Gamer plays Half Life 2 on Intel Compute Stick on absolute lowest settings

A YouTuber by the name of LowSpecGamer modified Half Life 2 to run on an Intel Compute Stick. However, he went a little further and researched what the lowest possible settings for the game from 2004 are.

To get the game running on the device with an Atom CPU of 1.83Ghz, 2GB RAM and Intel HD Graphics, it was really only necessary to set the game on the lowest settings. The minimum system requirements of Half Life 2 require a processor with 1.7GHz and 512MB RAM, in addition to, for example, an ATI Radeon 9500. In this way it was possible to achieve between 40 and 60fps at 720p.

Because this wasn’t low enough, LowSpecGamer went looking for the game’s very lowest settings. He has put his configuration file online so that others can enjoy the very lowest settings. Some highlights of his changes include disabling all decals, forcing DirectX 7, as well as disabling the characters’ teeth and eyes for that little bit of extra performance gain.

Disabling breakable objects also helps a bit, although it does ensure that shot boxes simply disappear. Through all these tweaks, the gamer was eventually able to hit more than 140fps, which raises the question of what kind of hardware the game is still playable on.