How To Play PC Games On A Potato

Have you ever wanted to play pc games on a cheap, crappy, laptop? Is that all you have and a nice gaming desktop is too expensive? Well, look no further adieu, here's my guide for how to play pc games on a potato. 

Keep in mind that your potato has to be at least somewhat decent. I would say spend at least $400 [or more if you can spare, but my laptop is $400] and make sure you have a graphics card. My laptop is an Asus with a Radeon Graphics card. The computer isn't anything special but it boots up fast with Windows 10. 

To start, you must make sure you have your laptop's energy plan set to High Performance. This is a no brainer but you would be surprised that some people only always leave their laptop's energy plan set to save energy or energy planer because they use it periodically throughout the day and can't always have it plugged in. However, for gaming you'll always want this set to High Performance. 

Now for the in game settings. I'm going to give you my options that have me running three different games [Overwatch, Heroes of the Storm, and Team Fortress 2-my favorite games] with smooth frame rate and relatively low [if any] input lag. The games won't look great, or that good, but it will be smooth. Always make sure to run the games in windowed mode, a smaller window, as fullscreen takes up more processing power on your CPU, making your potato cry more and lag incessantly.

Overwatch 

 

Display Mode: Windowed

Resolution: 1366x768 [60`] [you always want this set to whatever option your overwatch game has the ` key set to, as this is your native resolution, which will give you better fps]

Vsync: OFF

Triple Buffering: ON

Reduce Buffering: OFF

Limit FPS: Custom

Frame Rate Cap: 30

Graphics Quality: Low

Advanced then click Render Scale: Automatic 50% 

And everything else set to low and off. Make sure to run the game in windowed mode, about 70% fullscreen size.

Heroes of the Storm

 

For this one it's more tricky as this game can become super laggy sometimes. A trick I've learned is that whenever you disconnect from a game just repeatedly hit the ESC key [don't know why that works]. You're going to want to go into the game files folder and add your own custom options there. 

 

On my computer you start by clicking This PC then going to Documents then Heroes of the Storm, and there you will see a text document entitled Variables, click that and change as neccessary. Here are my settings. You can tweak these as needed but I have everything set to the lowest possible and low and behold! The game runs fine. 

 

accountCountry=USA
alternateclock=false
alternateLowTextures=true
ambientenvironmentmap=false
aolight=false
architecturePreference=2
autojoinchannel=true
camerafollow=true
camerasmartpan=false
chatpositionx=0.000000
chatpositiony=0.000000
cheapquadselection=true
creepnormalmap=false
creepQuality=0
creepselfshadow=false
creeptrans=false
creepUseGroundNormalTexture=false
cursorconfinemode=1
deff=false
deffspec=false
deffspecpow=false
depthDisp=false
displaymode=0
displayunitstatus=Damaged
dof=false
dragScrollMode=GripWorld
dragscrollspeed=28
extrapostprocessbuffer=false
fogvolume=false
foliagedensity=0.000000
foliagequality=0
frameratecap=60
frameratecapGlue=30
gamma=1.253306
globalhdr=false
glossmaps=false
GraphicsApi=Direct3D11
GraphicsOptionEffectsDetail=0
GraphicsOptionLightingQuality=0
GraphicsOptionModelQuality=0
GraphicsOptionMovies=0
GraphicsOptionOverallQualityVer7[21]=5
GraphicsOptionPhysicsQuality=0
GraphicsOptionPortraits=1
GraphicsOptionPostProcessing=0
GraphicsOptionShaderDetail=0
GraphicsOptionSSAO=0
GraphicsOptionTerrainQuality=0
GraphicsOptionTextureQuality[2]=0
halo=false
height=1080
highqualityframeblur=false
highqualityhaloblur=false
highqualityhaloblurgame=false
hotkeyprofile=0_Default
keyboardscrollspeed=31
lastDeviceId=39028
lastReplaySaveMode=0
lightingLevel=1
lightmap=true
lightmapcastshadows=false
linearDepth=false
localao=false
localeidassets=enUS
localeiddata=enUS
localeidinstall=enUS
localhdr=false
localight=false
localShadows=false
lowqualitymodels=true
lowQualityMovies=true
mastervolume=1.000000
mousescrollspeed=32
MoviesSeen[1]=1
music=true
MusicContinuous=false
MusicHeard=1
musicvolume=1.000000
normalmap=false
normalzieHalfVector=false
OptionRevision=5
OptionRevisionAccount=0
parallax=false
particlelod=0
particleobjects=0.000000
particleterrain=0.000000
physicsClothEnabled=false
physicsdensity=0
physicsMaxComplexRagdolls=0
physicsRagdollsEnabled=false
pixellight=false
portraits3d=false
preBlendedCreep=true
PreferredGameSite=
profanityfilter=true
reverb=false
ribbonlod=0
shadowmapsize=512
shadows=false
simplifiedCloaking=true
simplifiedShaders=true
soft=false
softshadows=false
sound=true
soundambience=true
soundambiencevolume=1.000000
SoundAutoDetectCPUCoreCount=4
soundchannels=32
soundeffects=true
soundeffectsvolume=1.000000
sounderrors=true
soundheadphonemode=false
soundoutput=Speakers (Conexant SmartAudio HD)
SoundQuality=0
soundready=true
soundreadyvolume=1.000000
SoundResampler=NOINTERP
soundresponses=true
SoundSampleRate=22050
soundui=true
sounduivolume=1.000000
soundvoices=true
soundvoicesvolume=1.000000
spec=false
splatlod=0
ssparticles=false
subtitles=false
targetinfopanelpositionx=0.000000
targetinfopanelpositiony=0.000000
targettexeldensity=0.150000
terrainHeightmapBlend=false
TerrainTextureLowResCacheSize=40
TerrainTextureSize=480
texQualityLevel=0
transparentshadows=false
treadlod=0
useLowqualitymodels=true
voicechatautojointeam=true
vsync=false
watercaustics=false
waterdeptheffects=false
waterflipbook=true
waterrendertargetformat=0
waterrendertargetsize=768
watershadow=false
width=1920
windowheight=697
windowstate=1
windowwidth=991
windowx=185
windowy=0
winkeydisabled=false
 

You can delete your files and copy and paste mine but I don't recommend that. I recommend looking at what your settings are and changing them to mine if you have a potato machine to game on. These settings will automatically change your in game graphics settings [it will say custom when you check it in graphics settings] so you don't need to mess around with the in game settings for HoTs except for the following. It helps to lower the sound quality, turn off headphones mode and reverb, turn off voicelines and subtitles, turn off Vsync, and run in windowed mode, about 60% to 70% fullscreen size.  

Team Fortress 2

Lastly, my favorite fps game, TF2. This one was a bit more tricky for me to get perfect but I finally nailed it. 

Resolution: 1280x720 [I've had problems with Native Resolution on this game]

Display Mode: Run in a Window

Click Advanced Graphics Settings 

Model Detail: Low

Texture Detail: Low

Shadow Detail: Low 

Shader Detail: Low

Color Correction: Disabled

Antialiasing Mod: None

Filtering Mode: Bilinear

Wait for Vertical Sync: Disabled

Motion Blur: Disabled 

Multicore Rendering: Disabbled 

High Dynamic Range: Full [if available]

Use Bloom effect: not toggled on

That should do it for these three games. What works for me might not be as great for others. Again, this is only options for people with a super low end laptop. Mines only cost $400 so its pretty much a potato. Also, keep in mind that you must run the games in windowed mode with these settings. For Hots I have to play it on a much smaller window for it to work, which caused me to learn how to play it with a smaller interface, which thankfully is easy with the grid movement button via mouse. But its also the same for Overwatch and Team Fortress 2, you must run the games in a smaller window, maybe not a totally small screen like I do for hots, but like 70%-75% of the screen you're used to if you always play games on fullscreen. 

Another important detail is that because you're going to be gaming in windowed mode for all this, you need to go into your Mouse Settings and where it says Roll the Mouse Wheel To Scroll, set it to One Screen At A Time. If you don't do that whenever you accidentally click outside of the window of any of the games, you'll run into problems.

I was really bored today because of the election so I decided to write this. I hope this helps somebody out there who like me, isn't very technical with computers but is willing to learn and test things out. And game on a potato.

Happy gaming!