Oldest MacBook Pro still suitable for contemporary Windows10 gaming (on min settings)

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Romford, Essex, England, GB
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Mac mini Server 4,1 (2.66GHz Core2Duo CPU, 16GB RAM, 120GB SSD, 500GB HD), iPhone SE 2nd gen (128GB)
More of a hardware question really, but as it's about running Windows on a MBP this seemed to be the most appropriate board.

I'm considering buying a second-hand MacBook Pro, but don't have that much by way of a budget, so I was wondering which was the earliest model(s) that still had new enough graphics to smoothly play the latest Windows games (dual-booting through Boot Camp) on minimum graphical settings.

Just to clarify: Obviously, I don't want the machine for Windows gaming exclusively; if I did I'd just get a PC laptop, but I do want to do some gaming on occasion as well as mostly using macOS for general browsing & practical work.
 
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Blue Mountains NSW Australia
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Silver M1 iMac 512/16/8/8 macOS 11.6
Suggest say a 2013 15" MBP which has the advantage of having USB3 ports and Thunderbolt options. There are two graphics options, both with 1GB DDR5 memory (nVidia Geoforc GT 650M) and the Intel HD Graphics 4000 also with 1GB DDR5 memory which is shared with the main memory.

This model has the memory soldered to the motherboard, so nit cannot be upgraded after purchase so look for a 16GB model.
 

pigoo3

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2017 15" MBP, 16gig ram, 1TB SSD, OS 10.15
Just to clarify: Obviously, I don't want the machine for Windows gaming exclusively; if I did I'd just get a PC laptop, but I do want to do some gaming on occasion as well as mostly using macOS for general browsing & practical work.

Thanks for clarifying.:) Getting a Windows laptop would be the obvious choice if you did not want this MBP for Mac OS use.

As far as the gaming. I think that it depends on the games. The newer the game...very likely the newer the computer needed to run the game well. What you can do is compare the Windows game system requirements...and then get the oldest Apple portable computer that at least meets or exceeds the system requirements of the game.

- CPU performance between Windows computers & Apple computers are pretty similar (since the same CPU's are used in some cases). Example: 2011 game matched with a 2011 Apple computer may be similar to the performance (CPU) of a 2011 Windows computer.
- GPU performance is also VERY important. The GPU listed for the game and the GPU's used by Apple may not be the same. But there are many websites out there where you can plug in "GPU A" and GPU B" and see how they compare in performance. This can give you an idea if the GPU required for the game...and the GPU in the possible Apple computer are similar in performance.

HTH,

- Nick
 

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