For the everyday, off-and-on PC gamer, knowing how to match your specifications to those that are recommended for playing certain games isn’t always the easiest task. How should you know if your GTX 550 is above or below a Radeon HD 6950? Problems like this, coupled with laziness, have probably cost some of us some cash that we wish we had back while we’re running a game at 10 FPS.
PC gaming is on the rise and has been for years. More and more of us are sitting down in front of our desktops thanks to games like Minecraft and services like Steam. Digital distribution hit the PC first and is slowly beginning to phase its way into the world of consoles. Not to mention, some games are just meant to be played using PC peripherals. Playing a first-person shooter without a mouse? That’s not for me!
When you buy a Nintendo Wii, you know that every game you buy will run perfectly on the console. We can’t say the same for the PC. We all have a different beast. In this post, I want to show you guys how you can know if your PC can run a game before you even buy it.
Can You Run It?
CYRI is a web service brought to us by System Requirements Lab. It runs in the browser through an ActiveX/Java component (that is completely safe) and works on Internet Explorer, Firefox, and Chrome. It’ll work on any version of Windows: XP, 2000, 2003, Vista, 7, etc. None of your information is collected and the analysis is extremely fast and accurate.
CYRI will test your computer for both the minimum and recommended requirements, which is really a great feature. Passing or failing the analysis based on just one of those benchmarks alone could definitely mislead the user.
Aside from your grade, CYRI also shows you how you score based on individual benchmarks like your CPU, RAM, video card, and more. Another great feature that could help you and I gauge if a game is at a playable level.
CYRI is the premiere service in this field and it’s never done me wrong. They do a great job of always adding new games and keeping the specifications and requirements of current games up to date.
YouGamers Game-o-Meter
If CYRI won’t work on your system for some reason, or for any other reason that you’d like to try an alternative, give Game-o-Meter a try.
While the benchmarking isn’t as extensive as what CYRI has to offer, Game-o-Meter definitely gets the job done. Like CYRI, you’ll be prompted to install an ActiveX component in the browser.
Running this component will allow the application setup to begin downloading in the background, and it should eventually pop up.
Game-o-Meter is directly affiliated with FutureMark, so you know that the benchmarks are on point. The end result is a page like this:
Below your analysis is also a link that you can use to share your results. This is especially useful if you’re looking for tech support or something like that. Here’s my link to the results above.
Which of these two services is your favorite? Let me know in the comments!
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cool! Thanks!
Its actually better to try yourself sometimes.
In my old pc i had a 512MB NVIDIA 8400GS with Core2Duo, pretty basic, and i checked if it could run Assassin’s Creed 2. It obviously showed a big NO!
But i played that game at lowest settings without lags.. :D
But since these websites install a plugin to check, they might be more accurate, the ones i checked asked to enter specifications manually.
i always use can you run it
wow!!!!! thanks i wanted to know about many games before buying or downloading if it can be played on my pc or not.
I never heard of YouGamers till I saw this article, and haven’t used Can You Run It quite sometime. I would have to go with Can You Run it due to detail on both minimum and maximum. YouGamers has a bar of over all performance and gives you an idea as to how to place your option settings to be sure to play the game smooth as possible.
I haven’t tryed a game yet
I must say that “Can you run it” is a particulary precise tool for seeing if you can run your game smoothly
This is essential stuff for gamers casual/hardcore alike. I guess i’ll MakeUseOf it :D
I’ll be bookmarking Can You Run It, it seems like a very nice, easy to use, solution.
Yes! Finally something that can tell me whether Darksiders 2 will work on my PC or not! FTW Bro!
As a causal gamer (read: I rarely play games on my computer), these are awesome! I have a decent laptop (Sandy Bridge quad core Core i5 with 8GB of RAM and Intel HD 3000 graphics), but sites like that really help decipher what’s needed on some games.
now this makes my life easy! Thanks a lot makeuseof! :D
Thanks (:
I am using Can You Run It, but I will try the other options :D
System Requirements Lab works well on my System Thanks For info.
Great article. Are there any sites you know of that let you put in specs and get average FPS on such and such settings so you can compare hardware before you get it?
I haven’t heard of such a service or website, but it’s a great idea and would be interesting to see. Has the potential to make a lot of money, too!