The best Netbook for gaming.

Wasn't there a netbook in Japan that had dual Atom and ion?

And have you guys seen the rumored upcoming EEE PC's? There will be a 11-inch ion netbook in Q4 with 11-hour battery and switch between graphics, for $500

 

OCZ was supposed to come out with an ION in their Neutrino barebones netbook but it's not up for sale yet. It's a rebrand of a Quantex Microsystems netbook that uses a single-core nettop Atom 230.

 

What? Where? That sounds PERFECT! Only if this Eee has a better keyboard than the others. I hated the keyboard of the 900 and 1000. It was almost perfect on the N10J.

 

Check out this link. Unfortunately, still no dual core though. But great form factor for sure. and better resolution.

 

Thanks for the link, but all I can find there is an ION 12" netbook (which already exists elsewhere).
I'd love to get my hands on a 10" or 11" ION + N280/Z530 (or Z540... am I dreaming?).

Also what's the deal with the Z520 in that "Elite" model? Seriously? Why not a Z530?

 

Possible but I doubt it:

Couple of things that go against GMA 500 theory:

1. Pinetrail has a seperate, optinal Broadcom HD decode chip
http://www.mydigitallife.info/2009/...phics-chip-for-its-pine-trail-atom-processor/

2. Pineview TDP is 6.5W: Considering Z series Atom uses 2W and US15W chipset uses 2.2W, 6.5W indicates higher TDP, likely a GMA 950 based part

3. The 200MHz GPU core on Pineview is pointed out to be higher performance than current GMA 950 with 133MHz core, but that won't be true with GMA 500. Current GMA 500 on US15W is clocked at 200MHz already and most apps perform less than 50% of the performance

http://www.cpu3d.com/news/7093-1/intel-to-launch-pineview-cpu-for-netbooks-in-2h09/story.html

4. Atom CPUs also use the modular approach which is already used in desktops with Lynnfield/Bloomfield. Moorestown will use GMA 500 derivative for lower power and Atom will use integrated GMA 950.

 

@IntelUser

Thanks for this deductive reasoning
I was suspecting gma950, too.

 

Hi,

If also my kind information is Baldur's Gate, Half-Life & Starcraft is also a
best netbook for gaming.
you just try it i hope u really enjoy.......

 

Any netbook with an expressport. Use hwtools' PE4L to connect a HD4670 and can game away far better than any GMA950/GMA500, X1270, or other basic netbook gpu designed for low power consumption.

Caveat is the gaming is restricted to where you have an external LCD/TV + power supply.

 

Or how about the Acer Ferrari One with its XGP?

 

The CPU is then a huge limiting factor.

Any new news on dual-core netbooks?

 

Not happening anytime soon since culv machines which are a step up from netbooks are hot items right now. Maybe in 2011 when quad core replaces dual cores in notebooks as mainstream.

 

I'm not sure if it was mentioned, but Gateway's LT3103u looks intriguing to me. Athlon 64 1.2Ghz and Radeon x1270 sounds halfway decent to me, for $380! While the N10 always looked appealing to me, the $700 pricetage made it pretty ridiculous at the same time.

 

Hmmm, good find! +1!

I didn't notice that before. CPU even though at 1.2GHz is on par with N270:
http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu_lookup.php?cpu=AMD+Athlon+L110

Good info on performance here:
http://www.pcmag.com/image_popup/0,1871,iid=242344,00.asp

And GPU blows away GMA950 and is even better than X3100. Granted, not nearly as powerful as the 9300m GS in the N10J, but the Atom couldn't really feed the 9300m GS, only the memory overclocked made a difference.

Plus a 1366x768 screen. No more of that 1024x600 crap and trying to find a compatability setting to get things to run.

Just curious how well the AMD handles flash video, hopefully better than the Atom. Also, it only has Wi-Fi G. Not a show stopper but now that I'm spoiled by N.

Not a bad combination especially for $380. I may have to consider this one as my new netbook.

 

That actually seems pretty decent. Especially when you're considering the price tag. The laptop is also very good-looking. Nice find sir!

 

EEE 1201N w/ Nvidia Ion and Atom N270

Intel atom 1.6GHz N270
Nvidia Ion
250GB HDD
2GB DDR2 Ram
Windows 7 Home Premium
11 Hour Battery

 

I'm just so tired of the N270 and GMA 950. It was a good start but it's gotta change. We need something slightly more powerful for the CPU at least to manage Flash, and more powerful and up to date for the GPU. Maybe make the GPU handle the Flash somehow.

I'm liking that Gateway LT3103u more and more. For $380 you get a larger screen with a usable resolution, a better GPU, a CPU that is apparently better general performance, larger hard drive than normal (250GB vs 160GB) and decent battery life.

 

They wont do that yet. For now theyll just say, get a CULV based laptop.

 

Coming next year, the 1.66GHz N450 and 1.86GHz N470. Both have 667MHz FSB's, have a GMA 500 gpu on the die, and are 64-bit.

 

OK - Have emulated a netbook's CPU/RAM performance using a expressport/mini-pci-e to pci-e adapter to get an idea of the performance a netbook, eg: Lenovo S10e, with an expressport would give using an external HD4670 video card and a PE4L. See DIY ViDock - My experiences so far if interested. 3dmark06 of 3169 and Resident Evil 5 1280x800 benchmark at 19.6FPS using an atom n270. An SU3500 performing noticably better so worth the stretch for a Acer AS1410 if you can.

 

Hmmm, that Acer does look quite good too. Tough decisions. I think the $60 is more than worth it though.

 

Difference between Ion and Ion LE is not much, besides Directx 10 support.

 

Will this system play flash video and the old school games? It is 450...
Thanks!

COLOR Obsidian Black edit
PROCESSOR Intel® Celeron™ 723 (1.2GHz/800MHz FSB/1MB cache) edit
OPERATING SYSTEM Genuine Windows Vista® Home Premium Edition SP1 edit
WARRANTY AND SERVICE 1Yr Ltd Warranty and Mail-In Service edit
My Accessories
ALSO INCLUDED WITH YOUR SYSTEM
PROCESSOR Inspiron 11z
OFFICE SOFTWARE Microsoft Works 9 DOES NOT INCLUDE MS WORD
SECURITY SOFTWARE McAfee SecurityCenter, 30-Day Trial
DISPLAY 11.6" High Definition WLED Display (1366x768)
MEMORY 2GB,DDR2,800MHZ,1 DIMM
HARD DRIVE 250GB SATA Hard Drive (5400RPM)
VIDEO CARD Intel® GS45 Integrated Graphics,WWAN
BATTERY OPTIONS 28WHr Lithium-Ion Battery (3-cell)
WIRELESS CARDS Dell 1397 WLAN 802.11a/b/g – Half mini-Card
INTEGRATED WEBCAM Integrated 1.3M Pixel Webcam

 

11z's Celeron and 3-cell are poor value. Acer 1410 a better performance offering at same pricepoint:

11.6" US$440 1410T black SU3500-1.4 2GB 250GB GM45 1366x768 VHP 1.4/6cell

 

Smartbooks are almost here

 

How's the Tegra's 3D capabilities though? I guess no one really knows yet, but what are the speculations?

 

Tegra official page and Nvidia working with Google on Chrome

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Ion 2 coming

 

Yup. Looking forward to it. Just hoping there will be a reasonable CPU paired up with one in a netbook.

 

Goddamit.

Mates, I have to say that I am getting so fed up with waiting. I should have gotten a N10 like two years ago. Instead for all this time, I have been waiting for Ion for like two years now. This thing has been so delayed to market. And now.. even before they release it in a netbook(nettops doesn't count) they are planning on making the sequel to appear in retail within 6 months.. sigh.

I understand that Intel are making things difficult for Nvidia, and Nvidia are becoming desperate after capturing other markets because supposedly, the GPU is going to die, and instead GPU and CPU will be one. Maybe Intel should just buy Nvidia, and then lets just go back to ATI/AMD versus Intel/Nvidia, to keep the market afloat.


I heard that the next generation of Atom processors might not be compatible with Ion... Maybe on purpose?

Could this mean that Ion quality graphics is merely a phase, and once Intel have screwed Nvidia enough in the , and Ion will be useless in Atom 2, all netbooks who want to use Atom 2 will be forced to use the crappy Intel graphics?


A damn joke. I don't know where the definition of netbook begins and ends. All I know is that I love the 9''-11'' Footprint, and that I like to have a sub 1000 Dollars laptop. The tendency for me is that if I have something that is very expenssive I tend not to use it, because I am constantly worried that I am going to break it.

Meaning that I am much more darring with a 500 Dollars Netbook that was build to be used, a ton. You don't care that much if it falls on the floor, compared to a 3000-4000 Dollars ultraportable from Sony, Apple or something.

I want gaming capabilities. I want to do image editing and all that intense stuff. I wanna carry it around all day. The display is small, but these days there are flatscreen monitors and TVs that can be hooked up to anything. Walk around with a little powerful monster and hook it up at work, at home, in the office, at your parents, at your friends or wherever..


The 6+ hour battery life is another big thing. Perhaps having a portable gaming device like a DS or a PSP would be better in the short term, but if you love PC gaming on the go.. then why the hell not?


With stuff like Steam, D2D, MMORPGs and so on you dont need optical drives anymore. gaming is going online and it's going digital distribution... with indie games getting bigger and more and more people becoming exposed to pc gaming through stuff like facebook, indie MMOs from Asia and so on, the netbook is perfect... its the perfect LAN partner.


We just need some 2,5 GHz atom processors and 4 Gigs of Ram devices with a bit more humpf than a 9400.. perhaps with dedicated GPU Ram. Then we are set. it will take some time if we need to keep the low heat, low battery usage and low weight.. but hopefully we will get there, for these small 10-11 devices.

Intel should STFU and reconcile with themselfs about what the hell the consumer wants. It's incompetence on their part to ignore their weak spots like GPU usage...

 

I agree. There's been so many netbook iterations it's disgusting. All the netbooks are the same now. Really no difference, either 10" or 11", and it basically comes down to the keyboard.

I ended up getting the Acer Aspire AS1410 because the N10J was still too small and the Atom just didn't have enough "oomph" for most things, and the stupid 1024x600 resolution just made things difficult. The Core 2 Solo 1.4GHz at least has some balls, albeit the 4500MHD is a bit anemic but is a good matchup to the Core 2 Solo, and the 1366x768 is at least a real resolution.

IMHO at this point in time, your best bet is to go with a CULV sub compact notebook like this one. Cost me $350 - $50MIR. I did go from 2GB to 4GB but that only cost me $30.

Unlike the N10J that costs $600-$700.

I really think that "netbooks" will disappear here very soon as we get tons of capable notebooks with a 10" or 11" profile for under $400.

 

So htwingnut, you think that Netbook will die with Atom?

 

People will keep calling CULV and Neo machines netbooks so the name won't die....nor will the Atom CPU die since it still has a role it is capable of filling in the HTPC-nettop and MID market.

 

I think the term netbook is here to stay unfortunately. But there's no real definition of it anyways. Kind of like laptop and notebook PC. There's a technical difference but there's also always a debate over what those details are.

I'd call my Acer a netbook but it's really a notebook because it has a full size screen and Core 2 Solo CPU. But it cost very litle compared to any other 11" notebook PC.

 

EEEpc.it

The N330 is just two N230's stuck together, and coming in January is the Pinetrail D510 dual core.

 

Is this netbook coming to the US?

 

Yes. Look for it around October 22nd.

 

Dual core Pineview sounds cool

 

The dual core Pineview so far is only in nettops, unless Asus updates this with it. And the D510 uses 13W, while the Southbridge uses 2W for a total of 15W, compared to 33W for the N330+Northbridge+Southbridge. Link

 

Well not sure if this thing even counts as a netbook, but it meets the form factor for one. Seems pretty powerful for a little netbook and the price seems pretty nice to.
http://asia.cnet.com/reviews/notebooks/0,39050488,45061169p,00.htm
http://www.netbookreviews.net/acer/ferrari-one/
http://www.notebooks.com/2009/09/14/acer-ferrari-one-netbook-on-video/
http://www.fudzilla.com/content/view/15691/1/
http://www.fudzilla.com/content/view/15736/1/

 

Would be foolish to buy an 330 Atom powered 12" netbook over a CULV Duo just for the 9400M chipset. Worse performance, and worse battery life for what will probably be the same pricetag.

QMI has a similar ION set up with an 230 that OCZ (along with several other companies) rebrands as the 10" Neutrino barebones and I wouldn't touch that either.

http://www.pcper.com/comments.php?nid=7244

 

Looks nice. Except the HD 3200 doesn't seem to be that much better than the 4500MHD. Nice to have a dual core though, although 1.2GHz, not sure how that performs in relation to a Core 2 Solo.

If they offer black I'd probably bite (and sell my existing Acer netbook). I guess I'll look for actual pricing and benchmarks in a few weeks.

The HD 4670 add-on for supposed $199 seems sweet too. Although, that's getting over $700 or more, you might be better off going with a 13" notebook with a faster CPU and GPU plus an optical drive for $1000 or so.

 

http://www.fudzilla.com/content/view/15984/1/

The same article is proving that the GPU in Pineview is NOT GMA500 based, but a souped up GMA950 variant, not even a GMA X3000 based one, partly since the die and power consumption will be too large. It is proving my theory that the Moorestown platform and the Pinetrail platform uses seperate GPUs, even though they are both integrated with the CPU.

GMA 3150=Enhanced GMA 3100, which itself is a modification of a GMA950.

It's Intel's best effort yet, but 4500MHD is far behind HD3200 in real games. Even more, the 4500MHD's being used alongside ULV CPUs use a significantly downclocked version, and performs more like the non-ULV versions of the X3100.

 

^^ Okay, I already saw that article. Before it appeared yesterday, everyone believed that Pinetrail graphics would be based on the GMA 500, but now we know its not true.

 

I only hope that Acer decides to offer this Ferrari netbook/notebook (whatever) without the logo and in black or dark blue. HDMI would also be preferable in lieu of the XGP port. But at $500 (hopefully less with possible coupons) it's still a great deal and a great gaming netbook option.

My only question is whether or not it will run Battlefield 2!?

 

How do you figure that? If you are going to game, you won't be doing it on anything with an Intel graphics chip, and the title of the thread is "Netbook for gaming."

Acer Ferrari One looks like the one to watch though. Neo + HD3200 will be sweet. Dual core Atom with 9400M looks pretty sweet to me, too.

Don't forget, too, that the games you can play on any Intel graphics chip are limited because the driver support is anemic. Half the time you can't even get games to load, even if theoretically they graphics chip could play it.

Do yourself a favor and at least get a graphics chip made by ATI or NVidia. Just spare yourself the pain.

 

Yes, I did not believe they would offer a GMA500 variant when the performance is that much lower and call the 200MHz clock speed an "enhancement" as some presentations showed. It also did not make sense Moorestown didn't have any issue running 720p, while Pinetrail did with Intel wanting to offer a optional Broadcom HD chip.

Plus its kinda cool that the integrated graphics on both Lincroft and Pineview is on the CPU die not the MCM while using fundamentally different graphics architecture.

 

I'd probably consider the HP dv2z the best "netbook" so far since it's configurable with the Turion Neo dual core CPU and Radeon 3410 GPU with 512 MB of VRAM (GDDR2?). It's about $700 for that configuration, and it's a nice machine with some good specs to boot.

 

But aint the problem with that, the CPU is horrid and the graphics eating away at the already poor battery life. I heard this new dv2 was supposed to be a big fail!?

 

hmmm....


Acer Aspire Timeline 1810TZ Subnotebook - Intel Pentium Dual Core SU4100 1.3 GHz , and 4500MHD with 2 gigs of ram. not bad...
according to notebookcheck, 4500 MHD graphics can run WoW, Sims 3 and similiar games smooth on low...


Acer Ferrari One 200 - Athlon X2 L310 AMD 1.2 GHz and ATI Radeon HD 3200.
I wonder if this CPU is worse than the one in the Timeline 1810TZ? The 3200 HD scores double the performance in 3D Mark 06(about 1500 vs 700)


tough choice...

i hate the red color on the ferrarri and the lack of HDMI pisses me of the no end, but damn, I am close to that ferrari. I dont care about ferrari or acer at all, but the specs look good...


spec wise, versus Samsung N510..
Intel Atom N270 1.6 GHz
NVIDIA GeForce 9400M (G)


All are 11'' with nice resolution( 1366x768 pixel )...


Now it's getting difficult. I wanna see some gaming tests on these.

Why dont they put the goddam Ion on the Ferrarri or timeline or any other machines? why only atom netbooks?