Choppy Graphics on an old computer

When we took over Lithgow Tech Services I took this time to take a look at some of the old computers we had lying around in the shop. To be honest I was not expecting to have any of the old computers to be a gaming machine. But one could hope.

To be honest I have been out of the PC gaming world longer than most of you have been in it. It’s been years. So I figured that before I start working on a new computer I would try out an older one with some older games ..

Testing Ark Survival on an old system

I have been playing Ark Survival on my iPhone 14 Pro for some time Yes Yes I know it is not the same as playing on a Gaming PC, But that was my point of wanting to try it on a real computer that did not fit in my pocket.

The computer we had to test was an old custom-built unit with Corsair liquid cooling, 16 Gigs or RAM, and an Intel i7 processor. but all about 7 years old.

While this unit did not have a graphics card none of the junk cards we had lying around was going to be faster than the onboard graphics system on the motherboard. choppy graphics were expected from the start.

Stripping down the parts that were not needed and cleaning the fans.

Our window tech and I took a look at this old computer and decided that the Liquid cooling was really pointless on an old computer like this. That and liquid cooling systems can go bad over time and we had no idea how long this computer was sitting there. could have been years.

From there cleared out the dust that was blocking the system from breathing. This unit would have had overheating issues even without playing games.

Loading Steam and Good Old Games.

Knowing that this unit was never going to be able to play Starfield I decided to see what old games I had on Steam and GOG. So I downloaded both game stores onto our old rig just to see what would work.

Lo and behold Ark Survival would run on this system. Being that this game is about five years old I figured there was a chance this would play nice with the old computer rig. And I was right it would run , , , , , Sort of

Choppy Graphics

Loading up Ark I was not expecting much. Thought my hopes this old game and old computer would play nice. Sure enough, it would run. It was hard to tell from the opening scenes if the pixelization and blocky artifacts in the video was from the age of the game or the system.

The way to ell if that is the case is to take a look at the game gameplay on Youtube. Make sure that the YouTube video is full screen.

Oh it was choppy all right. This old system just had a hard time playing Ark. We changed the graphics to Low and still had performance issues.

So what are our options with an old computer?

Honestly, with an old computer like this there is only so much we can do. We would have to do the following.

• Upgrade the Processor
• Max out the RAM at 32 Gigs
• Git a much better Graphics Card
• Consider getting a new motherboard

If you were thinking that would require a whole new computer you are correct. There is not much we can do with this old computer with choppy graphics.

But Old games will still play.

Just because a computer will not play the most current games means that it is useless. You just need to have the correct expectations of what the gaming computer can do.

There is nothing wrong with the older games. So I am going through GOG to find some old but great games we can run on the computer at the shop!