I am doing this thing on an older computer called “modern retro gaming”, where basically I revisit some old titles from a few years back and see what the low-end hardware of today can run. Right now, that game is Tropico 3. Released in 2009, Tropico 3 was never really a game that took much to run. Back then, all you needed was a dedicated graphics card. Not the more expensive cards to run the AAA games of that year, but just any graphics card that was not integrated into your CPU.
Fast forward to 2016, though, and I am running it on a computer with an integrated card, the HD Graphics 510, within a Pentium G4400 processor. These weren’t around back then, but it was launched for those that can’t afford the more expensive stuff that NVIDIA and AMD are marketing.
The 510 is worse off in performance than the newer HD 530 is, but it still definitely can run Tropico, just not in the highest settings. I had the resolution up at 1080p, but the settings were all basically on medium. It has to show that integrated cards still do not perform that well, considering the 510 and 530 both came out a good amount of years after the game released.
My recommendation for those on a tight budget (I built the computer specifically for work as I already had a desktop for gaming) is to search on eBay or Craigslist for used graphics cards. You can typically find some GTX 7 series cards on the cheap in very good condition. Even much older cards, like the 600 series or even GT cards, should be found for roughly $50 used. These cards, while not the newest around, will at least get you to play some of the games from 2009-2013 on much better settings than an integrated card can. Also, always be safe using Craigslist. I mostly recommend using eBay since it is still cheap and the shipping is usually low, or the Reddit group /r/hardwareswap.
Excellent post. I love these retro gaming posts, since a lot of blogs have kind of abandoned the past. Keep them up, I love hearing about what kind of games you guys are playing!