The thin-and-light gaming thread

Lots of places have lots of netbook gaming threads, but now it's time for a Thin-and-light thread!

A thin and light laptop is something like the Aser Aspire 1410 qand 1810, or the MSI x340, or the Asus UL20 and UL30 series. They are NOT netbooks. They are small, light laptops that are more powerful than netbooks, but less powerful than full fledged laptops. The Alienware M11x is a thin and light, but it has a powerful dedicated graphics card, so it's got a pretty big advantage compared to the rest of the category.

There's THIS thread for the Acer timeline series, but I'd like to make a more general one.

Here's how it works:

Post games along with your thin and light model and CPU, RAM and OS (especially if you've upgraded it). Also post the resolution and settings you played it at, that way everyone gets a good idea of how well they can expect a given game to work.

Strategy

Civilization IV and Expansions MSI X340 - SU3500, 3GB, Win 7 pro - 1366x768 - high settings no AA

Galactic Civilizations II Ultimate MSI X340 - SU3500, 3GB, Win 7 pro - 1366x768 - high settings no AA

Warcraft III and expansions MSI X340 - SU3500, 3GB, Win 7 pro - 1366x768 - high settings no AA

RPG

Torchlight - MSI X340 - SU3500, 3GB, Win 7 pro - 1366x768 - high settings no AA

FPS

Counterstrike Source MSI X340 - SU3500, 3GB, Win 7 pro - 1366x768 - high settings no AA (could be some slow-down. I haven't played it much)

 

I'd have to highly recommend the Alienware M11x for this category of gaming. It's an 11.6" screen, but is the same size as a piece of paper (8.5x11), so very portable and fits in a bag nicely. I keep my notepad (still use one ha) and al my papers in the same sleeve as my M11x, works fantastic and is very easy to carry.

As for gaming, this thread has tons of great information for those interested in actual performance:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/ali...ads/462632-m11x-gaming-discussion-thread.html

But, it runs just about everything out there short of a few very recent released titles.

Price, it starts at $799 for a pretty much ready to go unit, only real upgrade would be go from 2GB to 4GB ($50) and a bigger hard drive if needed. Battery life is suprisingly good as well. Non gaming 7ish hours, gaming is 2-3.

So, there are two choices for this category listed! But, I love small protable gaming, I find myself playing much more often when I'm not tethered to a desk!

 

You're totally right about that, but the point of this thread is more to recommend and talk about game performance on thin-and-light machines people already have. Feel free to add some stats from your M11x gaming.

 

So what's a thin-and-light then for the purposes of this thread? Not sure if I'm familiar with what machines you are wanting to talk about. If this is more for maximizing performance and tweaks for the MSI or something I'll stay out

 

I added a description of the laptop type to the post. It's simply a class of laptop and sometimes information on how a given game runs on that type of laptop can be hard to find, so we can build a database here.

 

Galactic civilizations and torchlight mispelled.

I don't recommend Civ4 complete for netbooks simply because the CPU power isn't that strong to handle huge 18-civilization games on a world map, but that's my opinion.

 

18 civ maps? Are you nuts? Why do that? Any time I play with more than six the first several get demolished right away.

 

Maybe it's because I completely lack skill in the game, but most of the world 18-civ maps I play tend to last a while before civilizations start to fade off.

At any rate, cutting 18 down to 8 doesn't make things much better for the netbook models, I still believe it's too much for the CPU to handle, especially on large maps.

 

Good point, but thin and light laptops are more powerful than netbooks.

 

Missed that, but I stand by the lack of adequate CPU power.