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Can netbooks play games decently?

 
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Takashi



Joined: 04 Dec 2006
PostPosted: Tue Apr 28, 2009 1:23 pm        Reply with quote
Yeah, the chipset won't play anything beyond cheap simple-looking indie and old games, and the 600 px vertical resolution doesn't help.

I ran PSU on a 800Mhz PIII and a 2001-era Geforce Ti200, and it delivered 25fps at 800x600 most of the time. My 1.6Ghz Intel 530 "regular" 15" laptop that uses the same chipset as the netbooks staggered while running Blue Burst, and hit single digits on PSU.

Acer is going to release a small desktop that has a dedicated Nvidia 3D chipset and a netbook processor, that might make it minimally capable of gaming (and by gaming I mean, a staggered, 20-ish frame version of Half Life II), and it's likely to go under 300$. Netbooks based on that structure should appear in the next months.

But at that price you can provably buy a better, if larger, Dell box or build your own via newegg.
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Last edited by Takashi on Tue Apr 28, 2009 3:27 pm; edited 1 time in total
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Takashi



Joined: 04 Dec 2006
PostPosted: Fri May 01, 2009 1:27 pm        Reply with quote
even if you want a laptop, for 400$ you can nowadays pull a cheap 15" single core Celeron M that will perform fine.
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Takashi



Joined: 04 Dec 2006
PostPosted: Fri May 01, 2009 4:32 pm        Reply with quote
Talbain wrote:
A solid-state drive can sometimes help alleviate some of the lag, but the processor is the biggest limiting factor (you might say the graphics card, but you would be wrong, since software rendering is much better than it used to be).
It's worth noting solid-state drives in netbooks are normally of pretty speed and won't give you the speed boost you're looking for. And that at best, they come equipped with a single 1Gb of memory (albeit most will let you upgrade to 2Gb).

I kinda like the Compaq one.
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Takashi



Joined: 04 Dec 2006
PostPosted: Fri May 01, 2009 7:04 pm    Post subject: Re: Can netbooks play games decently?    Reply with quote
Talbain wrote:
I say you can run PSU and SMT: Online because online games have much lower requirements in general simply because the games are made with the "wide appeal" for customers. Meaning that they have to make the game very accessible to computers (and thereby customers).
I'd like to point that PSU in particular will not run even close to well, due to the engine having no auto-framerate, meaning you'll lag horribly behind everybody.

But it will run. It has little to none CPU requirements, as in the 800Mhz example I have before.

I installed Google Earth (on linux) on my aspire and it ran miserably, but fine when I disabled Atmosphere rendering.
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Takashi



Joined: 04 Dec 2006
PostPosted: Fri May 01, 2009 10:35 pm        Reply with quote
DonMarco wrote:
Check out the second gen netbooks, with the 1.6 Ghz Atom - better battery life. Throw in a gig or two of RAM for $20 and an optical mouse and youre fucking set. Shouldn't have a problem with many PC games and even HD videos.
Atom isn't that good in performance - it's speedy compared to your VIA processor, but still much slower than this 2-year-old, 1.6Ghz single core and non-Hyperthreading (read, low-end) laptop. You can provably pull 720p with CoreAVC...

Also, the GMA video chipset on Atoms is clocked at half the speed as regular laptops. But that can now be solved, if you like your lap extra crispy.
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Takashi



Joined: 04 Dec 2006
PostPosted: Mon May 04, 2009 3:47 pm        Reply with quote
DonMarco wrote:
10 most-anticipated netbooks of 2009
I so wish they could talk Wacom into implementing a proper touchscreen instead of the resistive technology that's useless for proper drawing. Of course, Wacom has their own overpriced tat to sell so...
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