Featured Game: Street Fighter X Mega Man

A disappointing resource hog

Year: 2012

Genre: Action + Platform

Recommend: Depends

Ah, nostalgia. Both the Street Fighter and Mega Man series have let their marks in gaming history. Now these two classics have come together with the collaboration of fans and Capcom. It's too bad that the game overloads most netbooks, even with its NES-style 2D graphics. On my netbook, the game runs at about 2 fps. Fortunately, higher-end netbooks can handle the game.

What you'll need

Reviews and Awards

While not the groundbreaking game of the century, by any imaginable means, the game has enjoyed largely positive reviews. IGN and Destructoid rated it a 7/10, saying the game is "solid" and "fun," but lacks replay value and a save system (version 2 of the game implemented a password system). GameRankings and Metacritic both give SFXMM a rating of approximately 71%. On the other hand, Edge magazine gave the game a 5/10, saying the level design is inconsistent and functionality is limited.

Tips

It's a little hard to give any tips when the game won't run at a tolerable speed. If you have a subpar netbook, don't bother with this game.

A pain to run in more ways than one.

AMD's Newish Fusion Processor, the C-70

AMD netbooks have this sticker, typically

 On September 1st of this year, AMD silently released its new C-70 processor, which can be considered a successor to their older C-60 part. The processor itself is nearly identical to the previous model. The only difference is the integrated graphics processor, which is now called the Radeon HD 7290 instead of the 6290, clocked at the same speeds, 276 MHz and 400 MHz for boosted mode, respectively. Some sites say the C-70 has Radeon HD 6290 graphics, so I suspect the new name is for purely marketing reasons. On the chipset side, the C-70 comes with AMD's updated chipset, the A68M, instead of the older A50M chipset that lacks USB 3.0 and native SD card and Ethernet support. Currently, the C-70 can be found in large netbooks such as the Acer Aspire One found here at Newegg, shown below. It comes with one USB 3.0 port and a multicard reader, unsurprisingly enough, plus a 64-bit copy of Windows 8. The new C-70 is nothing to be excited about, but should be worth the consideration of new netbook buyers or those wanting to upgrade an old single-core Atom netbook.

The Acer Aspire One AO725-0494

 

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

An Introduction to AMD's Fusion CPU's: Ontario

Not wanting Intel to monopolize the netbook market, AMD unveiled the Fusion processors in early January of 2011. The lower-end of them, the Ontario series, consists of one single-core C-30 (1.2 GHz) and two dual-core C-50 and C-60, both at 1 GHz. All of them have a TDP of 9 W. The C-60 is a special processor in that it can boost the speed of the CPU (by 33%) and GPU under load. All Ontario processors have a Radeon HD 62x0 GPU at 276 MHz standard clock, with the C-60 adding 45% on demand. This puts its capabilities at about half of the Radeon HD 6350, more or less. Ontario-powered netbooks tend to cost a bit more than Cedar Trail ones, and rightly so. The amount of games playable on Fusion is far greater than any Intel netbook, so if you're not extremely tight on cash, go for a Fusion netbook.