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Author Topic: Steam Games That Work With A HP DC7900  (Read 3275 times)

MadMalkavian

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Steam Games That Work With A HP DC7900
« on: September 14, 2013, 10:13:38 pm »

I'm looking to buy some games on Steam within the coming months seeing as I've got a computer that can actually play some games now. There are some conditions however.

  • The game must be able to work with the following system specifications: Intel Core 2 Duo 3.0GHz, 2GB RAM, Intel GMA 4500 integrated graphics chipset with on average 714MB of RAM.
  • The game must be no larger than 4GB due to limited HDD space and a 250GB data cap on my internet.
  • The game must be $15 USD or less at it's normal everyday price.

I have been planning on getting Terraria this Sunday so this is for purchases to be made after then. If it helps I like action role-playing games akin to Morrowind, Fable: The Lost Chapters and Vampire: The Masquerade: Bloodlines, life simulators akin to The Sims 2 and The Sims 3, and construction games akin to Dwarf Fortress and Minecraft. I like competitive first person and third person shooters on occasion as well but my only experiences with those are Cosmic Break and Combat Arms.

Any suggestions would be appreciated.
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aristabulus

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Re: Steam Games That Work With A HP DC7900
« Reply #1 on: September 15, 2013, 11:37:21 am »

Your list of conditions is rather restricting...

The Intel chipset is going to limit you more than anything else. It doesn't matter how much RAM the chip is getting if the bells & whistles the game wants are not present.  The system RAM is a bit low for a dual core, especially for sharing with the integrated graphics.  (consider capping the VRAM share in the BIOS, 512 or 256, depending on what you're doing)

How much free space do you really have, and what's filling up the HDD???  If you've got an external drive, consider offloading as much as you can.  Some game examples: Company of Heroes (One) was new in 2006, needed a Pentium 4 / 512mb RAM / 64mb VRAM... but 9gb of HDD.  Black Ops 2 is 16gb, Total War Rome 2 is 35gb.  3D models pack in more polygons and denser textures as time goes on.  Indie games tend to be less greedy for space, but some of them are still biggish.

$15 not-sale price closes off a bunch of things that will likely never get lower than $20, for varying reasons.  I picked up Torchlight 2 on the summer sale for 75% off / $5.  Totally worth it.  I've not spent more than $10 on a single game in a long time, so I understand being price sensitive... but don't shoot yourself in the foot.  With your hardware as stated, you really need to start by finding games you can run, then weigh the price against the experience.  Building a wishlist that only includes things you can run, then keeping an eye on sales would be a good strategy to keep your costs down.

So, more direct suggestions.

Consider spending a little on hardware upgrades... A $40 low-profile video card, even if it's in a PCI slot, will give you a lot of head room in what you can play simply for having an AMD or NVIDIA chip on it.  Similarly, another $20-$40 on some RAM will open up a lot too.  (do check what slots are available, what the motherboard can handle before you buy anything, and that 32-bit OSes cap out at 4gb of RAM installed / ~3.2gb showing in OS)

Go see what interesting things you can find on GOG.com.  I'm not even joking.  The older games they have will almost certainly run like a champ on your computer, and a lot of the newer indie games will likely be okay too.  There are very few things over $15-$20, most are $10 and under, all are DRM free.  (Humble Store, too...  http://calvein.github.io/humble-games/  iirc, I got this out of b12's Humble thread)

Terraria will probably keep you busy for a while.  Morrowind and Fable:LC will both run for you, if you haven't already played them to death.

Play some freeware titles...  hey, they're free!  ;)  Your computer will definitely Dorf, it's just a matter of how long you can run a fortress before it grinds to a halt.  There's a whole continent of new-wave roguelikes out there, even more since Angband went GPL.  FreeCiv, FreeOrion, MegaGlest, Battle for Wesnoth in strategy.  Marathon 1+2/source, ID Tech source mods for shooters.  Many many more than I can reasonably list, or recall; go check out the free game sticky.  :)
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MadMalkavian

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Re: Steam Games That Work With A HP DC7900
« Reply #2 on: September 28, 2013, 12:04:06 pm »

Your list of conditions is rather restricting...

The Intel chipset is going to limit you more than anything else. It doesn't matter how much RAM the chip is getting if the bells & whistles the game wants are not present.  The system RAM is a bit low for a dual core, especially for sharing with the integrated graphics.  (consider capping the VRAM share in the BIOS, 512 or 256, depending on what you're doing)

How much free space do you really have, and what's filling up the HDD???  If you've got an external drive, consider offloading as much as you can.  Some game examples: Company of Heroes (One) was new in 2006, needed a Pentium 4 / 512mb RAM / 64mb VRAM... but 9gb of HDD.  Black Ops 2 is 16gb, Total War Rome 2 is 35gb.  3D models pack in more polygons and denser textures as time goes on.  Indie games tend to be less greedy for space, but some of them are still biggish.

$15 not-sale price closes off a bunch of things that will likely never get lower than $20, for varying reasons.  I picked up Torchlight 2 on the summer sale for 75% off / $5.  Totally worth it.  I've not spent more than $10 on a single game in a long time, so I understand being price sensitive... but don't shoot yourself in the foot.  With your hardware as stated, you really need to start by finding games you can run, then weigh the price against the experience.  Building a wishlist that only includes things you can run, then keeping an eye on sales would be a good strategy to keep your costs down.

So, more direct suggestions.

Consider spending a little on hardware upgrades... A $40 low-profile video card, even if it's in a PCI slot, will give you a lot of head room in what you can play simply for having an AMD or NVIDIA chip on it.  Similarly, another $20-$40 on some RAM will open up a lot too.  (do check what slots are available, what the motherboard can handle before you buy anything, and that 32-bit OSes cap out at 4gb of RAM installed / ~3.2gb showing in OS)

Go see what interesting things you can find on GOG.com.  I'm not even joking.  The older games they have will almost certainly run like a champ on your computer, and a lot of the newer indie games will likely be okay too.  There are very few things over $15-$20, most are $10 and under, all are DRM free.  (Humble Store, too...  http://calvein.github.io/humble-games/  iirc, I got this out of b12's Humble thread)

Terraria will probably keep you busy for a while.  Morrowind and Fable:LC will both run for you, if you haven't already played them to death.

Play some freeware titles...  hey, they're free!  ;)  Your computer will definitely Dorf, it's just a matter of how long you can run a fortress before it grinds to a halt.  There's a whole continent of new-wave roguelikes out there, even more since Angband went GPL.  FreeCiv, FreeOrion, MegaGlest, Battle for Wesnoth in strategy.  Marathon 1+2/source, ID Tech source mods for shooters.  Many many more than I can reasonably list, or recall; go check out the free game sticky.  :)

Upgrades may or may not be a possibility at this time due to income restrictions. I'm a disabled NEET and my monthly income is about $866.40 USD, with most of that going to rent, groceries, phone, internet and utilities. I at most in a week have maybe $10-$15 that I could maybe spend on a Steam game, but the thing is I have difficulties with saving money - part of why I have a representative payee who handles my finances and gives me $50 a week out of my check for me to do my shopping with. I could ask her to help me save up for computer upgrades but that might not be doable by the first of October because some bureaucracy and missing mail might reduce my montly income by $235 USD and thus prevent me from saving money for the most part.

I have Terraria and so far have spent over 80 hours playing it, I bought Morrowind: GOTY Edition back in 2006 via Target and I pirated Fable: The Lost Chapters since I lost my legitimate copy of the game that I had been given back in 2006 during a move in 2008. I like a few things on GOG.com but only a few things. I honestly don't like Dwarf Fortress and am kind of regretting purchasing Gnomoria as a result. I don't like the Civilization series and in fact I should have specified that I'm mostly big on life simulators, action RPGs, roguelikes, games like Terraria and Minecraft and the occasional FPS. I did just start with Team Fortress 2 this morning and am having a blast, even if I die a lot.

Thank you for the suggestions. I'm sorry it took me so long to get back to you. Part of my disabilities lead me to be absent-minded and forgetful, especially with how my brain is wired and how part of it has shrunk due to various conditions. I'll keep upgrades in mind and hopefully I can get them done and taken care of sometime.
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aristabulus

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Re: Steam Games That Work With A HP DC7900
« Reply #3 on: September 28, 2013, 01:20:01 pm »

Thank you for the suggestions. I'm sorry it took me so long to get back to you. ...

No worries...  Forums are nice like that, the messages wait and wait and wait for you.  :)

Quote
(money things)

There's nothing saying you _must_ spend those spare dollars on Steam.  If you can find a few free things to keep you busy in the meanwhile, that'll help pass the time to save up for those (relatively minor) upgrades I suggested.

Quote
(game things)

The stuff I listed was just some notable free titles off the top of my head.  There's a _ton_ of free stuff out there, but sometimes you gotta dig a bit for it.  Good places to start:

B12's free game sticky.

DOS-era abandonware sites, if you're feeling retro.

Roguebasin, for getting your @ on.  ;)

Tiggit, which is kinda like the free + open source Steam.  Many of these games are available as stand-alones; I don't recall how much community stuff it actually adds.

A mega-thread over on Cheap Ass Gamer... lots here, some downloadable, some browser.  The last time I really dug around in it there were out-of-date parts, but there's been updating and adding new games since then.

-----

All that said, TF2 could keep you quite busy... and maybe also score you a little extra Steam money, if you gets some nice drops you're willing to flog off on the market.  Marathon is what Bungie was doing for they were officially Bungie, so could be called Halo Zero... you should check that out too.

Good luck sorting it all out!  :)
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What is steel compared to the hand that wields it?  --Thulsa Doom