What Games Can My Laptop Run?

[Nelle]

Now this is going to be some cliched thread but I really need quick answers because I really want to play good games right now, plus I don't know If I posted this on the right section or not, but anyway...

I have this laptop.

Specs:

Processor: Intel Pentium Dual Core 2.0ghz
RAM - 1gb RAM (I got my page file up to 1GB, suggest to me If I should ram that number up a bit.)
Card/Chipset: Mobile Intel 4 Chipset Family with 284mb memory

OS: Windows 7

Now I can run classics with a breeze such as the likes of Aliens vs Predator 2, Half Life and Deus Ex. 2004-2006 games may differ, I can run UT2004 on high (but I much prefer medium), Half Life 2 on high (without AA) (i much prefer medium/low, idk why), and Oblivion... well I don't know why It wont run fabulously on my laptop (I am modding the game maybe that's why).

I'm looking for ANY games, new or old, only from the timeframe of 90s to 2009 that will run on my laptop with GOOD frame rates even in low settings, I can sacrifice quality over performance! I'm thinking about If Original Bioshock, Fallout 3 and a bunch of others in my laptop. I can sacrifice quality, except the resolution must be native and the draw distance is acceptable, though I can also skip that. Because I really just want to play games!

I'm downloading Dota 2 at the moment, fingers crossed it will work like a charm after tweaking it.

Now please, don't say "BUY A GAMING PC". It would be rude and non-sense.

Thank you.

 

[Nelle]

Your laptop is old as shyte. And you seem (based on the info you have given) to be using integrated graphics. I doubt many people are going to be able to precisely tell you what you can play well on your system. Its trial and error for you.

I suggest at least upgrading your RAM. More than likely you are on a 32bit Windows 7, so its only going to be able to see 4GB of RAM. So you should buy 4GB.

Its the integrated graphics that will hurt you the most in this situation probably.

Not really that old, It's been bought back in 2010, I used to play countless of hours of LOTR: Conquest with a good framerate and Sims 3 (don't judge me man, I love the Sims franchise lol)

I tried Fallout 3 with this trusty baby once, I forgot how It went though, I must try it again!
I think my Oblivion problem can be remedied IF I DON'T OVERDO MODDING LOL.

Other than that... Well, I agree with the RAM problem, I can't buy one now that shyte is overly expensive in my country XD

 

[Archangel768]

Dark Forces 1, 2, mysteries of the sith, Jedi Outcast and Jedi Academy (to be honest, i find it hard to push through the original dark forces but jedi outcast and academy are still very fun)
Knights of the Old Republic 1 (never played 2, should be good)
Star Wars Battlefront.
Call of duty 1
The Curse of Monkey Island (if you don't like puzzles, at the very least, use a walkthrough and enjoy its story which is very good)
Also play the other monkey island games, Curse if my favourite though.
It looks like Bioshock 1 should work on your computer.
I think Fallout 3's requirements are a bit too high for your laptop.
Age of empires 2 and 3
Star craft 1

 

[imagineak]

Well, you can play older games which are, in my opinion, far better than games we have today.
I will recommend you few, check them out on youtube.

Mafia: The City of Lost Heaven (2002)
Return to Castle Wolfenstein (2001)
Age of Empires II or III
No One Lives Forever (2000)
The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind (2002)
Warcraft 3 or 2
Age of Mythology (2002)
Call of Duty 1 (2003)
Command & Conquer: Generals (2003)

 

[PatrickXD]

You'll probably be able to get the first F.E.A.R. running on low settings. I had a PC that was about the same spec as your laptop - a bit lower, actually - and I could run it just fine. I also played a lot of Rome: Total War. I'd imagine you could get DOOM 3 and the Quake series running just fine, too.

 

[Chimpzy_v1legacy]

My previous laptop has specs similar to yours, except it has 2gb ram and a somewhat better, dedicated gpu.

Playing just about any game from before 2006 worked pretty well, but anything newer than that was hit & miss.

Some games ran surprisingly well, like Gears Of War, XCOM Enemy Unknown and Civilization V. Others, like Modern Warfare, Mass Effect and Fallout 3 ran, but only on the lowest settings and with frequent frame rate drops. Not unplayable, but enough to be annoying. Never tried BioShock so can't help you there.

It could also handle most indie games without problems.

That said, it is a bit better than yours, with the dedicated gpu probably making the biggest difference.

You could also try Can You RUN It [http://www.systemrequirementslab.com/cyri].

You just need to install a small client that'll analyze your specs. After that just go to the site, type in the name of a game and it'll tell you if you could run it. It's a decent guideline. It's not foolproof though, because sometimes I've had it claim my specs aren't high enough even though I can flawlessly run a game. So take it with a grain of salt.

 

[BeerTent]

To say that your computer is old is completely wrong.

The "can you run it?" plugin that Chimpzy linked to is good though.

Oddly enough, your computer cannot fully support your OS. You have 1GB of ram, while this is fine for 32bit editions of Win7, it is not fine for 64bit editions of the OS. If you plan on keeping this machine, I would recommend a RAM upgrade to get you up to 2GB, even if it's just for office work.

Next up, the intel graphics chip. That ain't designed for games. It can DO them... Just like how I can DO Carpentry, it's not going to be pretty. Seeing that this is a laptop means that there's no way to upgrade this. Really, the only games you got are ones that are designed to run on lower end systems, and take the cheap intel GPU into account when rendering.

Looking back, I misread. I'm actually quite surprised that you can do what you can do with it. I'm not quite sure I actually believe it.

For games you can run? I'd recommend the likes of less graphically intense indie games. FtL, Hotline Miami, Don't Starve... Still though... With the specs you offered, this looks like a low end browsing computer. That RAM worries me.

 

[loc978]

Wow, you're trying to game on that? I wish you luck. My laptop is from the same era, though considerably faster in the video department (Nvidia 8400M GT) with 4GB RAM... and the hardest thing I bother running on it anymore is Terraria ('course, I also gave up running Windows on the thing, it came with Vista... it's now running a linux 3.8 kernal and KDE 4.1... basically what Windows 7 stole its look from).

It also requires a cooling pad even for Terraria. Damn thing hits 90C gaming without one. Your mileage may vary.

Other games I have run on it:
-Fallout 3 (unmodded, low settings, still get regular framerate tanks. Any modding makes it unplayable)
-Starcraft 2 (low)
-Supreme Commander (no mods, limited to total 1000 units, ie 250 x 4 players or 500 x 2... no surprise, CPU-intensive game with support for 17 cores... I have 2)
-Killing Floor (low)
-Mass Effect 1 (low)
-City of Heroes (not that it matters now the game is dead... but I couldn't even play it at native resolution or with draw distance above 50%)
-Neverwinter Nights (some minor framerate issues in places)

games that give it no issue, even running under linux with a Windows XP emulation layer:
-Fallout 1, 2 and Tactics
-Arcanum
-Baldur's Gate 1&2
-Icewind Dale 1&2
-Starcraft
-Frozen Synapse
-Playstation 1 emulation (I run an emulator with my emulator [http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_7G6ciJUMuAk/TGOJCxnXBYI/AAAAAAAABY8/drhyu0NLBdY/s400/yo+dawg+1.jpg])
-Total Annihilation
-Age of Mythology
-Star Wars: Galactic Battlegrounds
-Knights of the Old Republic 1&2
-World of Warcraft
-Everything in Command and Conquer: the First Decade
-Galactic Civilizations 2

Also, I'd like to reiterate the point that 1GB of RAM technically isn't enough to even run your OS. Vista and 7 eat 1GB just on their own... minimum to really run anything smoothly on either is 2GB, and you're best running 4GB if you intend to multitask at all. In addition, that video card of yours doesn't have dedicated RAM (at least according to these folks [http://www.notebookcheck.net/Intel-Graphics-Media-Accelerator-4500MHD-GMA-X4500MHD.9883.0.html]), so that 284MB on it is pulled from your main system RAM, leaving you with about 3/4 of a gig to run everything else. That kind of RAM was okay in 2003 (my single-core ~1Ghz laptop from back then runs 768MB. Still a working internet machine, can run Plants vs Zombies), but now it's atrociously low.

Strong recommendation: add RAM (if it helps, you're probably running a 200-Pin DDR2 SO-DIMM. if you have an expansion slot, toss a 1GB PC5300 chip in it. Examples [http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=100007609%20600006176%20600000407&IsNodeId=1&name=1GB])... and any game from 2006 on back should run on it.

 

[Nelle]

Thank you for the suggestions guys! Although I must say 70% of all the games mentioned, I already have and already finished with this laptop!

To further explain my laptop's worth, It ran LOTR: Conquest on medium (although it lagged horribly on the Mt. Doom stage) and Sims 3 on medium/low settings. I don't quite also try Can You Run It because it told me I can't run Oblivion but it did (although I modded the hell out of it became unplayable lol)

My friend who also has the same laptop demonstrated to me that it can run Crysis and Borderlands AND Assassins Creed 1, although it's on low settings.

idk what the other guy is talking about with Windows 7 not working with my laptop, It's running fast, and quite booting up quick too! Last OS this baby had was Vista, I noticed a huge performance boost upgrading to Win 7

Again I appreciate you guys for helping! Really made me happy because some other forums ignored my thread same as this lol

EDIT: Did I mentioned I ran, and finished Modern Warfare on this bad boy? with a mix of medium and low settings and on Native Res

 

[Nelle]

I meant the tech in your laptop was old, not the laptop itself. Should have phrased it better.

I'm not fond of knowing my tech is in the dinosaur age? I thought Dual Core was introduced late 2007/early-mid 2008?

 

[loc978]

I meant the tech in your laptop was old, not the laptop itself. Should have phrased it better.

I'm not fond of knowing my tech is in the dinosaur age? I thought Dual Core was introduced late 2007/early-mid 2008?

We've just had some very, very major hardware advances since then. There are 8-core CPUs that are considered a bit outdated these days.

Still, like I said in my earlier post, even a single-core from 2003 can keep up with internet browsing and games older than it (even some brand new games). Seems like you know your system's limits pretty well.

Still, that RAM...

 

[Nelle]

Pretty much my problem is the RAM. Gosh, I don't have money for it. I don't think I can earn that much being a student that's country is being expensive on computer stuff. I'm not looking into making my laptop a over-the-top rig with 12 gazillion cpus and Gabillzillion of RAM. I just like it the way it is 1gb ram more. And I think even without that plus ram there are games, fun, great pc games that will run with this laptop smoothly even if it demands to be on low settings haha

 

[onikami]

I'd say follow the indie games on steam. It tends to be a place to get cheap games that don't need a lot of computer power to run and that are quite good. Well, not all of them are good but there are good games to pick from.

Papers please
Recetear: An item's shop tale
Thomas was alone
Don't Starve
Rouge Legacy
Gunpoint
The Swapper
Couldberry Kingdom
Dust: An Elysian Tale
Braid
Bastion
Fez
Monaco: Whats yours is mine

Not I didn't check the requirments on these but they should be up your alley

Also there is minecraft but I'm not sure how that'll run on 1G of RAM

 

[Nelle]

Source Engine runs pretty well on my laptop, although exception is Dota 2, I can't run it without it stuttering and having that low memory pool problem. Maybe I should try Fallout 3 again and NOT Overmod it again lol. For the indie games one, well. I don't have money for it right now but I'm sure hell interested to play Gunpoint and Bastion. And Minecraft ran good but it didn't interested me as a gamer soo yeah.

 

[Rack]

My recommendation would be to skirt round the issue. Rather than wondering if you can play Fallout 3, compromising on the settings and running into problems when the game gets hectic I'd play low fidelity indie games and classics from back in the day.

That means I have to recommend Sacrifice, because it's awesome and still way too few people know what it is. If you're strapped for cash I'm pretty sure the original Spelunky is still free.

 

[Nouw]

Two-words: indie-games. Suddenly, specs aren't so important anymore when you're not playing AAA games. For a euphoric experience in a 2D 'fuck-'em'-up' I recommend Hotline: Miami. For a creepy Silent Hill-esque feel in a survival-horror RPG I recommend Lone Survivor.