If you own or are looking to buy an affordable laptop that doesn’t come with a discrete graphics card, that doesn’t mean you’re stuck just playing solitaire. A laptop’s CPU can handle more than you might think all on its own, thanks to its Integrated Graphics Processing Unit (IGPU).
Intel CPUs come equipped with a range of IGPUs depending on what generation they’re from. To find out which one you have, read our 2017 integrated GPU guide. So for anyone looking to get in some game time on something like a Dell XPS 13, we made a list of games you can expect to run on high settings while keeping a playable frame rate.
Hollow Knight (2017)
A recent 2D-indie game, Hollow Knight might overtax older CPUs in the Broadwell line or earlier generations of IGPUs. The game runs in the Unity Engine, which is known for causing some issues with low-spec systems. But with Skylake and Kaby Lake iterations of Intel HD 500 or 600 series, Hollow Knight’s particle effects shouldn’t pose too much of a problem.
With a newer laptop, you should be sitting pretty with this beautiful throwback to games like Metroid and Castlevania Symphony of the Night. Some hitching when particle effects show up, when entering the water or defeating an enemy, might still occur, but the general experience should be very playable on newer CPUs.
[“Source-laptopmag”]
