Advertisement
If you have a new account but are having problems posting or verifying your account, please email us on hello@boards.ie for help. Thanks :)
Hello all! Please ensure that you are posting a new thread or question in the appropriate forum. The Feedback forum is overwhelmed with questions that are having to be moved elsewhere. If you need help to verify your account contact hello@boards.ie
Low End PCs/Laptops: The Lowdown and Game Compatibility List
Options
-
10-09-2010 6:46pm#1Mods feel free to move or delete.
PC gaming has had its shares of ups and downs. It's safe to say that PC gamings best days had been in the late 90's/early 00's, where graphics hardware wasnt so much of an issue if you wanted to play the latest games.
Technology progresses, for better or worse, unfortunately. While graphics has made huge strides and hardware companies such as Intel, Nvidia and ATI have taken it in their stride to accomplish such things, there's always going to be niggles with every step.
So, you've just bought a laptop. And you've just found out that they've thrown in a crappy Intel integrated graphics card, and now you can't play the latest PC games on your shiny new hardware?
Fear not! This guide will hopefully aid some people into buying laptops, or trying out some other games as well as modifying the latest ones
Step 1: Know your Hardware
You want to know what's inside your PC/laptop before doing anything first. The easiest way to do so without downloading extra software:
1. Right click My Computer/Computer, and click properties. A pop-up like thus should appear for XP users
or like this for Vista/7 users
This gets you your Processing speed and your RAM.
Now, on this box, for XP click Hardware, then device manager. Look up Display adaptors and expand it. You should get something along the lines of Intel GMA 950/Nvidia Geforce 8600GT/ATI Radeon 4650. This is your graphics card.
For Vista/7 users, click on Device Manager and follow the steps thereafter.
Step 2: Assess your Hardware
All fine and dandy gathering information, but for some users all of this is utter gibberish. Hopefully I can explain this well, so here goes:
Your PCs speed is dependant on your processor (CPU). The amount of temporary information stored while loading an application or game is your memory (RAM). The hardware that renders what you see on your screen is the graphics card (GPU).
CPU
For CPUs, there are thousands of different speeds available.
My general rule of thumb for PC gaming:
For games released in the last 4 years, a score of 500 is the bare minimum you need to get it running on low settings. Obviously the higher the score, the better performance you'll get (faster loading, smoother gameplay etc)
For games released from between 2003-2006, a score of 200 is required to play those games at acceptable levels.
For games released beforehand, I'm fairly sure that 99.9% of users here would have the necessary CPU speed to run that certain game.
This is just a list of the most common CPUs found in laptops/desktops. For more CPUs, go here, search your CPU and grab it's score.
RAM
RAM is the least complicated of the lot, but general rule of thumb is:
For Visa/7 users, 2GB or RAM is required for games released in the last 4 years for optimal performance. For XP users, 1-1.5GB is sufficient.
For games released from 2003-2006, 512mb or more would be more than enough.
GPU
The graphics card is the common culprit in users not being able to play their latest games. As dedicated hardware was advancing, Intel decided that the world needs budget graphics rendering, and thus came about their Graphics Media Accelerator chips. Unfortunately what they didn't tell the end-users, is that their GPUs were exceptionally poor and sluggish.
To assess your GPUs graphics ability, notebookcheck (for laptop GPUs) and videocardbenchmark (for desktop GPUs) have compiled a thorough list of cards and their subjective performances.
For notebookcheck, what they have done is divided the GPUs into classes. Simply look up your GPU on the list, and determine it's class.
If you're looking to play games released in the last 4 years, The top tier of Class 4 graphics cards are able to meet bare minimum standards for gameplay. The higher it goes the better the performance. Top tier Class 3 and upwards really hits the sweetspot for current gen gaming.
For games released beforehand, any card right down to the bottom of Class 5 will give you acceptable levels of gameplay. Class six cards might not have the graphical requirements to play a number of games.
For videocardbenchmark, the list is similar to the CPUs Passmark.
For games released in the last 4 years, a score of 90 is the absolute bare miniumum for current gen games.
For games released beforehand, a score of 30 would be your absolute minimum.
Step 3: Unbalanced computer
So, you've found out you have a nice fast CPU, but your GPU lags way behind? Fear not. There ARE tricks to get newer games running better on your PC.
3D Analyze is a handy little program. What it basically does is emulate the GPU lighting and shadowing effects onto your CPU. The program itself takes a bit of tinkering to get optimal performance, but yields of almost 20-30% boost in some games is possible. (I got Starcraft II running at 40fps on my 8400M from emulating T&L, lighting and pixel shaders
)
The other options is upgrading your hardware. If so, talk to the guys in the building and upgrading forum on boards, and they'll help you out as best you can. Laptop users BEWARE: Upgrading your GPU is nigh on impossible. Only about 5% of manufactured laptops supports GPU upgrades.
Step 4: Play a game and report back here!
Before playing a game, check to make sure your Directx and Graphics drivers are up to date:
Directx
ATI
Nvidia
Intel
This is only intended as a rough guide for people wanting to play games on their laptops/pcs without much knowledge of the platform. While it's safe to say that the guide is fairly accurate, there can be errors. Some games that have come out require GOD-LIKE PCs to run smoothly (Such as GTAIV), and therefore don't apply to the theories I have outlined. So I hope you all can test out games with your currently computers and report back the playability of your games too
Other helpful links
For Intel GPU users: http://groups.google.com/group/intel9x-gaming/web/games-that-work-intel-gma-950?pli=1 This is a comprehensive list of compatible games on the Intel 945 chips, that include the Intel GMA 950 (Netbooks excluded. Their GPUs have been altered to preserve power and therefore slower than what's actually charted). You have a graphics card that's faster than a GMA 950, chances are your laptop could play 95% of those games (CPU and RAM pending)23
Comments
-
-
Wow, brilliant post!
I have
Windows XP
AMD Turion 64x2 which has a score of 982
With 2 gigs of RAM.
My graphics card lets me down.... Class 5 ATI Raedon Xpress 1150 hypermemory.
I game quite a bit actually. These are the games which I play at an acceptable level on my laptop:
World of Warcraft: On mid level graphics settings, usually get 20+fps which is grand.
Rome Total War: Works grand unless I have the unit sizes on huge
Civ 4: Works grand, mid way graphics(some stuttering if there are lots of civs)
Civ 3: Perfect. Huge time sink.
Battlefield 1942: Works perfect, some great mods for this, Desert Combat being my fave.
Sim City 3000: Great game
The Sims 1 and 2: Work fine
Silent Hunter 3: I play this a lot, it WORKS but it stutters a lot, sometimes, but because I love it it is acceptable to me. Really pushing my computers high end with this.
Hmmm, thats all I can think of now, anyone have any more suggestions?
Should I try that 3d analyse thing? I don't want to somehow mess up my computer.0 -
-
-
-
Advertisement
-
-
-
-
There goes my weekend!!!cherryghost wrote: »It'll easily work. I've ran it on a Intel GMA950 xD
And thanks0 -
-
Advertisement
-
Everyone seems to think it is better than oblivion(my fave game) Hopefully I will be able to overlook the graphics, if they are shocking.VenomIreland wrote: »Most certainly.
Enjoy this awesome game0 -
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
Advertisement
Advertisement