The best Netbook for gaming.

Definitely a half-way decent laptop for the price.

Not sure which Asus you're referring to though. Compared with ASUS netbooks, the HP is 2" wider, 1" deeper and 1.6 lbs heavier. Asus = 11.6" x 8" x 1" @ 3.2 lbs / HP = 13.5" x 9" x 1.3" @ 4.85 lbs. Doesn't seem like much but a 17" compared to 15" is about the same difference.

Plus talking about gaming, I've used my M11x for over two hours straight and not as bad as I'd thought. No issues. Almost forgot that I was playing on the small machine. But it doesn't necessarily mean in one sitting either. Just total play time on the battery is pretty significant, also has HDMI, as do the latest Asus netbooks.

And I highly doubt you could game for 3 hours on that HP considering the advertised battery life is "up to 4 hrs 15 mins" which usually means lowest brightness, wifi at lowest power, and minimal use.

I could probably find those same specs in the HP (or better) for the same price or better than that HP in a 15". But the point is portability, compact, and battery life.

 

Doesn't the dedicated ION2 outperform the 4250 IGP, though? I so suppose the ULV CPU versus a dual-core Atom would level the field somewhat, but I don't know.

I've thought about the M11x, but the more I think about it the less I can justify it. I already have my GX660R for serious gaming, and ideally my netbook would be a quick and easy traveling machine when I'm on the road or if I have to make a quick technical support house call.

I do want some graphical oomph, hence why I picked a 1215n. I can do gaming on lowered settings and watch 1080p easily, and still have some great battery life.

 

Honestly, even at 1.6 lbs difference... the concept you could encumber any healthy human at 4.85 lbs is kinda silly.

The HP is light, plenty handy, and is laptop uncrippled...

As for 3 hours, its my brother so it was likely diablo2... no network and I seriously doubt he was stretching the GPU.

Let's be fair here... you are comparing your $900 alienware to a laptop at half the price? (almost a third when at the holiday price)

 

I wasn't really comparing, just making comment about the Asus actually. Regarding size and weight. Like I said, difference between Asus and the HP is about the difference between a 15" and 17" laptop, which most people consider a decent difference otherwise 17" would be more prevalent.

To each their own, that's why I opted for the M11x. Not nearly as tidy a package as tons of other netbooks out there, but it gets the job done, plays the games I want. Besides you can get the AW M11x R1 for $500-$600 now. I got mine for $500 with SU7300, GT335m, 4GB RAM, 500GB HDD.

But I've used those Asus netbooks and can see the appeal. They are light as a feather, small, and thin. 4.9lbs vs 3.2 lbs can make a big difference if you're carrying it around with you a lot, not to mention needing it as small as possible to fit in your hand bag, briefcase, purse, or whatever. Some people want as small and light as possible while still having the option to be able to game on occasion (like Forge stated). I doubt most people want a netbook solely FOR gaming. But a netbook that CAN game.

 

17" laptops weigh in the 9lb region and are intentionally designed with much greater cooling and airflow. Most of these laptops are really desktop replacments...

15" laptops average in the 6lb region. I think we can dispense with the 15-17" comparisons. That's more than TWICE the weight difference.

The 14" we are talking about is <5lb and the ASUS 12" is 3.2.

At a certain point the shaving of weight and size is no longer relevant...
The humans who use these computers shouldn't have a problem easily moving 5lbs as if it was a child's toy...

My overall point is of course...

Eventually you have to start wondering when the "smaller and lighter" is about fashion and not about function.

The same goes with battery power...

"Has 80 billion hours of battery life between charges, weighs .00000000001 nanograms, and is one molecule thick!"

Despite the above being useless, someone would by it and claim the weight and thickness was absolutely necessary and was perfect for them. Of course they absolutely needed the battery length as well.

 

Obviously. I think this proves the point that each user has their own needs and desires and you should buy what suits you best.

For some people a $400 netbook with an ION GPU for an occasional WoW romp or some single player skirmishes in SC2, is more than adequate, so why lug additional weight around. For others, a larger, heavier notebook with a little more CPU and GPU performance is what they need.

I personally am disappointed with the pace at which netbooks have evolved. The Atom is still prevalent for the most part, and from what I can tell doesn't afford much extra battery life over a ULV CPU. I mean look at the beast of the M11x that can get 8+ hours of useable battery life, yet many Atom based systems can't reach 6. To be honest I don't NEED 8+ hours of battery life, but I like not having to worry about plugging it in all the time.

The ION2 is a good step up, but needs to be coupled with a ULV CPU and then you'll have a nice configuration in a 12" package.

You can argue size all you want, but for me, if it's the size of a magazine or smaller, it's a good size. And if you look at smart phones or whatever you want to call them now, they constantly strive for smaller, lighter, more powerful as well. Give someone an old Blackberry and they'll go "ewww, it's so big and heavy", compared with an iPhone or Android device.

 

You counldn't even fit a 13.1" screen if you shaved away the bezels... where did you get the strange idea it could fit a 14" screen?

 

Wow what an old thread! For netbook gaming nowadays my vote goes towards the M11x and Apple Macbook Air.

 

Or if you consider Sony's insane pricetag as a business expense, the Sony Z XD

 

Alienware M11x R1 at the right price is a great option. I got one in December and played Wow all through christmas on a road trip down to Florida. It did the job better than I could have ever imagined it would.
Good luck

 

Yeah I really like the Sony Z, but the pricetag is exorbitant considering a few other options you have like the Acer 3820TG and M11x. No you don't get the 1600x900 screen or an optical drive or SSD, but for most it's not necessary, especially in such a small package. And you can buy a 120GB SSD <$200 now which is larger than what most Z's have in them.

The Macbook Air isn't much cheaper and doesn't have that powerful of a GPU (GT 320m). The new Macbook Air is surprisingly super thin though.

 

Well, I played around with an i5 1600x900 sony Z before. Safe to say, if I had the budget, I would of got it over the m11x... (since it was replacing my old m1210/n10j/DV2 - yeah, I am stupid like that) combo...



Silly me, eh?

 

Actually I strongly considered the Z once, but what really put me off was that the SSD's were proprietary and 64GB just didn't cut it for me, and wasn't about to pay their extra few hundred bucks for a 128GB version.

 

They aren't really proprietary, and users have modded them with 1.8" Intel SSD before, but that's beyond the range of netbook pricing already

 

The drives *are* proprietary, they have no casing and are double sided board in RAID 0. There are no off the shelf replacements except for what Sony offers. Having to mod a machine for something that should be off-the-shelf is a no-no imho.

 

Not really, they still use SATA, all you have to do is void some warranty....


well... then I remembered, this is NBR, not [H] or xs, lol.


yeah, you're right Well, the newest, Z13, has a HDD option, so it can now accept normal SSD

 

Good to see they're using normal hardware now.

 

Yeah, took them long enough, lol.

ONTOPIC: m11xR1, though the n12xx series from ASUS draws close in pricing (500usd), it's still significantly behind in GPU and CPU power. Both use an Intel/nVidia GPU combo, iirc.

 

Yeah you can get a refurb M11xR1 for about $600. Asus 12XXn usually runs about $450-$500, but I'd say roughly 60% the gaming power of the M11x.

 

Even less once the R1 is OC'd

BTW, did the latest bios A05 resolve the OC+Speedstep issue? (where it would run OC'd, even at idle, instead of dropping the multi down).

 

I'd be so happy if Asus tossed out a ULV/ION2/Optimus 12-incher. That would rock.

ION2 is pretty powerful considering its in a netbook, but those Atoms seriously do choke it up.

But hey, nothing's perfect.

 

Yeah, I don't get it. Intel should drop the Atom altogether and continue to crank out SU7300's or variant clocked at 2.0GHz or something. CULV + ION2 = WIN!

 

I research a little and the 1215t supports only 2gb of max memory and the 1215n go for 4gb max (i already have 2gb here) so this and with the atom dual core makes the 1215n the better choice

What do u think?

 

I concur.

10chars

 

If you're going to be doing any 3D gaming then choose the 1215n, period. If only for web surfing, etc, 2GB is more than adequate.

The 1215n is IMHO, the best true netbook capable of gaming out there.

 

Any netbook and OnLive.

Watch this video of Assassin's Creed being played on a 10" Eee PC as proof:

YouTube - Assassin's Creed 2 Runing on a Netbook (Onlive)

 

Zacate > ION2.

I'd like to see an E-350 with an HD6400M in Hybrid Crossfire.

 

Can't wait for AMD Fusion.. Atom is so outdated

Btw 1215T support can use all 4GB, while 1215N you can only see 2.7GB on windows 7 64bit (cpu and bios limitation)

and ION2 is just rename version of GT218 ak G210/G310.

 

Yeah, I don't know why people said otherwise . The 1215n has an issue with memory remapping, since it's still the old 945 chipset underneath...

 

I read that 1215t only supports 2gb max, anyway here in my country es really hard and expensive get so-dimm 4gb

I dont know of the problem of 1215n and 2.7gb, still i can install 2+1gb and get a bump of memory...

Im kinda lost now jeje, 1215t or 1215n ??

 

1215N, it's faster. And the V100 series from AMD are as junk as the older Athlon Neo X1 series. K8 based crud, they are. (In my experience with the HP DV2). No amount of GPU firepower will save it, and the ION is a bit faster than the old 40SP 42xx in the 1215T. CPU is, too (surprisingly...)

 

Im searching for options and i found for the same price of the 1215n this:

HP 425 XD057LA

CPU AMD Athlon II Dual-Core P320 (2,1 GHz, 1 MB L2 de caché)
Chipset AMD RS880M
DDR3 4 GB 1066 MHz
SATA 320 GB
DVD+/-RW SuperMulti with LightScribe
LCD LED HD BrightView de 14" (1366 x 768)
ATI Mobility Radeon™ HD 4200

weight 2.3kg, this dont bother me, i dont decide cause of the size, i dont know what to do jajaja

 

Well... that should do a bit better, by simple virtue of K10.5 (P320) roflstomping the best Atom can dish out.

 

The Nile platform pretty much fixed the problem of first gen Neo on heat, battery life and performance. When running applications that use only single thread (like all of the older application/games) it is much faster and responsive than ATOM ever will.

PCMark Vantage (from notebookcheck)
Asus Eee PC 1215T
K125, Radeon HD 4250
1760
Asus Eee PC 1215N
D525, ION 2
1794

So an Atom Dual Core @ 1.8Ghz only matches up to Neo II Single Core, that tell you much about Atom power..

Btw I used to have atom and neo netbooks.. but sold them waiting for FUSION.

 

Yeah, I had a DV2 and still have a n10j. DV2 was too stupidly hot, though.

I am eagarly awaiting a x120e from Lenovo - starting at 400usd, probably 450 for the dual core variant... and it should also crush-roll through existing competition with ease, especially with the bigger, better GPU

 

Toshiba NB550D benchmarks (AMD C-50 @ 1.0Ghz)
AMD Fusion APU review | Benchmarks | Hardware.Info Nederland

Definitely much better GPU than Nile platform, cpu wise some win/loss against N550 but totally pwning N450.

Now I wonder how would Zacate with higher clock speed on GPU and CPU would perform.

 

The best laptop for gaming is on my sig

 

The title said netbook not notebook, so better luck next time

 

What I'm realllly after is an ultra-portable that can handle some light gaming, only cover a 10.1's footprint, and sport a better than 1024x600 resolution while doing so - this new Lenovo might just be close enough. Thanks for the heads up guys!! My brain's been addled by sleep deprivation & a sea of mobile chipsets though.. how much video memory will it borrow/will the 6310 really crush-roll the competition in the GPU department? It seems every otherwise worthy "netbook" I've seen with shared video, doesn't get enough of it to better the ION 2.

Seriously dude, quit bragging about your beast of a laptop. You were already reminded of the thread topic pages ago - ultraportables/netbooks. As an owner of a decent 17" gamer I know they're not fun to tote around. (tis the reason I'm here) I expect I'll end up selling mine in favor of a decent 15" of sorts, for those extended travels. It's just too cumbersome. Won't safely fit on my desk/next to my desktop either for multi-boxing.

 

You can check my thread for some game benchmarks involving Fusion APU Brazos

http://forum.notebookreview.com/gam...cpu-6250-gpu-performance-acer-522-review.html

 

The best netbooks for gaming are pretty much AMD fusion netbooks and the 11.6' M11X (if you want to still count that one).

/close thread