Thoughts on what you'd like to see when testing a budget gaming PC

[Beach_Ball 185]

Salutations everyone! You might be surprised to see me in this far corner of the forums!

I recently purchased a cheap $200 dell computer and threw a $100 GT 1030 GPU inside (prices are in Canadian currency). My goal is to see how well or poorly Town Square runs on low end hardware, and I'd like the community's opinion on how I should proceed! I'd like to ask a few Qs below and I'll see if I can shape up a video using your input. Note that this is just a personal fun little experiment of mine, John didn't put me up to it or anything like that. I just think this would be a neat thing to do with the community.

1. What software should I use to show the PC's specs? (CPU-Z, the BIOS, Windows itself etc.)

2. If I had to choose one, should I opt for live game capture via an external capture card, or record the monitor with a tripod+camera? Shadowplay/OBS isn't an option because Shadowplay isn't supported and OBS tanks on low end hardware.

3. What software should I use to monitor FPS? (Steam's FPS monitor, MSI Afterburner, Fraps etc.)

And if you have any other general remarks about how I should test stuff out, let me know! I don't think I'll be posting benchmark graphs (as imo it's kinda weird to do that for a game your working for aha, if they floated around the net then out of context they would lack proper disclaimer transparency) but I would love to show long clips of gameplay when Town Square releases. A lot of people have been asking about minimum specs for a while, and I hope this little endeavor will help lend a hand in discovering the answer (or at the very least, help supplement the testing the dev team will do)!

Here are some pics of the PC if anyone is interested! Processor is an intel core i3-2120 and has 8GB of ram.

Case:

Internals:

The GT 1030:

 

[LightBringer 63]

I would recommend Fraps and (oddly enough) a camera to just record the screen as you play. Capture cards are just extra money for too little use if you ask me. And I have seen a good few videos taken on cameras, showing the screen. Just makes sure it is a good quality video camera though. Otherwise a capture card would be the generous way to go.