The curious pleasure of running games in low-spec ("Potato") mode...

[Adam Beckett]

Mad Max 

A Screenshot of Mad Max

By: Adam Beckett

I 'broke' my current gaming rig. Not by overclocking, but by trying to mess around with drivers, downvolting and creating elaborate Windows 10 Skip-Ahead Preview Build Power settings.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=494245417

Anyway, I had to 'fall back' to my really, REALLY old PC, I bought only because I was curious about what AMD was doing at the time = combining CPU and GPU on a chip.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=468444112

I bought AMD's Llano A8-3850 APU (4x)2.9GHz Processor with AMD Radeon HD 6550D Graphic Card at the time (SoC = System-on-a-Chip), just to see how it performs vs a dedicated CPU/GPU machine. If the architecture, which sounded smart, would be able to compete THIS time, vs Intel's chips (it did not).

Now, this was my fallback 'gaming rig' - until my Ryzen 7 arrives (again, decided against Intel, despite being sure to buy a i7 8700K this time around).

It takes the curious mind, to NOT install any of the graphic cards laying around (from old AMD Radeon's xxxx and my oldest NVIDIA 'modern' card (GTS 450) to the latest (RX580/GTX1060)) and see how well any of the 2000 PC games perform on the card-less APU AMD PC.

Alea Jacta Est 

A Screenshot of Alea Jacta Est

By: Adam Beckett

From GTA V, Dota2, StarCraft 2 or Kingdom Come Deliverance in lowest settings, to Dishonored, XCOM 2 and all the TOTAL WAR games ... the result is ... predictable, but still 'good enough' to be 'playable' in the lowest settings (aka "Potato Mode").

Finding what can be tweaked beyond 'low' to 'medium' or 'high' and checking frametimes and framerates. Monitoring, testing, benchmarking = a kind of 'metagame'. Fun in itself.

This "low spec PC" is actually an ASUS mainboard, running without a PC case in the open, sitting on top of an mini-ATX-sized cardboard box, next to a 400Watt PSU, sitting on another small cardboard box. Between them a couple gaming harddrives.

I am sitting next to it, listening to the barely hearable sound of a single small (CPU) fan. This thing runs at probably 100-250 Watt max. The CPU is currently at 23 Celsius/73 F - during gameplay, maxes out at 40C/104F.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=458362534

Even more curious, I was browsing for my 'low-spec' games and started to install them from my Steam Library. 1000x games, I overlooked again and again, which are waiting, like unread books - full of unexplored worlds of adventures and entertainment. Games, which have to overcome their lack of "3D-ishness" with deep gameplay and various game mechanics.

Before "Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon: Wildlands" there was HoI (3/3) 

A Screenshot of Hearts of Iron III

By: Adam Beckett

The kind of "good games" I used to play, before I followed the "buy a 3D card" train, 20 past years ago, and got blindsided by the shiny polygons.

I also used a thumb-drive Live Linux Distro to install SteamOS and try out the SteamOS/Linux-based games in my library.

AVE MARIA!!! 

A Screenshot of Crusader Kings II

By: luzness

These past days, I was reminded what makes me enjoy video games so much. From turn-based 2D games to twin-stick shooters, to old RTS games, to any type of puzzle game, simulations, RPGs or adventure game and yes, even FPS (of which I became pretty bored), but it is NEVER boring to play Quake 3 Arena, UT, Doom3 or "No One Lives Forever".

Well... that's an interesting way to end a turn. 

A Screenshot of Frozen Synapse

By: FaeDine

Now, my Ryzen has arrived from Amazon ... and I am not at all in a hurry to switch to it.

There is something freeing about being restricted by PC hardware.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1300360650

I watch my currently installed Game Library and am happy with the 300+ games, waiting for me to be explored. They can entertain me way far into 2019 ... even into 2020.

人類在這個遊戲的設定是....少數或是快滅絕的種族，被各種奇怪的外星人瞧不起+欺負... 

A Screenshot of Halcyon 6: Lightspeed Edition

By: 貢啊丸

NOT wanting to, not feeling the NEED to switch to the 'fastest', 'biggest', 'best' PC, running the most demanding games at fastest speeds, in highest, maxed out settings ... is a curious feeling.

Does not feel bad at all.

[Sapph]

HOw did you exactly "break" your pc? None of what you described, would do anything to pc to damage it.

[Adam Beckett]

Originally posted by Sapph:

HOw did you exactly "break" your pc? None of what you described, would do anything to pc to damage it.

It started running unstable after a recent update - Win 10 Preview Build BSOD'd unproperly. The motherboard is/was a Asrock 970 Extreme3 (AM3+). I was messing around with different graphic cards and drivers (mixed multi-card).

I used the graphic card monitoring tool installed for the ASUS ROG STRIX GTX1060 for the also installed GTX 650Ti BOOST, trying to adjust manually fan and power-settings, which led the system to freeze and to some sort of power spike, damaging the SDRAM DIMM DDR3 system RAM.

I flashed the mobo firmware, but it did not help anymore.

[Sapph]

I would say the death was just an coincidence out of being old. Those are not connected in any way to each other. So it wasn't the things you did which broke it.
Or there was indeed some kind of power spike. From your power supply.

If it was power supply, it will happen again sooner or later with the new hardware if you use the same one on it.