Netbooks: 100 Games Tested and Rated

At the moment, more or less the only people who try to enjoy video games on a netbook are dedicated fans who need to get a fix wherever they are.  The hardware just isn't designed for demanding games, and Intel's integrated graphics chipsets aren't enough to power today's 3D titles.  That hasn't stopped our friends at Gamingbolt.com from seeing what games they could run on which machine.  They tired a hundred different games to see how they got on!

Although the ION chipset is making progress and can now offer better performance than it used to, lots of machines still use Intel chipsets.  The MSI Wind, for instance, is one example, which has an Intel Atom N270 processor, 1 GB of RAM and Intel GMA 950 graphics.

On the list of titles reviewed by Gamingbolt, famous games like Counter Strike Source, Left 4 Dead, GTA, The Sims 3 and Warcraft 3 all make an appearance, along with plenty of others.  Their tests confirmed our own findings: lots of games are simply unplayable, but there are still a few exciting options.  And of course, just because a game is old doesn't mean that it's less fun to play.

If you are after a netbook that you can play games on, we suggest the Asus Eee PC 1201N, with the famous NVIDIA ION chipset and a dual-core Atom processor.  The ASRock G22 has a similar spec, but also includes a Blu-ray player.  More traditional (but also less expensive) are two other ION notebooks: the Samsung N510 and Compaq Mini 311c.  With a single-core processor, though, their gaming performance is limited for plenty of titles.


> Product Survey: Netbooks
> Product Survey: Laptops

www.digitalversus.com/laptops-38-netbooks-article-934.html> Buyer's Guide: Laptops


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