r/lowendgaming Jan 05 '26

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

146 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 Firstly, that a community of people has been helping each other to run games on inexpensive and outdated PC hardware for many years, long before all the insidious price hikes we’re enduring today.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 4h ago

Game Deal Best free Steam games and visual novels of August 2026

8 Upvotes

Also check out my free Steam game list if you haven't seen it!

These are (in my opinion) the best-looking Steam games that have either recently switched from paid to free, were released as free to begin with, or left Early Access. There are also some leftover games from July that came out after I made my previous post.

Jungle Labs (a game design workshop that has previously released great games like D1AL-ogue, EXE.CUTOR, and Spacetime Shooter) put out another big batch of games this month. Those make up a decent chunk of this list.

I've beaten a little over half of the games below, and there are some real winners here.

I recommend checking out the Steam page for all the games on this list to see if anything looks interesting to you, but these are a few that I felt like highlighting.


Cursed (Remake) - New remake of a horror game with an enhanced Classic mode and a greatly expanded Extended mode. Gameplay is point-and-click in the style of Shadowgate combined with real-time combat and occasional other real-time sequences. If you like this, also check out Cursed 2 and Cursed 3.

Kujira no Hara - ~50 hour long RPG with Legend of Zelda-style combat. The story takes place inside a giant whale, and you explore a variety of different locations, meet many different people and creatures, and solve different types of challenging puzzles.

No Results Found - Use your detective skills to solve a mystery related to a mysterious cult. The game has a Windows 98-style interface, and you use programs that feel era appropriate. Even the background music is just you playing songs in the in-game music program.

Null Root - Action roguelike with a massive permanent upgrade system. You start extremely weak and can only do very short runs, but everything including run length can be upgraded.

SHIROKUMA KING - Turn a polar bear into a killing machine by stacking it up with various items and weapons, then match it up against the best bears other players have built.


2D and very light 3D


A.D.D. (Anomaly Detection Department)

ASTRAL COURT DX

Beanman Gets His Cool Back

Blue Sign

Cosmic Roll

Cursed (Remake)

Dear Magical Girls

Fall Queen

GRIDNOVA

Hallowed Core

Hell o' Halo

Knytt Classic

Kujira no Hara

Lockey

Mr Twiddle's Wee Diddy Farm

Mystic Garden

No Results Found

nudge

Null Root

ON&OFF - My personal favorite on this list.

Polluted Flesh

Pot's On

SHIROKUMA KING

SSTWL - Sector Breach

UnDo - Solid sokoban puzzle game. The only problem is that I was unable to change the language to English in the settings, so all the tutorial text is unreadable.

Unload

Vice Signalling


Visual Novels


3Paths

Calamity Cait - 3D

The Library on the Lake

Sanguis Amantis


3D


Apple Faces Up

Hamsterballin'

Lost Light

Rat Race

Rest In Paws

Slick As The Devil

The Stone Ship


r/lowendgaming 1h ago

Will This Game Run? Will farcry 5 run on my Zbook fury laptop?

Upvotes

48GB Ram DDR4- 512GB SSD M.2- Nvidia Quadro T2000 Max-Q 4GB


r/lowendgaming 17h ago

PC Purchase Advice Need help with graphics card and gaming laptop

8 Upvotes

So I have landed a gamer girlfriend. She wants to have a gaming laptop/PC but I have absolutely no idea. I play only chess. I am tight on budget so picture as less as possible. And hence I am landing here for peer support. OS would be Win11 ofc and a 16GB RAM with 512 SSD is fine. But graphics card!? Need help.

She plays Subnautica, Star Wars, Valorant, COD and more. Quite into niche games that only 20 plays on earth play, rest watch on streams.

Laptop/PC either is fine. I'm based in India.


r/lowendgaming 10h ago

Will This Game Run? Can I play street fighter 6 with tweaking of course?

2 Upvotes

16.0 GB of RAM

13th Gen Intel Core i5-1334U

Intel Iris Xe


r/lowendgaming 21h ago

Will This Game Run? Are these specs enough to run ark survival evolved without lag?

9 Upvotes

I’m looking at a gaming laptop, here are the specs.

Acer Nitro V 15 Gaming Laptop Ryzen 5 7535HS RTX 4050 16GB RAM 512GB SSD 144Hz

I’m not looking to do anything hardcore, I really just want to play ARK’s base game solo. Are these specs enough to run it somewhat smoothly?


r/lowendgaming 1d ago

What Games Can I Run? Please recommend me RPGs for Iris Xe Graphics.

15 Upvotes

Hi everyone, I always wanted to dive into RPGs but don't know where to start, also I want to play something that feels modern in other words does not feel very oldschool/clunky in movement, I'm open to all kinds of rpgs even jrpgs, niche, indie etc.

SPECS:
i7-1165g7, 16gh ram ddr4, Iris Xe Graphics


r/lowendgaming 1d ago

Game Review Metal Gear Solid 4 PC Port Minimum Requirements are a lie.

9 Upvotes

I am getting a playable 25 FPS on a Microsoft Surface Pro 4. 720P/Low settings. There's a noticeable lag in the menus but it is absolutely acceptable. You'd get even better performance with a dedicated GPU. My specs are

Processor Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-6300U CPU @ 2.40GHz, 2496 Mhz, 2 Core(s), 4 Logical Processor(s)

Intel(R) HD Graphics 520

8 GB RAM.


r/lowendgaming 1d ago

What Games Can I Run? What are the best games I can run on my PC?

8 Upvotes

CPU: Intel Core i5 6200u

GPU: NVIDIA Geforce 940m 2gb

RAM: 16gb (idk DDR3 or DDR4)

Operating System: Windows 10 and Debian 13. Either one works

Storage: 1 TB HDD


r/lowendgaming 1d ago

Parts Upgrade Advice does i5 7500 -> i7 7700 worth it?

17 Upvotes

currently i am rocking an i5 7500 with 16 gb of ddr4 and a gtx 1650 with win10, i used to run apex legends with this setup no problem, but since this new season, i have massive fps drops when i get into sweaty fights and generally lose them, i am currently not sure when i will invest in a new pc, but it seems i am stuck with this setup for at least the next 12 months, would it make sense maxing out the mobo and upgrading to an i7 7700 for this 12 months? alteratively was looking at cooler updates since, under full load the temp is quite high ( 90C+ ), it was pasted a while back 12+ months ago, should i repaste? it was always kind of running hot tho?), so i suspect the cooler. this was originally an office pc lenovo m710s


r/lowendgaming 1d ago

What Games Can I Run? I want to play the best assasins creed game possible for my pc at a playable FPS

13 Upvotes

my pc specs
OS: WIn 10 Pro
CPU:11th Gen Intel (R) Core i3 - 1115G4 u/3.00GHz , 2 cores
RAM:8.00GB
GPU:Intel UHD Graphics
VRAM:512MB

pls suggest the best ac game at playable fps (i finished brotherhood,1,2,revelations)


r/lowendgaming 1d ago

Parts Upgrade Advice Low Profile GPU Upgrade for Precision Tower 3420?

1 Upvotes

Got one of these bad boys for hella cheap off a workplace auction, but the NVS 510 currently in it somehow performs worse than the integrated graphics!

I don't need a modern AAA powerhouse, but it would be nice to have something a little stronger in case I use it as my backup setup (albeit the SFF case does mean my options are somewhat limited).

No definite budget as long as it's a relatively modest performance upgrade compared to what it came with.

Specs:

CPU: i7-7700

GPU: Nvidia NVS 510/Integrated Intel HD 630

RAM: 32 GB 2400 MHz DDR4


r/lowendgaming 2d ago

What Games Can I Run? Need Game recommendations

8 Upvotes

Any genre as long as the game is fun

Specs: 8th Gen Intel (R) Core(TM) i5-8365U @ 1.60 GHz , Intel UHD 620 128MB, 8GB RAM Single Channel Speed: 2400 MT/s

Games I have currently:

Faith: The Unholy Trinity (60 FPS)

Roblox (Depends on game but mostly 60 FPS)

The Binding of Isaac (60 FPS)

Postal 2 (60 FPS)

Terraria (60 FPS)

Left 4 Dead 2 (50-60 FPS)

UNDERTALE (60 FPS)

Rain World (60 FPS)

Fallout: New Vegas (50-60 FPS)

Hollow Knight: Silksong (50 FPS)

Hotline Miami (60 FPS)

Prototype 1 (60 FPS)

Noita (60 FPS)

People Playground (60 FPS depends)

Fallout 3 (60 FPS)

Fallout 1 (60 FPS)

Fallout 2 (60 FPS)

Darkest Dungeon (60 FPS)

Look Outside (60 FPS)

CrossCode (60 FPS)

Disco Elysium (60 FPS)

GTA IV (50-60 FPS on very low graphics and at 800x600)

Deltarune (60 FPS)

Darkwood (60 FPS)

Signalis (60 FPS)

Into the Breach (60 FPS)

F.E.A.R (60 FPS)

Morrowind (60 FPS)

YOMI Hustle (60 FPS)

Nine Sols (60 FPS)


r/lowendgaming 2d ago

Will This Game Run? Rocket league

2 Upvotes

Hello, my older cousin asked if my computer can run rocket league so I am asking you guys. Specs are the following

AMD Ryzen 3 3200g

AMD Radeon Vega 8 (1 gb uma frame buffer)

8 gb ram (7 gb usable)

Kingston SA400, the 240 gig model but partitioned into 146 gb and 77 gb

Windows 11 Pro 25h2


r/lowendgaming 2d ago

PC Purchase Advice How viable?

4 Upvotes

I own an asus tuff gaming laptop, more specifically the FX505DT model. my specs are:

Processor AMD Ryzen 7 3750H with Radeon Vega Mobile Gfx (2.30 GHz)

Installed RAM 8.00 GB (7.81 GB usable)

Graphics card NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650 (4 GB)

AMD Radeon(TM) RX Vega 10 Graphics (113 MB)

Storage 384 GB of 943 GB used (plus i have a 2nd ssd with almost one more terabyte)

System type 64-bit operating system, x64-based processor

my question is would upgarding the ram by another 8gb ddr4 make it viable on 1080p with medium/low setting for 40-60 fps or is that a distant dream? (sorry if i sound dumb, im pretty new to this stuff, also not sure about the flair neither lol)

edit: not sure if i messed up the text or left this out (i thought i wrote the specs properly) but here are the specs according to speccy:

CPU

AMD Ryzen 7 Mobile 3750H    60 °C

Picasso 12nm Technology

RAM

8.00GB Single-Channel DDR4 @ 1200MHz (17-17-17-39)

Motherboard

ASUSTeK COMPUTER INC. FX505DT (FP5)

Graphics

Generic PnP Monitor (1920x1080@120Hz)

4095MB NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650 (ASUStek Computer Inc)   47 °C

128MB ATI AMD Radeon RX Vega 10 Graphics (ASUStek Computer Inc)

SLI Disabled

CrossFire Disabled

Storage

465GB Western Digital WDC WDS500G2B0A-00SM50 (SATA (SSD))   34 °C

476GB INTEL SSDPEKNW512G8 (Unknown (SSD))

r/lowendgaming 2d ago

Tech Support GTA V keeps crashing.

2 Upvotes

I have a HP 15s eq3045au, 16gb ddr4 3200 mhz, 512gb ssd, ryzen 5 5625u, AMD Radeon tm integrated graphics,

I've tried playing GTA V legacy but it keeps crashing after breaking out the bank ( the bank heist starting the game).

I played dota 2 with this laptop last year if this helps.


r/lowendgaming 3d ago

What Games Can I Run? What games can I play?

13 Upvotes

Specs: 12gb ddr3 ram, i5 3210m cpu (2.5ghz), radeon 7600m (2gb), 224gb ssd

Like: Rpgs, strategy games

Dislike: point and click, visual novels

You can recommend anything, really. Looking for offline games but I would really appreciate an MMO recommendation or any other online multiplayer game to play with my friend too.

Thanks.


r/lowendgaming 3d ago

Tech Support Any optimized screen recorder for a midly-potato laptop?

6 Upvotes

Well, recently I got a laptop with the following specs:

  • CPU: Intel Core i5-5200U
  • GPU: Nvidia Geforce 940M (2GB DDR3)/Intel HD Graphics 5500
  • RAM: 6GB (1x4GB, 1x2GB DDR3 1600Mhz)
  • OS: Windows 10 LTSC
  • Screen resolution: 1366x768p

I want to record gameplays of Geometry Dash, maybe at 1280x720p (But it MUST be at 60FPS). For the GD players here: No, I don´t meant showcasing (If that was the case I would rely on tools that are in Geode mods, like Eclipse+ffmpeg API), but recording at the same time I play for like verifications or formal completions. And nope: I would be using my phone as a handcam.

I tried using OBS Studio an configurating it to use QSV/h264 for encoder (Intel Quick-Sync from the iGPU, while the Geforce 940M would be rendering the game), but it throws a error when starting the recording. It works using software encoding, but of course both my iGPU/CPU usage peaks at almost 100%, which isn´t very good for the game performance (I mean, yeah, I can get +144FPS on a lot of levels, but in the heavier ones, where it barely keeps 80FPS, the recording could make them drop awfully).

There´s another option for internal recording, or should I just cope with? Looking for your answers. c:


r/lowendgaming 3d ago

What Games Can I Run? ryzen 1600x and i5 9500 both with 1070, 16 gb ram. What can I run/run well?

14 Upvotes

I figure that almost anything will run, but whether it will run over 12fps.


r/lowendgaming 2d ago

Will This Game Run? Can I run Deep Rock Galactic on any settings?

2 Upvotes

I have a somewhat old ASUS Viviobook 15 with
-Intel(R) Core(TM) 5 120U (1.40 GHz),
-16g installed ram
and
-Intel(R) Graphics (128 MB).

I can run Warframe decently well on low settings but most other things run poorly for me. The fans sometimes make loud noises on startup and I haven't actually tried to run anything too major recently. is DRG going to be too much if I buy it?


r/lowendgaming 3d ago

What Games Can I Run? Can I play any shooters?

19 Upvotes

Processor: 12th Gen Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-1235U

Installed Ram: 8GB

Graphics card: Intel(R) Iris(R) Xe Graphics

Storage: 80.5GB free


r/lowendgaming 3d ago

What Games Can I Run? what Games can I run in this rig ?

4 Upvotes

My PC specs:-

Processor AMD A6 PRO-7400B R5, 6 Compute Cores 2C+4G 3.50 GHz

Installed RAM 10.0 GB (8.98 GB usable)

Storage 238 GB SSD AARVEX 2.5 SATA 256GB SSD, 112 GB SSD SSD 120GB

Graphics Card AMD Radeon(TM) R5 Graphics (927 MB)

System Type 64-bit operating system, x64-based processor

Pen and touch No pen or touch input is available for this display

I have played many games Like

Assassin's creed 1,2,3,4 brotherhood, rogue.

Gta 3, Vice city, San Andrease, 4, 5

Kane and Lynce 2

Minecraft bedrock and java both

Roblox

Mafia 2

Little Nightmares 1&2

Watch dogs

Tomb Raider (2013)

Rise of Tomb Raider

Hitman 1, 2 blood and money, and absolution .

Total overdose

Max Payne 1, 2 & 3

Outlast 1 & 2

Call of duty Black Ops 2

Call of duty: Modern Warfare 3 (I only liked few missions )

Remember me

Bioshock 1, 2 and Infinite

I couldn't run Sleeping dogs Original and definitive edition for some reason

Spec ops: the line

Dead space 1,2,3

Far cry 2, 3, 4 (3 and 4 are really good)

Alan Wake (2010)

The walking Dead full series (My personal fav game)

The wolfs among Us

Life is strange

Call of Juarez

Crysis 2: warhead

Metro 2033 (I didn't liked the game, it is weird )

NFS: most wanted original and 2012, Carbon

I'm saving Batman : Arkham City, Mad Max, Bully: scholarship edition, Minecraft Story mode, Alien : Isolation for later

I don't want to play the Borderlands series, The saboteur, The Godfather, Mafia 1, L.A Noire, True Crime, Wheelman(2009), Driver series, Layers of fears, Amnesia: Dark descent, Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Conviction.


r/lowendgaming 3d ago

Will This Game Run? Anyone tried running SW: Zero Company on 1060 6gb ?

7 Upvotes

Hi, as in question,
I am rather curious if this game is possible to run on gf 1060 6gb
I am aware of the requirements, but maybe it would be stable 30fps 1080 on low settings etc?

my specs :

OS : Win 10

motherboard : Gigabyte B360M D3H-CF

Ram : 16gb 2666 mhz

Graphics : 6gb Geforce GTX 1060

CPU : I5-8600k 3.60 ghz


r/lowendgaming 3d ago

What Games Can I Run? What game can i run with my old intel hd graphics

9 Upvotes

This is my pc

Artix Linux (Arch without systemd)

Intel Core i3 3220 (hd 2500)

4GB of RAM (2 sticks of 2 gigs) (also got aggressive zram compression)

Old ass 512gb HDD with 41K hours of usage

I run games through proton with PROTON_USE_WINED3D=1 to make DirectX games run on OpenGL and some of them run better than on Windows only because i use "mesa_glthread=true", this last parameter tells the Mesa driver to separate the graphics API calls to another cpu thread, making games that use a single core (like Geometry Dash) technically use two.

The most heavy game i play on that is Team Fortress 2 at medium settings at 75fps with vsync (i got a 75hz 4:3 led monitor)

Can someone tell me what other games i can run

My steam profile it's in my reddit profile linktree so yeah I got some light games already but i want some others

I like uhmm games where i can shoot yeah in first person i like pew pew things cuz it's fun to pew pew things thx you for reading guysss


r/lowendgaming 4d ago

What Games Can I Run? GMA 950... what can I run on that?

24 Upvotes

Intel GMA 950 Integrated Graphics, 4GB DDR2, Core 2 Duo E7300, 240GB SSD SATA

I've already semi-succesfully ran GTA SA with mods, but on lowest graphics and 480p-ish at an acceptable 30fps, CS 1.6 ran just fine. Ravenfield didn't run since the graphics lack its required APIs, not even visual novels want to launch because of Ren'py requiring OpenGL 2.0. which is a bummer. Minecraft 1.8.9 ran at barely-playable 20FPS.

what are so games that'd run at an acceptable 25+ FPS? I'm not bothered by low graphics or low resolution (like 800x600)