[hnick]

Valheim is very poorly optimised right now, graphics aside. I am not sure how well it works on older hardware but on my RTX2060 and corresponding CPU I get frame drops all the time and global locks when it decides to save the world state in combat or I walk towards somewhere new. I'd imagine it's worse on an older computer, it'll run but it might not be as enjoyable at sub-30-FPS.

Hardware creep inevitabily leads to optimisation decisions about how much effort to spend getting things to run well.

I do agree that PC hardware tends to last around 5 years now though unless you run the latest AAA games, and there is a wealth of older games. Just the stuff I missed since 2000 would be enough to keep me busy for at least a decade.

[belval]

i5-4XXX + R7 260X (a very bad and old card) works well at 1080p low settings. 3800X + 1080Ti gets you 58 fps at 4k.

YMMV but be sure to put the window in fullscreen, that helps with the frame drops.