Got a new computer - And some questions.

[MrEco]

Hey everyone. I've never been able to do much PC gaming, being that good gaming PC's are rather expensive and I know nothing about how computers work or how to build one.

But as of yesterday I purchased this computer:



It's specs are (According to the product page):
AMD A Series Processor 2.5GHz (1MB Cache)
4GB SDRAM RAM
640GB 5400RPM Hard Drive
15.6-Inch Screen, AMD Radeon HD 6480G
Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit

Now, other than the hard drive space and the Windows 7 being the OS I don't know what any of that means.

But last night I played some Team Fortress 2 on it and it ran like a complete dream, all the settings at max and no frame rate drop whatsoever. Now I'm wondering what else it's capable of. If any of you fine folks who are more acquainted with computers could tell me what to expect this computer to be capable of I would really appreciate that.

Also, I know that Windows 7 has some problems playing games meant for older Windows OS's. But do services like Steam and GoG circumvent that and optimize the games for W7? And other than that are there some ways I can tell if a game will work with W7 before buying it, and if not are there simple ways to make it compatible?

Thanks for any help! XD

[fastbilly1]

If you are super concerned about OS compatibility, go to the GoG or Steam forum for that title and see if people have experience with the title on Windows 7. Most of the titles at GoG should run on your computer no problem - out of my 60 GoG games only Dark Reign had issues on 7 and that was fixed by running it in compatibility mode.

I am not super familiar with your specs (I am a intel/nvidia guy) but a quick look and anything from 09 and before should play like a dream, anything after that will need some tweaking, but should still run fine - looks like it runs BF3 on medium settings well.

[Duane Dibbley]

Some Steam games explicitly say they don't work on newer OSes, so be sure to check the system requirements before purchasing.

[isiolia]

The big hangup with PC hardware requirements for gaming tends to be the graphics card, commonly referred to as the GPU. In the later 90s or so, games started being able to take advantage of a dedicated 3D graphics processor...and later started requiring one.

The main problem with many big-box systems is that they don't include a particularly good GPU, and often lack the capacity to accommodate much of any upgrade (if any at all).

What most include instead are what'd dubbed "integrated graphics" - basic, serviceable graphics processing that tends to represent the bottom of the barrel when it comes to performance. While they used to be part of the motherboard's chipset, more recently CPU makers have integrated them into the processors themselves. AMD likes to market theirs as "APUs", which is what you have. They are designed to be budget CPU/GPU combos.

On the desktop, where you have more options, they kinda suck, since a cheap CPU + cheap GPU does better. In a laptop, where the options are fewer, and there's rarely an upgrade path, they can represent a good value, provided you do want to take advantage of the graphics.

As mentioned, you should be fine with older titles - but there are many to pick from. Not many benchmarks for your particular card here, but maybe it could give an indication.

I would not expect many modern games to run well (Valve's stuff tends to be very kind to lower spec'ed machines)...but there are quite a number of classic titles, indie games, and so on that it'd handle nicely.


Regarding the services mentioned, GoG goes out of their way to make sure the games they sell run on modern systems (it's part of their sales pitch). Still may not be 100% perfect, but at least they try.

Steam...less so. Some titles are run in DOSBox and the like, others are not. Best to search the forums (or just Google in general). Many older PC games have had unofficial patches or modifications to make them run on modern OSes. The vast majority of what I've gotten from Steam has worked fine anyway, but the occasional title will need a fix from elsewhere.

[neilencio]

He's got one of AMD's newfangled APUs, where the IGP and the CPU are in the same place. The 3d capabilities of the APUs are on-par/slightly better than entry level dedicated cards. fastbilly's recommendations are good.

One thing to remember about entry level cards is that they're mostly fine on low settings (no effects, resolutions that are lower than 1080p), but post-processing and filtering will completely kill the FPS (in most cases, reducing the performance from playable to slideshow).

Currently using an APU myself, and one of the low end notebook ones at that (Radeon HD 6320), it can run Source-based games on high settings, and Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare on low settings smoothly.

EDIT: oh! and if you're paranoid about temps, you may want to think of improving ventilation. APUs can get VERY hot during gaming, since the cpu and the video processor are right next to each other. Mine jumps straight to high 70Cs-low 80Cs for both the cpu and gpu (from 40C) during gaming (I had to downclock and undervolt to get decent temps - 60c max load).

[Valkyrie-Favor]

I'd say 3/4 of my Windows 98 and XP games run on my 64-bit W7 laptop without any problem. For the ones that don't, I still have a high-end (for the time) Windows 98 PC.

It's not too hard to dual boot operating systems, so I would consider that. Get an old W98 or ME disc from somewhere and install it on a small partition with 40GB or something. The rest can go to W7 for everything else. You should have compatibility with pretty much all old games that way. If you're interested, guides are all over.

The other guys covered the hardware stuff already, so that's cool.

[RyaNtheSlayA]

isiolia's post basically sums it up nicely. While you wont be doing anything real amazing on that machine, it should be serviceable for playing anything up to 2009 just fine, plus the tons and tons of indie games available.

Just keep the post-processing to a minimum and you should be a-okay for some light gaming.

[MrEco]

Alright, that has made things a lot clearer guys. Thanks for all the help, and honestly I don't think I'll miss the post-2009 stuff too much.

Just two more quick questions.

Mods for older games that make them look nicer will require more CPU and stuff as if they were a newer game right? Like if I got Morrowind and then installed this mod it would be as if I was playing a later released game right?*

Second, other than a couple games I'm not too familiar with the PC exclusive side of things. So maybe some quick recommendations would be nice (Genre or whatever is not an issue, I'll check out anything). Obviously things that would be friendly to my computer and OS is possible please.

*EDIT: Side note, is downloading mods complicated? I mean I'm sure it depends on the specific mod, but what can I expect from most cases?

[Xeogred]

If you're getting crazy graphic/texture mods like that, yeah they'll burn up resources more. But sometimes that's not true with mods and in return they actually make the games run better than they originally did.

[neilencio]

Second, other than a couple games I'm not too familiar with the PC exclusive side of things. So maybe some quick recommendations would be nice (Genre or whatever is not an issue, I'll check out anything). Obviously things that would be friendly to my computer and OS is possible please.

Some games that will run and look nice(current/last gen-ish graphics?) on your machine:

Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare - you'll have to tweak a bit to find a setting that's playable. Mostly on low/mid
Left 4 Dead 1 and 2 - you'll have to tweak a bit to find a setting that's playable. Mostly on low/mid
Counter Strike: Source/HL 2 - will run fine with all the bells and whistles
Marvel Ultimate Alliance - will run fine with all the bells and whistles
Spider-Man - web of shadows - supposed to run smooth, but the game itself is buggy, so YMMV
The Last Remnant - will run fine with all the bells and whistles. Has slow loading problems on win7, but can be fixed by making it use only one core
Star Wars: Battlefront (1 and 2) - runs fine with all the bells and whistles
Devil May Cry 4 - runs fine with all the bells and whistles
Burnout Paradise - runs fine with all the bells and whistles
Need for Speed: Most Wanted - runs fine with all the bells and whistles
Dead Space 2 - runs fine with all the bells and whistles.
Super Street Fighter IV Arcade Edition - you'll have to tweak a bit to find a setting that's playable. Mostly on low/mid

AMD's APU is different from other IGPs in the sense that it's a full featured graphics card, has support for shaders and DX11, but is severely underpowered (compared to Intel's IGPs, which is not only underpowered, but also lacks features, which is why even a game with an old engine such as WOW will look like arse on HD graphics).

When tweaking a game, you can get a lot of FPS back by turning off post filtering and lowering LOD (if a game has settings for those). And avoid using resolutions that are higher than 1024 x 768 (for 4:3) and 1280x720 (for 16:3). Purists will say that those resolutions look like crap, but you honestly won't mind some jaggies if the alternative is jerky/laggy fps.