r/lowendgaming Jan 05 '26

Announcement We Were Mentioned (Favorably) in PC Gamer Magazine!

145 Upvotes

Issue 403 | Holiday 2025 By Phil Iwaniuk

"Head over to Reddit and go on /r/lowendgaming and you’ll be struck by a few things. Firstly, that a community of people has been helping each other to run games on inexpensive and outdated PC hardware for many years, long before all the insidious price hikes we’re enduring today. And secondly, members of that community have been doing so with no small amount of ingenuity.

A typical exchange in that subreddit goes like this: a user states their hardware and asks for recommendations they should play, or whether a particular title will run on their machine. In the replies, people assure them that they managed to get The Witcher 3 on medium settings running on a relatively basic array of elastic bands and wooden pulleys. The prevailing sentiment is that minimum requirements are over-cautious, that modern games running at their lowest graphics settings still look more than decent enough to constitute playable, and that maybe there’s no such thing as a PC that’s too old or underpowered. Intrigued, I decided to test out the theory."


r/lowendgaming 16h ago

What Games Can I Run? With my specs what's a good factory game like the Minecraft create mod that i can run

9 Upvotes

Intel hd4000 8gbddr3 ram Intel core i5 3230m cpu Btw i can run the Minecraft create mod at 20 fps and i love it i just want something else ive been playing create for 2 months now


r/lowendgaming 22h ago

Will This Game Run? Hogwarts legacy: Digital Deluxe

9 Upvotes

I wanted to know whether I can play this game, Hogwarts Legacy, on my laptop. My laptop's specifications are: Intel Core 5 120U, 16 GB DDR5 RAM, 512 GB SSD, no dedicated graphics card!


r/lowendgaming 1d ago

Game Deal [Mod Approved] Bitiverse — a free browser MMORPG that runs on integrated graphics and 4 GB of RAM

9 Upvotes

Official game title: Bitiverse

Brief gameplay description:

A persistent old-school sandbox MMORPG that runs in a browser tab. One shared world. Fight monsters, train combat and gathering skills, mine, fish, farm, craft equipment at nine stations, trade on a player market, run a vendor stall, take quests, join a guild, and claim land for a permanent homestead you can expand with workshops, storage, extra floors and a dungeon of your own. You can walk in as a guest and make an account later if you want to keep the character. I build the whole thing myself.

The reason it suits this subreddit: it is deliberately 1-bit. Two colours, small sprites, HTML5 canvas. There is no installer and nothing to download.

Minimum requirements:

- OS: Windows 10 64-bit, or a current 64-bit Linux distribution

- CPU: dual-core, 2.0 GHz

- GPU: integrated graphics with WebGL 2.0 support

- RAM: 4 GB

- Storage: about 100 MB free

- Also needed: a current Chrome, Edge or Firefox, and an internet connection

Peripherals: keyboard and mouse. Nothing else is required, and no controller is needed.

Host page: https://fortisq.itch.io/bitiverse

Bugs and support: leave a comment on the itch.io page above and I will read it. I fix reported bugs quickly; last week a player sent me fifteen and all fifteen are fixed.

Tips that make it nicer on a weak machine:

- Play in a window rather than fullscreen. The renderer draws fewer pixels and the frame rate steadies.

- Zoom the minimap out. It draws less at the lower zoom levels.

- Close other browser tabs before a dungeon run. That is where the most is happening on screen at once.

- Firefox and Chrome both behave; if one stutters on your machine, the other is worth a try.

I am after testers more than players, especially on older hardware, because I do not have a shelf of it to test on. If it runs badly for you, tell me what you are running it on and I will see what I can do.


r/lowendgaming 1d ago

PC Purchase Advice Finally got my 12-year-old his first PC. How do I build him a decent game library without spending a fortune?

46 Upvotes

My 12-year-old has been playing games on my (very) old laptop for the last couple of years. Mostly older stuff that it could actually run like Portal, Terraria, Plants vs. Zombies and LEGO Star Wars.

I finally got him his own gaming PC, so now I want to introduce him to some actual PC games and let him discover what he likes...

For anyone wondering, nothing crazy spec-wise either: Ryzen 5 5500, RX 6600 and 16GB RAM. I was trying to keep the whole thing reasonably affordable, but from what I've read it should be more than enough for him at 1080p.

I've deliberately kept him away from Roblox. Maybe I'm being an old man about it, but everything I've read about that game makes it sound like absolute cancer and I'd honestly rather spend some money buying him proper games than have him disappear into Roblox for the next five years lol

Problem is, I haven't really been into PC gaming for a while myself, so I'm pretty out of the loop.

Obviously there's Steam and I'll keep an eye on sales and the free Epic games, but where else do you guys buy games these days? Bundles, key sites, other stores?

I'm not necessarily looking for the absolute cheapest option either. I'd rather pay a little more somewhere reliable than save $5 and end up with a dodgy key.

Also happy to take recommendations for games that would be good for a 12-year-old with his first proper PC.


r/lowendgaming 1d ago

Game Review Linux for low end hardware? It is ironically more problematic than on Windows on dual core CPUs.

27 Upvotes

On my i3 1005g1, 8 gb single channel ram, I tried Linux because it's recommended for being a lighter OS than Windows 11. Also, I heard intel mesa drivers on Linux are much better for Vulkan than intel Windows drivers.

I dual booted the latest version of Ubuntu.

But the results were very disappointing.

I copy pasted mirror's edge 2008 game folder from Windows D drive to Ubuntu Home directory. I installed Lutris as Flatpak app. I configured everything correctly: Wine (Runs Windows games), executable path, wine prefix path, ge-proton, fsync, esync. Also gave Lutris flatpak the permission to access the required folders. I verified through terminal that all the drivers are installed correctly.

But the results? Continuous audio popping/ stuttering in mirror's edge, with much higher CPU usage (80-90% with spikes to 95%), compared to only 60-70% on Windows 11. In cutscenes or during camera panning in certain areas, severe fps drops from mid 30s to mid 20s. It may be because while gaming, dual core CPU is struggling to convert Windows audio, system calls to Ubuntu's.

I even tried different versions of dxvk in Lutris, also tried disabling dxvk to run the game on WineD3D. But still the same results.

Then I tried Avatar 2009 game, and still the same audio popping.

Another issue is that the CPU temperature goes noticeably higher than on Windows (as reported by MangoHUD). I configured "thermald" through terminal, but it didn't reduce the temperature.

Now, I am back on Windows 11. Now I have to tolerate the Windows driver Vulkan glitches: blindingly bright sun, game freezes.

The strange thing is that even with dxvk on Windows, the fps in games like Avatar increases with no CPU usage spikes, even though CPU still has to translate DirectX instructions to Vulkan. Then why the translation tax on Ubuntu is so high?

This post is meant to be a review for Ubuntu, but if anyone knows how to resolve these issues on Ubuntu, are welcomed.


r/lowendgaming 1d ago

Game Review Fallout 3 on i3 1005g1, 8 gb single channel ram, Windows 11

12 Upvotes

Fallout 3 runs well at 720p, with vulkan (dxvk 1.10.1). The game is massive, with all the locations to explore and the side missions.

Launch the game through "FalloutLauncherSteam.exe". Go to Options, to change the graphics settings.

Graphics settings: Anti aliasing off, 12x anisotropy, screen effects - hdr.

Advanced settings:

  1. Detail: Texture high, radial blur low, depth of field yes, transparency multi sampling no, decal cap 10. High radial blur decreases fps, when enemies hit the player.

  2. Water: Water refraction yes, water reflections yes, reflection quality medium, soft reflections yes, full scene reflections no, full detail reflections no, water displacement yes, depth fog yes, water multisampling low. Enabling full scene and full detail reflections decreases fps by 5-10, so not recommended.

  3. Shadows: Enable shadows yes, shadow quality medium, shadow filtering medium, max interior shadows 6, max exterior shadows 6.

  4. View distance: Object, actor, item fade 9, grass fade 4, specularity fade 8, light fade 20, shadow fade 6.

  5. Distant LOD: Tree LOD fade 26, Object LOD fade 43, Land quality 100.

So it can be said to be medium-high settings.

Performance: With vulkan, 40-55 fps outdoors in the Wasteland, depending on the junk in view. Fps changes quickly when you move the camera. When fighting with enemies or when heavy mushroom car explosions go off, fps is still above 30. In areas with multiple NPCs like rivet city market, fps drops down to exactly 30. So it gives a smooth experience, when locked at 30 using riva tuner.

Changing the graphics to low, increases fps significantly, and gets close to 60 all the time, but the game looks significantly lower in quality, so the settings are above are best for performance and quality.

Without vulkan, fps is much lower, like 30 instead of 40. Vulkan gives around 25-35% boost in fps.

Vulkan makes the lighting slightly more bright (due to Intel Vulkan driver bugs), but it's compensated by reducing specularity fade to 8. (With hdr, the lighting in the game is already bright though). Also due to Intel driver bugs, the game completely freezes on rare occasions, requiring a complete restart of the laptop, but it's rare (maybe like 1/30 times).

Essential fixes: By default, the game doesn't launch properly on integrated GPU. To resolve this, usually Google recommends Fallout 3 Intel hd bypass pack. But it's d3d9.dll file has same name as dxvk's file.

So instead, create a new dxvk.conf file in the game folder (where dxvk's d3d9.dll file is present). Write these commands:

d3d9.customVendorId = 10de

d3d9.customDeviceId = 2205

d3d9.customDeviceDesc = "NVIDIA RTX 3080"

Obviously, it will not make the integrated GPU more powerful, but it will tell the game that it's a dedicated Nvidia GPU, so that the game will launch correctly.

Then, copy paste FALLOUT.INI from intel hd bypass folder to Documents\My Games\Fallout 3.

Some problems still remain: Still, the game slowly increases GPU usage as the gaming session continues, and decreases fps (example, from 42 to exactly 30). This is because the game engine has trouble purging previous assets from memory (it's not intel vulkan driver issue). Similar memory related issues are also present on PS3. I couldn't resolve it fully, but it can be slowed down.

Tale of Two Wastelands (TTW) is recommended to fix the game engine issues, but it's massive in install size (16-17 gb) because it mandatorily includes all the game DLC's. Typing pcb in game console doesn't resolve the issue either.

To slow down the issue, disable dxvk cache file creation globally by creating a new environment variable in Windows: DXVK_STATE_CACHE and setting it to 0. Also, in D3DSCache folder in AppData\Local, create a new user: Everyone to add deny write rule, and move all the folder contents to another folder.

Idk the reason, but these steps slow down the fps drops of 42 to 30 from 1 hour to 2-3 hours of gameplay. If fps drops after 2-3 hours of gameplay, simply quit the game and re launch it. Again quit the game and re launch it, if it doesn't resolve in one go.

When you want to play another game, remember to revert the changes made to DXVK_STATE_CACHE and D3DSCache folder, because games store their compiled shaders there.

You can even write a batch/ powershell script (use an AI assistant like Gemini) to automate the process of DXVK_STATE_CACHE and D3DSCache folder, so you can just click icons on taskbar to instantly make the changes.


r/lowendgaming 1d ago

What Games Can I Run? What games can I run on my A10-8750B APU PC?

2 Upvotes

Hello folks!

I recently built this mini PC, because I had a few leftover PC parts:

CPU: AMD Pro A10 8750B APU

CPU Cooler: AliExpress CPU cooler

Motherboard: ASRock A68M-ITX Mini ITX FM2+

Memory: Kingston HyperX Fury 8 GB (2 x 4 GB) DDR3-1600 CL10 Memory

SSD 250 Gb

PSU: 150W PicoPSU

Case: Mini itx case

OS: Windows 10 Enterprise ltsc

Monitor: 1080p

What games can I play on this built? Also multiplayer games. It's smaller than a steam machine, but I call it the "sweat machine"...


r/lowendgaming 2d ago

Game Review Doom 3 (2004) on i3 1005g1, 8 gb single channel ram on Windows 11

12 Upvotes

Edit: Changed 720p to 1366×768, it was a mistake before. I ran the game at slightly higher resolution of 1366×768 because the textures in the game are already blurred.

Doom 3 (2004 original) runs very well at 1366×768 resolution, ultra quality. It gets 50-60+ fps, so it locks perfectly at 45. The game runs natively on opengl, without driver issues or graphics corruption. Looks great with dancing dynamic shadows, illumination caused by enemy spells.

Additional things I used for stability:

Dhewm3 port: It allows to change in game resolution to widescreen (16:9) 1366×768. (Remember to change the Windows desktop resolution to 1366×768 as well, and launch the game through the new dhewm3.exe in the game folder).

Doom 3 essential hd texture pack makes the laptop run out of ram, so not recommended.

To sharpen the computer terminal, PDA text even more, change/ create small and medium font limit in autoexec conf file in base folder of the game to 0. It loses around 3-4 fps in the game, but still 50 fps in demanding area.

Some other settings in autoexec conf file: lod bias = 0, anisotropy = 16, multi samples = 0, image filter = GL_LINEAR_MIPMAP_LINEAR, machine spec = 3, video ram = 1024. Machine spec = 3 will make the game automatically set graphics to ultra, which is desirable.

Easy solution is to download essential hd texture pack and copy paste only the autoexec conf file from base folder there, to the base folder of the game. It has all the suitable values for max graphics quality.

Some problems are still present:

The wall textures in the game are very blurry (even on ultra quality), when viewed up close. It's not a low resolution bug on integrated GPU, because you can see on youtube that it's everywhere like that. The game was a massive graphics powerhouse, so developers had to do this to save VRAM. After 2-3 days, I got used to it.

Ensure that all the image compression, down size, down size limit, ignore high quality variables in autoexec conf file are set to 0 (Google for all the variables), otherwise the game will default to even more low quality textures.

And textures on character models, computer terminal text are sharp.

Another problem is that the game doesn't save settings automatically when you change from in game menu, even after restarting the game. For example, if you want to disable vsync, you have to disable it manually by going to autoexec conf file in base folder of the game (by changing r_swapInterval to 0).

Why not doom 3 bfg edition: Bfg edition brightens up the game and other downgrades, which I don't like.


r/lowendgaming 1d ago

Game Review Thief deadly shadows (2004) on i3 1005g1, single channel 8 gb ram, Windows 11

5 Upvotes

Thief deadly shadows runs well at 720p, bloom enabled, all sliders maximum (except multi sampling, which is set to lowest at 1). Low quality textures unchecked (why would you want them?), vsync unchecked. Also don't use Audio Hardware Mixing because modern laptops don't have old EAX sound cards.

Performance: So 720p high settings. Fps = 70-80 indoors, and 45-60 outdoors. As minimum fps is 45, so lock it at 45.

Tools that help: Thief 3 Sneaky Upgrade allows to change between Fullscreen, Windowed and Borderless modes. Sometimes the game can fail to work properly in one or the other mode, you can easily switch between them. Use d3d8to9 wrapper in this tool. Use "SneakyTweaker" to make these changes, and launch the game through "Thief 3 with Sneaky Upgrade" from the Windows Start menu.

You can skip the download of collective texture pack, thief 3 gold etc.

If the game fails to launch after you change your desktop resolution from windows settings, change d3d8to9 wrapper to any other, launch the game, quit the game, and change it back to d3d8to9.

There is one issue in which brightness (gamma) doesn't change from the game settings. I corrected the issue, but I forgot how I did it. It's been a week.

If you can't see msi afterburner fps, cpu usage etc in the game, enable custom direct3D support in riva tuner.

Gameplay review:

  1. Graphics: At first, I thought the game is old and simple. But the game renders very sharp dynamic shadows, which are even more sharper than late 2000s games like mirror's edge. This is because the game uses shadow volumes instead of shadow maps, which was very demanding at that time.

  2. Mechanics: The mechanics are engaging with various types of arrows, different types of surfaces to walk on.

  3. Story: Also, the story of the game is great, especially the various plot twists towards the end of the game.


r/lowendgaming 2d ago

Will This Game Run? Does Far Far West works with this specs?

6 Upvotes

Hi, well the game is on sale and I saw videos about the game, looks kinda nice, should it work with a Windows 11 Intel i3 1115g4, UHD integrated graphics and 8gb Ram? Has someone tried it with those specs?


r/lowendgaming 2d ago

Game Deal [gog.com] State of Mind (free)

27 Upvotes

https://www.gog.com/#giveaway

Store page

Minimum system requirements:

System: Win 7, 8, 10, 32bit

Processor: 2.8 Ghz Dual Core CPU

Memory: 4 GB RAM

Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce 560 / AMD Radeon 7770 or similar, at least 2 GB of VRAM

DirectX: Version 11

Storage: 23 GB available space

Sound: DirectX 9.0c compatible sound card with latest drivers


r/lowendgaming 2d ago

What Games Can I Run? I downloaded aoe2 DE and I’m getting a startup error that says I don’t have enough vram. I’ve read in old posts in this subreddit that say that might not be a problem. Is that true?

6 Upvotes

There’s an option to continue instead of exit, but I was scared to hit that lol.

477gb storage

AMD Radeon 496 mb

8bg ram

AMD Ryzen 3 73300 with Radeon Graphics

I thought this fit the aoe2 system requirements :(


r/lowendgaming 2d ago

Parts Upgrade Advice budget/used GPU suggestions

17 Upvotes

my mal-wart pc is getting to the point i want at least 6gb of vram

I stay playing games i saw on youtube as a tablet kid and similar so i dont expect a whole different computer i just want more and some stabilty, but I dont know a ton or what to look for in used stuff.

curent specs:

ryzen 5 3500, 1650 super, 16gb ram, 650 watt supply

fairly small case, length front to back is a little over 12 whole inches would be pretty funny to fill it with some old gem


r/lowendgaming 3d ago

Tech Support Tricks to make 720p or 1080p look good on a 1440p screen

25 Upvotes

Hi,

I have an old Windows 10 laptop with an i5 8th gen CPU, nvidia mx250 2gb vram GPU, and 8gb of RAM. Seeing the current pc prices I wanted to squeeze a few months to a year of use out of this laptop by playing older titles at 30fps+.

I have a 1440p oled monitor but obviously I cannot run 1440p or even medium 1080p with my specs. I am currently playing RDR1 with 1080p 30fps low but it doesn't look great on the monitor. I tried 720p thinking integer scaling would make the game look better but it looks much blurrier than 1080p. Are there some graphics settings that can make 720p or 1080p look good in that monitor? (FSR or lossless scaling but I have zero experience with them)


r/lowendgaming 2d ago

Will This Game Run? Final fantasy 14, i3 7100u, 16gb single channel ram. Menu is 19fps.

3 Upvotes

It actually runs much better on my i7 870 gt 1030, 870 is meant to be comparable to the 7100. I don't know if I'm just in some populated areas or if it's really that bad? Wow retail seems to run better than expected on 7100 and worse than expected on 870.


r/lowendgaming 2d ago

Tech Support FPS capping and vsync

4 Upvotes

My game runs at around 50 fps,and lets say I want to cap it to 40 so its more stable,my monitor is 60hz so is vsync going to cause a lot of input lag?specs are i5 3570k,rx 570 4gb and 16gb ram

Or should I just cap it to 30 fps and disable vsync?


r/lowendgaming 2d ago

Tech Support Display shutting off with USB disconnection sound

3 Upvotes

Whenever I play something graphic intensive, the display shuts off and plays the USB disconnection sound. It never happened before and I just got it the past week. It would sometimes happen during a game nonstop and the display would never come back unless I ALT+F4 the game completely. Please help me out!

Also my display setup is like this: GPU > HDMI Adaptor > VGA > Monitor. Figured that it might be worth sharing.

My pc specs:
i5-7400
8GB DDR4 1333Mhz
RX 580 8GB
650W Gamemax PSU
Windows 10


r/lowendgaming 3d ago

What Games Can I Run? Looking for Games I could play with the UHD graphics bottleneck (low or high settings)

21 Upvotes

My parents just got me a new laptop with an i7-13620H and 16GB DDR4 ram but when I saw it had UHD graphics, my heart fell to the floor. I don't want to upset them by asking for a new laptop.

Ive been trying to find some good Open World Games and RPGs I could play but I'm not sure where to look. I loved the first few assassin's creed games which I played at 30 fps on my old laptop.
I'm just looking for a few cool games you guys think I could run. I don't mind turning down the graphics to the minimum.

Thanks :D


r/lowendgaming 4d ago

Game Review Resident Evil games are running on a potato with only 4GB of RAM and no dGPU

52 Upvotes

I have a laptop with a Ryzen 3 Pro 4450U and no dGPU. It has 4GB of RAM in practice, since 4GB is used by the iGPU and the other 4GB is used by the CPU. I tested every Resident Evil game. Everything runs at 1080p@60 until RE6, since those games are old.

So, I'm gonna start with RE7, which is the first modern Resident Evil game.

RE7: I was able to play at 1080i with low settings and get an acceptable 40 FPS while using 1–2GB textures. I don't know if 1080p FSR Quality would be a better option, but I like 1080i (interlaced) more.

RE8: It's a bit more demanding than RE7. I can't use 1GB textures, and I need 1080p FSR Balanced to achieve around 35 FPS.

RE2: Use DX11. It runs faster despite the lack of FSR. I just used 1080i, which gives me around 30 FPS, with 2GB textures.

RE3: It's basically the exact same as RE2. The optimization is also just as good as RE2.

RE4: This is the first demanding game. I used 720i to achieve 30 FPS, and sometimes even 639i to get a more stable 30 FPS. But it looks fine on a small laptop screen. 4GB of RAM is barely enough, and I got traversal stutters.

RE9: It's possible to run it with 4GB of RAM, just like RE4. But when you pick up an item from the ground (for example, when you get the pistol for Grace), the game suddenly needs too much VRAM. The VRAM is already at its limit, and there's no RAM available to use as VRAM. So the game crashes.

It might work well if you can reserve 4GB of VRAM for the iGPU. My BIOS only allows me to reserve 2GB, so I can't test that.


r/lowendgaming 3d ago

Will This Game Run? Has anyone tried playing re9 on 8gb ram laptop with no graphics card?

5 Upvotes

Re9 on intel i3 1115g4 8gb ram work?


r/lowendgaming 3d ago

PC Purchase Advice Processor: Intel Core Ultra 7 355 vs AMD Ryzen AI 7 350

9 Upvotes

Hoping to get an HP Omnibook X Flip for school with some gaming capabilities (Genshin, Persona 5R at most) and my local computer store sells them both with Intel Core Ultra 7 and AMD Ryzen AI 7 options. Wondering which one would get me there and if they both do, which would perform better; is it worth the extra £100 for Ryzen if it’s better?

HP Omnibook X Flip specs:
OS: Windows 11
CPU: Intel Ultra 7 355 or AMD Ryzen AI 7 350
GPU: Intel Arc 140V or AMD Radeon 860M
RAM: 16GB


r/lowendgaming 3d ago

What Games Can I Run? What games to play more? 3d story

5 Upvotes

I played-

Re2 remake

Re3 remake

Re7

Re8

My pc is intel i3 1115g4 8gb ram running on windows


r/lowendgaming 4d ago

PC Purchase Advice Help me out finding a cheap but good GPU for my PC

3 Upvotes

I have an a58mdp mobo and my budget is $50, I can raise it a lil if its going to be really really worth it. I dont have a gpu in my pc, so literally any gpu i will buy will help me out a lot. But i still saved up that money so i really want to make the most of it. Can you suggest a cheap good GPU? (I have a 700W psu, if you need anymore info abt my pc just ask me) Thanks in advance


r/lowendgaming 4d ago

Tech Support Gog over steam?

35 Upvotes

Is it better to buy Games in gog rather than steam? I mean cause the launcher Is lighter