Hi all - I'm a total newb when it comes to knowing what's up with graphics cards etc. I have a laptop PC from 2010 that has a Graphics Device Intel(R) Graphics Media Accelerator HD on board. I have played The Sims 2, The Sims 3, Age of Empires III, etc on this machine in the past, no issues.

Just learned that my graphics card isn't up to running Firewatch the hard way, however. May get a new graphics card in the future, but until then I want to enjoy some other games on GOG.

I'm looking at Terraria but it doesn't look like I have enough memory on my graphics card, sadly (32 MB available, Terraria says it needs 128 MB dedicated memory).

Hotline Miami, which I've wanted to try for a while, only says it needs "3D graphics card compatible with DirectX 9.0c", which I should be able to handle, right?? I've got DirectX 11.0

Help me, I'm clueless. It's been too many years since I've been able to play games and now I'm way behind. Am I going to be able to run anything??

I say it short: You are screwed ;)

Why? Even if your onboard GPU (short for graphical processing unit) would support newer games, the devs might have excluded onboard GPU from the list of supported devices.
So you have no indication at ALL, if a game would run on your PC.

The ONLY way to be safe is getting a "external" GPU-card, as you indicated yourself.
EDIT: the only way to be sure would be testing every single game

Well for a start, you need to learn about computer specs. It isn't hard, and it is easy to do. Sounds like your laptop needs to be retired from gaming.

I was afraid of that. I can still run old hard copies of things, I guess (disc install etc). I was hoping to resurrect the stupid thing since it's just old junk parts otherwise but is in decent shape aside from being outdated.

I would ask on the game specific forum first (in fact I just did on the forum for Mother Russia Bleeds).

If you get no answer, you take a risk or you buy no game. I'd say it's advisable to play the game before you buy it.

That is what I have been gathering, that there's no way for me to know unless I just blindly buy and try. I may take a chance with Hotline Miami. I think my machine should be able to deal with it... Fingers crossed. Was really excited to have discovered GOG, now am dismayed that I may not get to enjoy it after all.

Sometimes you can be lucky and find a real graphic-card for older laptops somewhere for a small amount of money.
And even GOG would not know 100% sure if a game supports ONLY real cards or onboard. Out of own experience, you have to go with not supported by default. Really sad. It was a bit better with the newer version of the onboard GPU. But 2010 to old again.
And I think that your case would be covered under money back policy ;)

EDIT, changed PC to laptop.....

Hi! green_carbon; played HM for several days with an intel hd 5000 (or something close to that) with zero issues.
You should have no issues with Terraria whatsoever. Try it and, if it doesn't work, you can ask for a refund! :)

Thanks, that's encouraging!

On the Games page, you have the option to filter by original release date. Nearly every game in the "Pre-2000" and "2000-2004" sections should work. A fair number of the 2005-2009 games may work. Until you can get a newer machine, there are still a good number of classic gaming gems lurking there, a lot of which are on sale dirt cheap at the moment.

The problem is that devs can filter out onboard GPU with more or less one line of code. A real GPU not, so long it does support the directX version required.

EDIT: Wanted to emphasize this part (blush)

Can you elaborate?

If you check under the properties of your graphic card, NOT your graphic card driver software but the Windows one.
You have a window with properties of your GPU:
overall (?), driver, details, reports (?), resources

And one of the fields in details, IIRC PCI-devicetyp/Klassen-GUID (sorry German version), or another one can be used to identify them. There are programs around to get around this problems. No, I don't have links anymore as this is already older that I had to use those ;)

And finding information about this IS really hard as the devs do not want to have this information being broadly public.
If you do enter the precise name of those fields for most you do get info back, but I have not found any overview when I needed a few years back.

But can you actually name examples of games that would do such a thing? Because I have never seen one.