How to know if a game is running on my pc 【step by step】 ⭐️

How do I know if a game is running on my PC? The first thing you have to know is that the PC is, unlike consoles, an open platform; This means that they are not tied to generations and to specific hardware, two of their greatest assets; But it also means that we must take other things into account if the hardware we use starts to turn years old.

When the time comes when our most anticipated video games don't run on our computer, it's time to change the pieces, or create a new PC Gaming configuration; but not to rush, today we will talk about the previous step to a change of components to play; We will talk about how to know if a game is running on my PC.

Index of contents

Know your team

It is essential that, to know if a game runs or not on your PC, you know what its specifications are. Our operating systems provide us with certain information about the hardware we use through diagnostic applications, or system information; But if you really have no idea what your hardware is, or how to make use of these tools, you can turn to third-party applications that do it for you.

Speccy identifies most of your hardware, although it is not foolproof.

One of the most famous hardware identification and diagnostic applications for our system is Speccy; application to which we dedicate its own Speccy entry on the web. This small program provides interesting data such as names, models, series and even temperatures; its use is recommended for the most lost in the field.

But this information by itself does not help us much; To find out if our hardware can run games, we need information about those games. We are talking about the system requirements, the information provided by the developers to know if our hardware is up to scratch.

System requirements

The system requirements, when they are intended for video games, are usually divided into two sections: the recommended and minimum requirements; both sides of the same coin, the one that determines the condition of our team.

These are the recommended requirements of Red Dead Redemption 2 on PC

The recommended requirements make up what developers consider to be the hardware from which they consider the gaming experience excellent; if our hardware falls within these specifications (or exceeds them) we are in luck, we can play without any problem.

The minimum requirements are what developers consider to be the minimum (hardware) power for the game to run and run normally; They represent the bare minimum we should aim to run a game on our team, although they are often very conservative in their estimates. If our computer has similar (or higher) specifications, we should be able to play the title in question without many problems, although we will have to moderate the graphic options for an ideal experience.

The minimum requirements represent the least we should aim to run a game on our team

Developers kindly provide this type of information to sales platforms; For this reason, to know if a game will run on our computer, we only have to compare the information in our system with the minimum and recommended requirements. However, the thing can sometimes become somewhat more complex; as we will see below.

The comparisons of our hardware and its capacity

Hardware changes rapidly, and it's common for a manufacturer's entire line of components to change within two years. When developers set the minimum and recommended requirements, they do so with the hardware at the time of game launch and do not usually update the information. For this reason, there are occasions when we will not be able to make an in-depth comparison of our hardware and that established in said recommendations.

The box of an Nvidia 7800GTX, a graphic from almost 15 years ago. Image: Flickr; Yashima.

For example, in the original Crysis, the recommended requirements involved graphics such as the Nvidia 7800GTX, or the ATI X180XT; two models that we cannot easily compare with current charts. For situations such as the one presented , several solutions are proposed.

The fastest is the use of some type of database that allows us to match our hardware. We find TechPowerUp GPU Database pages a reliable source to start working on; we can put our graph and the graphs listed as recommended by the developers to check their comparison; Another feasible option is to search graphs by model and buy them with others of similar power, information that the database also includes. Other pages are also known to the community and can do this, such as UserBenchmark.

The What Can I Run page can be a simple help for most users.

Another very useful tool to know if a game is running on my PC or not, is the What Can I Run page; In it we can enter our hardware and the database will be in charge of comparing said hardware with the requirements provided.

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Third-party tools: Can I Run It

One of the most widespread pages among the PC community to determine if our hardware can run a game or not, is Can I Run it. This page makes use of a desktop application (System Requirements Lab Detection) to create a cookie with information about our hardware and buy this with its database.

The hardware identification tool for “Can I Run It” is System Requirements Lab.

If we follow the steps of the web, in a few minutes we will be able to know if a game is compatible or not with our hardware and the procedure is quite innocuous. It is up to the user to choose this way, or use the information above to estimate how to know if a game is running on your PC.

Minimum requirements don't have the last word

It should be noted that, as we have said in one of our previous paragraphs, the minimum requirements are not set in stone; in fact, they are usually quite conservative regarding the capabilities of the meanest hardware. Unfortunately, it is difficult to establish whether a game will function properly on hardware that is far from the minimum requirements.

Cyberpunk 2077 is going to be released this year and is presented as one of the benchmarks to beat for current hardware.

The ideal in such situations is to have access to some demo, or the like; as well as consulting online communities to those users who have already had to see their faces with a certain game below the minimum specifications. Some of these communities are specialized, such as LowSpecGamer, or Low End Gaming (both on Reddit); while in forums such as the one we have here, in Professional Review, although not specialized in the subject, you can find answers to many of these questions.