How do I know if I can play a given game with my hardware?
February 11, 2025 10:47 AM Subscribe
I generally only play smaller/less demanding games on my PC, and don't worry too much about specs. And I've not had a problem yet. But sometimes I'm not sure if my system can handle something. And now that tons of Steam games work on Linux and I play some PC games with my kid, I'd like to get a better sense of how to know if a given game will work ok.
Some specifics: I have a little Intel NUC, running Linux.
CPU Brand: 11th Gen Intel(R) Core(TM) i3-1115G4 @ 3.00GHz
RAM: 31721 Mb
Video Card:
Driver: Intel Mesa Intel(R) UHD Graphics (TGL GT2)
Now, if I meet or exceed a CPU spec, and have a lot more ram than called for, and the game is a simple 2D affair, I know I'm fine. The hard part is knowing how to make sense of graphics card requirements for 3D games. I know my integrated chipset isn't considered "good" in comparison to modern graphics cards, but all the requirements I see on e.g. Steam just list "a graphics card that supports OpenGL", or some specific model of GeForce etc, and I'm not sure how to know if I'm even in the right ballpark if the requirement specifies the latter.
Some specific questions:
Is there some specific graphics card my chipset is loosely equivalent to?
Can I play this game? It looks like in that example I don't even meet the CPU requirements. But also it also just feels like the kind of game I should be able to play, and doesn't seem all that intensive. But the whole point of this question is that I'd like to move beyond vague intuition, or at least get better at it.
What about this one? That one I'm reasonably confident I can just by the look of it, and I exceed the cpu/ram requirements by a good margin. Does that mean my graphics card is at least as good as a GeForce 8800 or Radeon® HD4800 series, 512 MB of memory?
I understand plenty of computer stuff in my own niches, but haven't thought or read about graphics cards this century, so anything rubrics general info you think would help is appreciated, thanks!
Some specifics: I have a little Intel NUC, running Linux.
CPU Brand: 11th Gen Intel(R) Core(TM) i3-1115G4 @ 3.00GHz
RAM: 31721 Mb
Video Card:
Driver: Intel Mesa Intel(R) UHD Graphics (TGL GT2)
Now, if I meet or exceed a CPU spec, and have a lot more ram than called for, and the game is a simple 2D affair, I know I'm fine. The hard part is knowing how to make sense of graphics card requirements for 3D games. I know my integrated chipset isn't considered "good" in comparison to modern graphics cards, but all the requirements I see on e.g. Steam just list "a graphics card that supports OpenGL", or some specific model of GeForce etc, and I'm not sure how to know if I'm even in the right ballpark if the requirement specifies the latter.
Some specific questions:
Is there some specific graphics card my chipset is loosely equivalent to?
Can I play this game? It looks like in that example I don't even meet the CPU requirements. But also it also just feels like the kind of game I should be able to play, and doesn't seem all that intensive. But the whole point of this question is that I'd like to move beyond vague intuition, or at least get better at it.
What about this one? That one I'm reasonably confident I can just by the look of it, and I exceed the cpu/ram requirements by a good margin. Does that mean my graphics card is at least as good as a GeForce 8800 or Radeon® HD4800 series, 512 MB of memory?
I understand plenty of computer stuff in my own niches, but haven't thought or read about graphics cards this century, so anything rubrics general info you think would help is appreciated, thanks!
I'm a mini-PC / linux user too so I'm always asking this question.
I don't really trust publisher minimum specifications or third-party game/gpu benchmarks because those are generally windows-centric.
Luckily, Steam's refund policies are liberal enough that I'll generally just return the game if it doesn't run well on my hardware, but this costs time to download and fiddle settings.
posted by Sauce Trough at 11:12 AM on February 11 [1 favorite]
I don't really trust publisher minimum specifications or third-party game/gpu benchmarks because those are generally windows-centric.
Luckily, Steam's refund policies are liberal enough that I'll generally just return the game if it doesn't run well on my hardware, but this costs time to download and fiddle settings.
posted by Sauce Trough at 11:12 AM on February 11 [1 favorite]
Hey, I apologize, I didn't read carefully enough and the tool I linked does not work with Linux. Apologies for the non-helpful answer.
posted by fennario at 11:16 AM on February 11 [1 favorite]
posted by fennario at 11:16 AM on February 11 [1 favorite]
Response by poster: That tool is not entirely unhelpful either, bc it does give some hints, if not a 100% guarantee, so no worries :)
posted by SaltySalticid at 11:31 AM on February 11
posted by SaltySalticid at 11:31 AM on February 11
I can't necessarily vouch for the site, but this is a page about your integrated GPU. Under Benchmarks, the Performance Rating slots it in amongst others with similar performance (and a couple much newer/more powerful ones, for reference).
The site I would usually point you to, UserBenchmark (which lets you do head-to-head comparisons with any other GPU in their database), doesn't even seem to have your graphics chip in its listings. It's not too surprising -- i3s are not going to be terribly common amongst those looking to play higher intensity games, and their results come from people who are intent on benchmarking higher intensity games.
That said, if you take a GPU with similar performance from the NotebookCheck site, you can plug that into UserBenchmark to compare against the GPU you're actually trying to look up, e.g. the GeForce 8800. In this case, you can very roughly say that a similarly performing GPU to yours has about double the performance of the 8800. (Which means that a 2020 integrated GPU has about double the performance of a discrete GPU released in 2008. Wild times!)
posted by tubedogg at 12:00 PM on February 11 [1 favorite]
The site I would usually point you to, UserBenchmark (which lets you do head-to-head comparisons with any other GPU in their database), doesn't even seem to have your graphics chip in its listings. It's not too surprising -- i3s are not going to be terribly common amongst those looking to play higher intensity games, and their results come from people who are intent on benchmarking higher intensity games.
That said, if you take a GPU with similar performance from the NotebookCheck site, you can plug that into UserBenchmark to compare against the GPU you're actually trying to look up, e.g. the GeForce 8800. In this case, you can very roughly say that a similarly performing GPU to yours has about double the performance of the 8800. (Which means that a 2020 integrated GPU has about double the performance of a discrete GPU released in 2008. Wild times!)
posted by tubedogg at 12:00 PM on February 11 [1 favorite]
You are not logged in, either login or create an account to post comments
posted by fennario at 10:56 AM on February 11 [3 favorites]