don’t download tons of hi-poly CC with HD textures, and you should be fine.

Thank you all very much! My cc in the game (hair) never exceeds 1,700, and my settings are on medium-low. But thank you guys so much, I feel at ease now!

My desktop computer has Intel HD 2000 graphics and I'm running ultimate collection at 1920 x 1080, all high settings except for the edge smoothing

Sounds awesome! Any lag?