Gaming on a Netbook

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[H]ard|Gawd
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Hey all, this thread started as a reply to a different thread but realized I would be derailing that post and that post may have been wrapped up in a nice little package thus requiring no further posts, but I digress.

Long story short, I've been in the market for some time for a portable computing device for travel and loafing about on the couch. Emphasis on travel so power consumption and battery life are paramount. I've more or less resolved myself to getting a higher end netbook than a lower end laptop.

One of the things I would like it to be able to do is play games. Now, I'm a realist and know I won't be playing modern games. I'd like to be able to play my modest indie games like World of Goo and Braid in addition to revisiting old classics like Starcraft, Diablo II and the plethora of Quake 3 engine shooters that I own (Jedi Knight, Soldier of Fortune II, Return to Castle Wolfenstein, etc).

What I'm curious to know is if anyone out there in [H] land has a netbook capable of running those games well. I haven't been able to find much information in the way of netbook gaming performance and don't want to be let down when I finally pick one up.

I'm also tentatively keeping an eye on the Notion Ink Adam tablet. It looks like a nice piece of hardware, but the only drawback is my current games would be rendered useless on it's Android system and I would likely need to re-buy lots of games to run on it.

Thoughts?
 
See the guy below struggling with Half Life 1 for an answer. ;) Long story short, don't expect to play much more than mid 01 games if not the Quake 3 engine. Now I'm sure some of them can play games like Q3 and Jedi Knight fine, but even then, we're talking 8x6 res and probably not much more than 30 fps.
 
Yeah, I dont game on my netbook, but installed a bunch of games to see how well they ran. Games like Warcraft 3 and RTCW (probably games of original xbox graphical power) are the limit of smooth play on my 1000H. Age of Empires 3 was a bit too much for it. RTCW ran surprisingly well on it... I wouldn't say it ran great, but with settings on medium to high it was playable.

If you want to game on a netbook, get something with nvidia or ATI graphics. Any laptop with low end intel chips just suck balls when it comes to gaming, that includes netbooks.
 
I'm looking at something with nVidia Ion specifically. Supposedly the new netbooks coming out with Optimus will have 10 hours of battery and can handle games decently well at 720p. They'll also have HDMI out so this could also be a front end for my main rig as a media center.

I'm looking at ASUS 1201PN which should release in the summer.
 
Anything with integrated graphics is going to suck for games, period.

You could get something like the Asus UL80VT. It has a CULV C2D processor and 4GB of RAM, so it's quite speedy for day to day tasks. You can switch between the Intel graphics chipset and the GeForce 210M chipset when you want to game. Don't expect to be able to play Crysis smoothly, but it handles newer games with reduced detail and those older games you mentioned just fine. Best part is you get 7-9+ hours of battery life when not using the dedicated graphics.
 
imyourzero said:
Anything with integrated graphics is going to suck for games, period.

You could get something like the Asus UL80VT. It has a CULV C2D processor and 4GB of RAM, so it's quite speedy for day to day tasks. You can switch between the Intel graphics chipset and the GeForce 210M chipset when you want to game. Don't expect to be able to play Crysis smoothly, but it handles newer games with reduced detail and those older games you mentioned just fine. Best part is you get 7-9+ hours of battery life when not using the dedicated graphics.
Click to expand...


While not incredibly true, it is a good word of wisdom. The reason though is because they usually lack dedicated memory and also the bus is usually halved. On top of this, they also lower clock speeds more than desktop counterparts. Definitely stay away from intel at least until Larrabee. :D
 
I can play Jedi Knight 2 on my EEE 1000HA. Don't expect battery life to be great during gameplay.

Diablo 2 played, but got choppy when it got busy.
 
i dont have one but i DO have a shitty laptop with which i can play

plants vs zombies
sims 1 (doubtful on netbook)
half life 2
 
The Asus N10 is probably the most powerful gaming netbook you'll find outside of the Ion Platform. I've been playing Half-Life 2 Ep2 on mine.

http://n10user.com/
http://n10.wikia.com/wiki/Games

9-26-08-cod4_n10.jpg
 
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My Eee 1001P seems pretty powerful for the older games I want to put on it. Until I upgrade to 2GB of RAM I cant tell you perfectly how well stuff runs, but with the 1GB I can play:
GTA 3 perfectly
GTA: VC pretty damn well (A little laggy at times, but pretty sure its RAM related, 1GB with Vista Ultimate is a little low on RAM right now :p),
WoW is playable (5-20FPS depending, 5ish in Dalaran, all low) and you can do five man dungeons pretty decently - Again, positive going to 2GB of RAM is going to be a massive boost, it was on a desktop. All settings are low).
LOTRO runs alright, 10-15 FPS (But I have the high res client on there right now, not sure if swapping to low client and using all low settings will be any different) - Not really playable for fighting or anything, but you could do AH and mail, bank etc in a town without much trouble.
RTCW runs great at whatever it defaulted to - med/low mix. Might be able to do more, I didnt mess with it much.

Battery life for most people doing surfing/documents seems to be 9ish hours. I havent tried yet.
Battery at moderate-heavy (gaming, installs, etc) usage is about 3.5-4 hours from what it gave me last night.
 
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I have a HP Mini netbook with ION, I travel a lot for work and mainly use it for watching movies but do some gaming.

Results have been mixed but I've found some modern FPS games actually run okay when dumbed down, including ETQW and L4D2. I actually picked up Painkiller on Steam specifically for it and it runs very well, I suspect anything from that generation would.

Also = Been playing Torchlight on it, that runs great.
 
A netbook with the ion platform will handle those games just fine. And of course there are some others that people mentioned here. You are probably talking the $500 price range.
 
I'm looking at either http://www.netbookreviews.net/asus/eee-pc-1201pn/ or http://www.netbookreviews.net/asus/1215n/ at the moment. Looks like both should release this summer but Optimus may not make it into the first wave.

Optimus for keeping up battery life looks pretty great for couch surfing while the Ion chip will let me game while traveling. I'm a bit less concerned about battery while traveling because airports and to a lesser extent train/bus stations have outlets (not to mention cars/planes/trains/etc may have travel outlets).

I don't think the screen/keyboard size will be too conducive to modern shooters, but classics should be fine. Other than that, indie/strategy/rpg games should be perfect. Funny you mention Torchlight...I'm actually considering as a go-to travel game because it never really ends and I'd only play a few times a year.
 
Well, it's not really a netbook...but you could always get an Alienware M11x. It's very portable, good battery life (when not gaming of course) and decent performance for games.
 
I looked at it but honestly $800 is way more than I'm willing to pay.

I *want* to pay $400 and I would cap at ~$600 max. The new Asus netbooks coming this summer will be perfect.
 
You can get laptops now with a lot of power to be pushing games even at 1080p if you have a high res laptop, I had a friend who bought a kitted out laptop recently and he had no issues with MW2 @ 1080p with high settings I believe.

But that doesn't go hand in hand with battery requirements you ask for. IMHO despite gaming laptops coming a long way, I still think it's a very bad tool for the job, I'd only stretch to a laptop if you absolutely need it for something like travel.
 
Games I have played on my Acer Aspire One:

Age of Empires 1, 2
Plants vs Zombies
Original Unreal Tournament
NES, SNES, Genesis Emulators

It has trouble with plants vs zombies.
 
ShuttleLuv said:
While not incredibly true, it is a good word of wisdom. The reason though is because they usually lack dedicated memory and also the bus is usually halved. On top of this, they also lower clock speeds more than desktop counterparts. Definitely stay away from intel at least until Larrabee. :D
Click to expand...

That's not really true - I have UL30VT and it can play even Half-Life 2 using intel GPU, using the GF 210 i can even run Bioshock / Stalker/ Empire TW with playable but obviously not so great framerates.

Then again I never played anything newer than Lionheart and Arcanum on my netbook when i had it ;)

Anyway given choice beetween CULV and netbook after having both CULV is absolutly ultimatly better.
 
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