Say Hello to the Gaming with Netbooks Netbook

I found it a bit hypocritical that I was telling my readers what they can and can't play on a netbook without actually owning a netbook myself. So I scoured the Internet for deals, and decided that a Cedar Trail netbook would be the best option for my low budget. I finally found the Gateway LT4004u, a fairly standard Cedar Trail netbook.

Normally this netbook would be out of my price range, but I found a killer deal at Newegg. My model is being offered for $213.98, but it's refurbished. That's no big deal, though; all that was wrong with the netbook was a few scratches on the lid.

Not only did I get a great deal on the netbook, Newegg was kind enough to include a free Targus sleeve with my purchase. In the product listing, Newegg claims the sleeve is black. It's not black. It's purple. Fortunately, the images Newegg uploaded clearly show the correct color. Note that the sleeve is refurbished as well, but I can't see any signs of use.

My case looks like this, but purple

The LT4004u houses an Atom N2600 processor and its accompanying GMA 3600 GPU. It supports 802.11b/g/n wireless networking (of course) and has a 6-cell battery. The netbook ships with 1 GB of RAM, but I plan to upgrade to 2 ASAP. Finally, the hard drive holds 250 GB of storage.

Gaming is definitely a hit-and-miss experience on the Cedar Trail platform. In my preliminary gaming tests, I found Project64, my favorite N64 emulator, to have major fluctations in framerates while emulating Super Smash Bros. Both Motocross Madness 2 and Midtown Madness exhibited slowdowns from time to time. I blame both Intel's pathetic driver support (only Windows 7 32-bit is supported, and weakly at that) and the fact that I only have 1 GB of RAM.

Some final thoughts: the screen is nice and bright, and the webcam is 'eh, ok'. The hard drive included with this model is pretty zippy, much to my appreciation. Another good thing is the low amount of bloatware; I didn't feel the immediate urge to uninstall everything I've never heard of.

On the whole, this is a peachy netbook  for productivity purposes, but gaming performance is a little underpowered. Once Intel updates its drivers, my opinion may change.



A "Come on, Intel!" Moment

It seems like the more I research the N2600 and its accompanying GPU, the GMA 3600, the less powerful they become. See, the GMA 3600 has a core clock of 400 MHz, which is great compared to previous generations. Problem is, that only applies to the shader and texture mapping units of the GPU. The PowerVR SGX545 core that the GMA 3600 is based on doesn't come with any Render Output units, or ROP's. Intel adds 4 of them, just as the GMA 950 had, and twice as many as the GMA 3150. Here's the rub: they can clock the ROP's at whatever speed they care to use, and they chose 200 MHz. Slowing down the ROP's reduces performance, naturally, enough to keep the GMA netbook series from playing Half-Life 2 (without tweaking). Is it enough to make performance worse than previous generations? Absolutely not. The new GMA 36x0 is better or equal in every way. The margin of improvement is just smaller. In the majority of applications, the GMA 3600 can't compete with the GeForce FX 5600, released over 9 years ago. It's more of a super Radeon Xpress 1150, and even then the Radeon integrated graphics can beat the GMA 3600 in memory bandwidth with a dual-channel DDR2-800 configuration.

A Few Words

First, if you'd like to have your favorite game featured on the blog, either write a comment on one of my posts or send an email to kory.l.hansen-[AT]-gmail.com. I would be more than happy to take a look at your game.

Second, increasing game performance can be as easy as running an installer and rebooting. These installers contain graphics drivers, pieces of software used to communicate with the integrated graphics processor inside your netbook. Updating the existing drivers on your system can add new features, fix bugs, or increase performance. To update your drivers, visit the following websites:

*Intel GMA 950 - intel.ly/LVHfWQ
*Intel GMA 3150 - intel.ly/qyy1Os
*Intel GMA 36x0 - intel.ly/Llt7VX
*AMD Radeon HD on Windows XP - http://sites.amd.com/us/game/downloads/Pages/radeon_xp-32.aspx#1
*AMD Radeon HD on Windows Vista/7 32-bit - http://sites.amd.com/us/game/downloads/Pages/radeon_win7-32.aspx
*AMD Radeon HD on Windows Vista/7 64-bit - http://sites.amd.com/us/game/downloads/Pages/radeon_win7-64.aspx

Featured Game: Vindictus

You can play it if you have the right hardware

Year: 2010/2011, depending on region

Genre: Fantasy MMORPG

Recommend: Depends

Best MMO nomination at E3 2010? Best free-to-play MMO of 2010? Playable on a netbook? Yes, yes, and yes. Oh, and did I mention it's free? Vindictus is a great game for netbooks, if yours has the chops.

What you'll need

Reviews and Awards

Besides its nomination for best MMO at E3 2010, Vindictus has received other praise for its graphics and action. IGN awarded Vindictus as the "Best Free-to-Play MMO Game of 2010". "Ever wondered whether or not it would be satisfying to break a pillar in half and smash one of those halves into the face of a giant wolf-man?" MMO Hut gave Vindictus an Excellent rating for its "great skill and attack animations" and other positive features. Vindictus got dinged a little for its repetitive combat and limited choice of playable characters.

Tips

Having trouble playing? Open up the Task Manager and kill all processes you can do without, using End Process. In extreme situations, this might even include Windows Explorer. Killing Explorer isn't as dangerous as it sounds; you can always use Task Manager to restart it if needed.

Screenshot from MMO Hut

An Introduction to the 3rd Generation Intel Atom Processors

Cedar Trail-M netbooks feature the same sticker as Pineviews

Cedar Trail-M is Intel's current generation Atom processor, released sometime in December 2011. These are much more suitable for gaming than previous generations, as Intel beefed up the GPU considerably. Currently there are 2 flavors of Cedar Trail, the N2600 and the N2800. The N2600 runs at 1.6 GHz and its graphics processor, the GMA 3600, at 400 MHz. The N2800 is faster, with the CPU at a speed of 1.87 GHz and the GPU (GMA 3650) at 640 MHz. The GMA 3600 series provides many benefits over the 3150, such as increased performance, even better OpenGL support, access to 1 GB of system RAM, and full acceleration not only for MPEG-2, but also WMV and H.264 video. With a Cedar Trail netbook, you can run games at higher graphical detail, or games that you couldn't play on older Atoms.