Windows games that will run on low powered laptop?

[JackB1]

Hey guys...haven't posted here in a while. Mostly due to my use of my XBox 360 being almost down to nothing.

Anyway, I just got a small 11" Dell Inspiron 3000 laptop with pretty minimal specs:

1.4Ghz Celeron
4 Gigs of DDR3 RAM
Windows 8.1
500 Gb hard drive

Are there any Windows 8 games that are worthwhile getting that will run on this machine? Will this run older verisons of Windows games too?

I am pretty impressed with this little machine and mostly got it for email, web browsing and social apps, but would be nice to have a few games on it when I have some time to kill.

Thanks in advance and hope everyone is doing well.

[TCrouch]

The biggest question is what video card it has in it. If it's integrated (which it probably is), not much will run. The biggest bottleneck for PC gaming is the video card, and if you just read the specs on the box or something and it didn't show vidcard, it is not going to run many games newer than 5 or 6 years ago, so you'd be best served just looking back through reviews from 2005-2008.

[LAking]

You could look into text based sports sims or simple turned based strategy games that don't have taxing graphics. 11" is small. What resolution is it. I imagine a lot of game's interfaces were designed for at least 13" screen although it all depends on the resolution.

EDIT: Install Steam and look through their collection of Indie games. There are TONS of great games that wouldn't require much in the way of a graphics card.Mark of the Ninja is one that comes to mind. Do you have a controller for it?

[JackB1]

The biggest question is what video card it has in it. If it's integrated (which it probably is), not much will run. The biggest bottleneck for PC gaming is the video card, and if you just read the specs on the box or something and it didn't show vidcard, it is not going to run many games newer than 5 or 6 years ago, so you'd be best served just looking back through reviews from 2005-2008.

Hey Tim! Thanks for replying.

This is the video card:
http://www.notebookcheck.net/AMD-Radeon ... 728.0.html

I actually ended up getting a similar Acer laptop and already upgraded the RAM to 10 Gb, but the CPU is
just a AMD 1 Ghz. Looks like I need to look for some older games that will still run under Win 8.

[JackB1]

You could look into text based sports sims or simple turned based strategy games that don't have taxing graphics. 11" is small. What resolution is it. I imagine a lot of game's interfaces were designed for at least 13" screen although it all depends on the resolution.

EDIT: Install Steam and look through their collection of Indie games. There are TONS of great games that wouldn't require much in the way of a graphics card.Mark of the Ninja is one that comes to mind. Do you have a controller for it?

I installed Steam last night and I'll try some demos and figure out what runs and what doesn't.
I do have a usb connector for my 360 controller, so I can also see if that works.

[TCrouch]

If it's got a Radeon HD in it, then at least it will play most games, honestly. You just may have to turn settings down the newer the games get.

Your best bet, as mentioned by LAKing above, is to try the Steam demos. Indie games should never give you a fit unless it's something that procedurally generates the environment (the many minecraft clones) where Memory could start to be an issue with 4GB on Windows 8.1.

But a demo is your best bet. You can find some decent games from years past and try them. You can mess with settings and see what you can get away with and what you can't.

[JackB1]

If it's got a Radeon HD in it, then at least it will play most games, honestly. You just may have to turn settings down the newer the games get.

Your best bet, as mentioned by LAKing above, is to try the Steam demos. Indie games should never give you a fit unless it's something that procedurally generates the environment (the many minecraft clones) where Memory could start to be an issue with 4GB on Windows 8.1.

But a demo is your best bet. You can find some decent games from years past and try them. You can mess with settings and see what you can get away with and what you can't.

I will do that. Any older windows racing games to recommend? They should still work on Windows 8 right? Will anything from Windows XP forward run?

[TCrouch]

That's a big "no". Not everything that ran on XP will work fine on 8 (or even 7 or Vista, for that matter). You may have to research some games before buying them to see if there are any Windows 8 issues on older games. I can play things like TOCA Race Driver 3 on my Win 7 64-bit OS, though. That's still a fun one to fire up now and then. I think the rFactor type games like Game Stock Car and rFactor itself will work fine, though. Again, run the rFactor Demo first and see how it works.

[pk500]

rFactor definitely runs on Windows 7. NASCAR Racing 2003 Season and Richard Burns Rally are a bit dodgy on Windows 7.

[JackB1]

Tomb Raider Anniversary seems to run pretty good on my laptop.

I ended up getting an Acer Aspire 11.6" V5 122P BTW, with 10 Gb's of RAM.
Fabulous little machine, once you get rid of McAfee and the rest of the bloatware.

[JackB1]

Just downloaded and tried Asphalt 8 on my laptop and I was AMAZED at how well it ran!
This was in the Windows Games Marketplace.

How is it possible that they make a graphics intensive game like this that runs so well
on my 1 Ghz laptop? I wish there were more games available in the Windows marketplace.

[Naples39]

Just downloaded and tried Asphalt 8 on my laptop and I was AMAZED at how well it ran!
This was in the Windows Games Marketplace.

How is it possible that they make a graphics intensive game like this that runs so well
on my 1 Ghz laptop? I wish there were more games available in the Windows marketplace.

Asphalt 8 was designed from the ground up to run on iOS and Android on mobile phones. I presume the Win8 version is some kind of port of the mobile game.

[JackB1]

Just downloaded and tried Asphalt 8 on my laptop and I was AMAZED at how well it ran!
This was in the Windows Games Marketplace.

How is it possible that they make a graphics intensive game like this that runs so well
on my 1 Ghz laptop? I wish there were more games available in the Windows marketplace.

Asphalt 8 was designed from the ground up to run on iOS and Android on mobile phones. I presume the Win8 version is some kind of port of the mobile game.

All I can say is it's incredible how well it runs on my weak laptop.

Fun game too! Like a cross of Burnout and NFS.