The host of The LowSpecGamer YouTube channel is dedicated to helping run cutting-edge games on low-end computers. As the site learned, a resident of Barcelona in his youth did not have the opportunity to play advanced games on his PC, so he was forced to look for workarounds. And now he decided to help others with what he learned himself.
Developers of cutting-edge modern games try to pamper their fans with the best possible graphics quality in their projects. After them, modders continue to improve the graphics to new heights. However, The LowSpecGamer does the exact opposite - it reduces the graphics quality to a minimum in order to run games on older PCs.
In his videos, he explains how to edit configuration files and use modifications to lower the graphics quality as much as possible. As a result, modern highly realistic games are becoming similar to projects from the beginning of the century. However, they contain all the functionality available to owners of powerful PCs.
A Spanish gamer named Alex cannot boast of multi-million views of his videos. And even despite the small audience and the laboriousness of learning all the intricacies of understated graphics, he continues to work in this direction. According to the site, the most popular video on his channel is the video on The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, which looks at least funny with minimal graphics settings. And judging by the comments and activity of subscribers, some like to play games with such graphics even more than with realistic ones.
A major upgrade or purchase of a powerful gaming computer at today's ruble is comparable to purchasing a used car.
- A budget GeForce GTX 1060 + mid-range Core i5 will cost about 40 thousand rubles.
- The average GeForce GTX 1070 + older Core i5K or younger Core i7K cost around 60 thousand rubles.
- The top-end GeForce GTX 1080 + the older Core i7K that reveals it will lighten the wallet by 80 thousand rubles or more.
We add a motherboard, cooling, RAM, SSD, case, power supply, monitor (in the case of the GTX 1080, take a 4K screen, otherwise the point is lost), accessories, and the price of an initial configuration of current components with a good reserve for the future reaches 80 thousand rubles . The average price exceeds 100–120 thousand. It’s scary to even calculate the cost of a top-end gaming build.
System requirements for games are growing, people don’t have money for new computers or upgrades, and we get the following statistics:
- Over the past three years, the share of eligible gaming PCs and laptops in the population has dropped from 23% to 5%.
- 76% of gamers are not satisfied with the power of their computers.
- 48% of gamers are deprived of the opportunity to invest money in upgrading their computer, and only 6% of game fans can afford an upgrade costing more than 20 thousand rubles.
What to do? Credit? The toad will strangle you, the wife will not understand. It takes a long time to save, but I want to play now. Should I just accept it and play whatever my current computer can handle? No. Modern technologies come to the rescue.
Gaming computer as a service
You use cloud storage, mail, instant messengers, social networks, and so on. Their work is provided by data centers. You send and receive data, and remote servers handle processing and storage.
A major upgrade or purchase of a powerful gaming computer at today's ruble is comparable to purchasing a used car.
- A budget GeForce GTX 1060 + mid-range Core i5 will cost about 40 thousand rubles.
- The average GeForce GTX 1070 + older Core i5K or younger Core i7K cost around 60 thousand rubles.
- The top-end GeForce GTX 1080 + the older Core i7K that reveals it will lighten the wallet by 80 thousand rubles or more.
We add a motherboard, cooling, RAM, SSD, case, power supply, monitor (in the case of the GTX 1080, take a 4K screen, otherwise the point is lost), accessories, and the price of an initial configuration of current components with a good reserve for the future reaches 80 thousand rubles . The average price exceeds 100–120 thousand. It’s scary to even calculate the cost of a top-end gaming build.
System requirements for games are growing, people don’t have money for new computers or upgrades, and we get the following statistics:
- Over the past three years, the share of eligible gaming PCs and laptops in the population has dropped from 23% to 5%.
- 76% of gamers are not satisfied with the power of their computers.
- 48% of gamers are deprived of the opportunity to invest money in upgrading their computer, and only 6% of game fans can afford an upgrade costing more than 20 thousand rubles.
What to do? Credit? The toad will strangle you, the wife will not understand. It takes a long time to save, but I want to play now. Should I just accept it and play whatever my current computer can handle? No. Modern technologies come to the rescue.
Gaming computer as a service
You use cloud storage, mail, instant messengers, social networks, and so on. Their work is provided by data centers. You send and receive data, and remote servers handle processing and storage.
Many people still have old computers that still had 2 gigs. random access memory and at one time they bought another 2 or 4 gigs of memory in the hope that their computer would become more powerful, stronger and would carry everything modern games. With 1 gig of video memory? Unfortunately, this time has already passed and 1 gig of video memory is very little for modern games and RAM also needs at least 8 gigs - I repeat, at least. And you need at least 2 gigs of video memory - and that’s also not enough. Many people launch and play modern games on such outdated PCs. Even upgrading them is not really an option, because standards, connectors, slots, chipsets and other words change - the only thing that will remain useful from the old PC is the case and HDD, and the rest is only for the office PC. The power supply may work fine, but you need to look at its power and efficiency.
So, now let’s look at what harm gaming on weak computers or laptops can cause. The main point is the negative impact on your vision due to slow graphics - freezes, lags, freezes, flickers, etc. - will have a very bad effect on your vision and mood. This is the effect of a weak PC on your health. And the second point of playing on weak PCs is the impact on the durability of this PC - in particular, the hard drive. That is, you will definitely have to increase the paging file and, due to the lack of RAM, data will be loaded and unloaded into the paging file - which will lead to increased heating of the hard drive and a reduction in its operation due to frequent access and read-write operations. Whether you want to play modern games on weak PCs or not is up to you, but my opinion is definitely no. It’s better to let your office PC serve its intended purpose for a long time.
But there will still be those who will play even at 15 fps - just to play. And it’s important for them - how to launch the game on weak computer with 4-6 gigs of RAM and 1 gig of video memory, and even with a non-gaming video card. The bottom line is that to compensate for the lack of RAM, you need to increase the swap file to about 10-16 gigs. All necessary libraries and game components must be installed on the system and the video card drivers must be updated. In most cases, games will run on such weak hardware, even with 2 core processors. I already said about the amount of FPS, naturally, to increase it, you need to set it in the game settings minimal settings almost everything that is possible. And then you get 10-20 fps and play a slide show. As I already said, I do not recommend playing in this mode - it is harmful to your eyesight and the hard drive.
