A third consideration is the thermal management, including fans and cooling pipes to dissipate the heat. The other is a discrete graphics processing unit (GPU) or graphics card. One is preferably a modern quad-core Intel Core i5 or i7 processor. There are two main elements for a good gaming machine. Why aren't Surface Pro and Surface Laptop good for gaming? Older games on Steam, game emulators, or arcade style titles like Pinball FX2 for Windows 10 (opens in new tab) are very playable as well. Where things get terrible is with Forza Horizons 3 or Star Wars Battlefront, which either won't play at all or will be so bad as not to be worth it.

Some people are fine with that, but most people consider it a severe compromise. Games like Heroes of the Storm or World of Warcraft can be played but you need to customize the graphics by dropping them to lower level settings. Sure, things will be a bit blocky, but it's not all bad. At the lowest graphics settings and 1024 x768 resolution, an average of 30 frames per second (FPS) is achievable. You could tweak the settings even more by going lower, too.Įven the favorite Rise of the Tomb Raider can drastically downscale and be playable on the Core i7 models. Playing Halo Wars 2 at 1466 x 977 with texture quality set to low and v-sync off results in a decent looking game with enjoyable frame rates.

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