Yeah, u gotta be more specific with ur requirements. If u seriously 1 a PC/Laptop that can play ALL games offered on GOG & Steam then u need @ least 1 that comes with a dedicated graphic card like NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 (4 playing games up 2 FHD smoothly) currently.

Do note that some old games may not be fully compatible & may need some tweaking in order 2 run on current systems while others may not work @ all.

Hm attached a quick configuration I made for you. Best of all: shipping is free! ;)

But seriously, best way to start planning is looking at the specs required for the games/programs you want to use and thinking of a max budget you're comfy with, without a budget its impossible to give good suggestions.


That game has oddly high system requirements for what it offers...

Unless you get a REALLY weak laptop (or netbook), the GPU (Graphics card) is more important than the CPU.

The 3250 is a third-gen processor, ivy bridge architecture.

The 7400 would be a seventh-gen processor, kaby lake architecture.

And unless you want to play newer games, even a weak graphics card will do most of what you need.

Depend on how you separate "newer" and "older". Witcher 2 is 7 years old now. Crysis is 11 years old. A weak GPU won't handle them that well.

I put older squarely on the PS2/Xbox and earlier in levels of power/performance. So pre 2005.

Yeah that is probably preferable to the laptop I linked to. Only slightly more expensive, but it seems to have double the video RAM, and if the bigger size is not a problem to the OP, better ventilation probably as well. Nitpicking a bit about this.

In reality, you probably won't be finding one PC that can run each and every GOG and Steam game. For instance, all new PCs come with Windows 10 by default, and GOG is still selling quite a few games that may have issues in Windows 10, and are not supported in it. I am pretty sure Steam has the same on its older releases.

For such problematic older games you'd either need some older PC with older Windows and older components, or some workarounds (like running Linux on your new PC on the side, in order to see if the game works better under WINE than under Windows 10).

HOWEVER. if your question was merely that the PC should have enough horsepower to run even modern games on Steam (and GOG)... I guess that is easier to "promise", by just selecting a PC with quite good GPU and enough RAM.

Well that’s why I have reached out here because I need help understanding how to read the specs required. Like I said blossom tales says it needs pentium 3250 yet when I look at a normal computer online I found one that said pentium 7200 which isn’t even the same language . I guess I was hoping any normal comp work make these simple retro style games work . I think one person here said blossom tales has very hig requirements for such a short 16 bit game . I am looking at spending 500/800 bucks and it’s onky to play steam and gog games that r anodyne shipwreck lamulana . Blossom tales and old school commandos from 2001

Here is another example . Anodyne requires 1.5 ghz what Does that mean ! I look at a basic hp pavilion comp online I found for 500 and it says it has a intel 7400 . It says nothing about ghz anywhere so this is issue . I hav no idea how to read the specs online to see if they r enough for games like this

Another example is shipwreck it’s only 3 bucks on steam but requires open gl 2.21 for a graphics card . Again the hp pavilion I found for 500 says graphics card intel 630 so this isn’t even the same language ? Again I would have no idea if that comp could play that cheap game

If you want a budget prebuilt that's still pretty decent, here's one:


https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16883101354

Just keep in mind it doesn't come with a monitor, but Acer makes decent computers. The graphics card isn't top of the line, but it's mid range and will play most stuff relatively easily from what I understand. The cpu is a decent one, all Ryzen cpus are pretty good from what I understand, but someone will correct me if I'm wrong.

It also includes not only a 1 tb hard drive for data, but a 256 gb solid state drive for your os (and maybe one or two games) - you don't want to read/write to a solid state drive a lot, so for that kind of stuff, you want to write to your hdd (The 1 tb drive)

This one's pretty decent considering pc's cost more than they did a couple years ago. Based on your budget, it's the one I would probably pick up, but I didn't dig into newegg for too many builds because dinner has to go in the oven, and I'm out of time.

Good luck!
-Cym

Looks pretty close to what i built.

If you posted a build earlier sorry, I only read the OP.

On a different thread a month or so ago.

I suppose the differences is about $200 (closer to $90 with the current discount), and not having Windows 10 as the main differences.