For £500 you are doing a lot more than pong. I am kinda curious how far back you have to go at different price points to play the majority of games from that era. Pretty sure £500 is still doing a lot of games 10+ years old.
Retro gaming on a Pi comes in at £50 or so, depends on which one you get though as more RAM does cost more. Downside here is ARM might limit your options a bit for some things not quite so old but it probably would otherwise be powerful enough for. Box86 + wine exists but that looks too much like 2010 Linux gaming that I would rather leave in the past. Some open source games could be compiled on it too.
Pi Zero could run a few games too and that is like £15. But your choices are going to be very limited for anything beyond retro gaming. CDDA should compile and technically run, slowly. Got a pinephone which has similar specs and can do it but compiling takes about an hour and I found out the game had loading screens I wasn’t even aware of before trying to run it on specs like that.
I was restricted to my MacBook Air when I was in hospital, and that has the same specs as a 500USD Mac mini (m4, 16GB RAM). It plays 3D stuff like Valheim at 60FPS! The only issue is the more limited library compared to my Linux and Windows machines.
Mac mini starts at $499 and has gone on sale for $479.
It’s not really for gaming, but for $500, neither is the Windows box. And the laptop is a lie, even with those bezels.
But let’s be real, you can get a decent PC for way less than $500! It won’t compete with the Mac, but it may yet be better for light gaming.
Light gaming, like Pong, or Breakout. Time to rediscover the classics!
For £500 you are doing a lot more than pong. I am kinda curious how far back you have to go at different price points to play the majority of games from that era. Pretty sure £500 is still doing a lot of games 10+ years old.
Retro gaming on a Pi comes in at £50 or so, depends on which one you get though as more RAM does cost more. Downside here is ARM might limit your options a bit for some things not quite so old but it probably would otherwise be powerful enough for. Box86 + wine exists but that looks too much like 2010 Linux gaming that I would rather leave in the past. Some open source games could be compiled on it too.
Pi Zero could run a few games too and that is like £15. But your choices are going to be very limited for anything beyond retro gaming. CDDA should compile and technically run, slowly. Got a pinephone which has similar specs and can do it but compiling takes about an hour and I found out the game had loading screens I wasn’t even aware of before trying to run it on specs like that.
I was restricted to my MacBook Air when I was in hospital, and that has the same specs as a 500USD Mac mini (m4, 16GB RAM). It plays 3D stuff like Valheim at 60FPS! The only issue is the more limited library compared to my Linux and Windows machines.
Mame and pre-2001 gaming FTW!
Yeah, what you had for 1500$ ten years ago you can for 300$ today