Featured Game: The Embodiment of Scarlet Devil

A little odd, but it works well

Year: 2002

Genre: Vertical Scrolling Shooter

Recommend: YES

If you were to sit me down at a PC a month ago and show me one of the Touhou games, I'd give up and walk away in not much time. After seeing a friend play the series often, though, I became fascinated with the Touhou series and the vertical shooter genre as a whole. There's something innately satisfying about massive amounts of bullets flying around on the screen and being able to dodge the lethal ones. Oh, and did I mention that Lunatic mode is @$#%&@#$!! impossible?!

What you'll need

You need a netbook...and Windows...and that's about it.

Reviews and Awards

Has anyone actually reviewed this game?

Tips

Want to prevent flickering on Cedar Trail netbooks? All you have to do is set Refresh Rate to 1/2 instead of 1/1 in the configuration utility. Viola!

Go here to download Scarlet Devil for free.

New Temash and Kabini Chips Released; Nothing to Be Excited About

AMD has been busy improving their Temash and Kabini lines to compete with Intel's hot new Bay Trail architecture. This February one new APU has been added to the Temash family, and Kabini picked up three new models.

The A4-1350 is basically the same as the A6-1450, but without the Turbo function. The E1-2200 trades low-voltage DDR3 support for a 50 MHz CPU clock bump, hardly worth it in my opinion. The first quad-core APU in the E-series is the E2-3800, which is basically a slower version of the A4-5000 without low-voltage RAM support. The A4-5100 is to the A4-5000 what the A4-1350 is to the A6-1450: the CPU runs 50 MHz faster, and low-voltage RAM support has been removed. Will these new models make a dent in Intel's market share? Probably not. There aren't any groundbreaking features added, and performance is still not enough for the latest AAA games. Rumor has it, though, that AMD's next-generation ultramobile APU's, codenamed Beema and Mullins, will be a gamechanger. We shall see.

Quick Picks: February 2013

Dead Space 3:

Aliens: Colonial Marines:

Impire:

Crysis 3:

Crysis 3 on a netbook? Yeah right!

March of the Eagles:

Sorry, can't play this one either.

Brütal Legend:

Bit.Trip Presents Runner 2: Future Legend of Rhythm Alien:

Quick Picks: January 2013

Since it's a rare occasion that I have time to write a full blog post, I'll be instating a new way of showing what games are playable on a netbook. I'll select a few games from a particular month and use an Excel table for each game, like I've done in the "What you'll need" section of regular featured game posts. Today's quick picks were all released in the first month of this year.

Fieldrunners 2:

Strike Suit Zero:

The (in my opinion) spectacular graphics are too much for even the fastest Kabini GPU.

The Cave:

Ace Combat: Assault Horizon (Enhanced Edition):

Too graphically demanding.

DmC Devil May Cry:

Both the CPU and GPU will struggle in this game. Not recommended with currently available hardware.

Dungeonland:

Skulls of the Shogun:

Wizardry Online:

This game has high memory bandwidth requirements, and it's not hard to see why; the game uses excessive bloom and motion blur.

Antichamber:

Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed:

The Gaming with Netbooks Guide to RAM Upgrades

Every good netbook user knows that a RAM upgrade makes a night-and-day difference in overall usability. From simple web browsing and word processing to complex image editing and gaming, having more RAM will reduce system lagginess and improve your overall experience. This guide will help you determine which RAM to buy for your specific netbook.

Before You Buy: Determine What You Already Have

When it comes to netbooks, few things are more annoying than buying RAM only to find that it's incompatible. That's why it's essential to find out what type of RAM is already installed in your netbook. To do that, head on over to the CPU-Z homepage and download either the installer or the .zip archive, whichever you prefer. Open CPU-Z and click on the SPD tab. If all the fields are grayed out, select a different memory slot to read info from.

Once you have the correct slot selected, look at the fields I have highlighted above. The first 3 fields are the important ones (and they happen to be listed in order of importance). Let's take a look at each:

Memory Type: This, in the vast majority of netbooks, will be either DDR2 or DDR3. Remember that, as you'll need to use the same type of RAM in the new stick.

Module Size: This one's a no-brainer. It's the amount of RAM that the stick has. In low-end netbooks, this will be 1 GB or even 512 MB. The new stick of RAM should obviously have a higher capacity than the old stick, unless you're upgrading for pure speed, which is neither worth the hassle nor the money.

Max Bandwidth: This is how fast the RAM can transfer data. The value in parentheses is actually half of what the stick is rated for, so my 800 MHz rating is actually 1600 MHz (because DDR stands for double data rate, hence the 1:2 reported/actual ratio). Note that the rated speed of the RAM is not always, or even usually, the speed the RAM will operate in your netbook, but we'll get to that later.

Capacity

Once you know the type of RAM you have, it's time to decide how much to buy. Some netbooks can utilize more RAM than others, so refer to the table below to see how much your netbook can hold.

*Official limit for N2600 is 2 GB, but 4 GB sticks have been found to work without issues **Config depends on # of physical RAM slots in netbook ***32 GB possible in the future (16 GB/stick doesn't exist yet)

Now, no one's holding a gun to your head and forcing you to buy the maximum amount of RAM for your netbook. If you don't want to pay for 8 GB of RAM and don't feel you need it anyway (say, for an E-450 netbook), you don't need to. 4 GB is perfect match for a modern netbook as it won't create a bottleneck, but there are always those that preach the 'more is better' mantra. And there's nothing wrong with that.

Speed and Bandwidth

Now that you've chosen how much RAM you want/need, the next step is looking for sticks that provide the fastest speed your memory controller supports. Once again, direct your eyes to the following table:

*Atom N450 and N470 do not support DDR3, only DDR2/667; Atom N435 supports DDR3/800 but only DDR2/667 **DDR3/800 for N2600, DDR3/1066 for N2800 ^E-450, E2-1800, E2-2000, and A4-1250 support DDR3/1333; all others limited to DDR3/1066 ^^DDR3/1333 only for E1 series

Giving the memory controller maximum bandwidth/speed allows integrated graphics to give their best performance, which, as you know, is crucial for gaming. While having slow RAM hampers performance, RAM that is faster than the memory controller supports won't hurt anything. The RAM will simply slow down so the controller can keep up, and no problems occur. I currently have a stick of DDR3/1600 running in my N2600 netbook with no problems, it just runs at 800 MHz rather than 1600.

Latency

If you've been shopping online for RAM lately, you'd see that all good RAM has its CAS latency listed. But what is it? CAS latency (or CL) is the delay between when the memory controller asks for data stored in RAM and when the RAM makes that data available. CL is measured with a single number, with typical values being 7 for DDR3/1066 and 9 for DDR3/1333, etc. Lower numbers are better, because the RAM can give the memory controller what it needs faster, although in real-world scenarios, low latency RAM doesn't make a noticeable difference against standard latency RAM. 

OS Version

In addition to hardware limitations, the version of Windows you're using also has a say in how much RAM you can use. Windows 7 Starter puts a cap of 2 GB on your RAM; add a 4 GB stick for example, and you'll have 2 GB of RAM functioning and 2 that sit idle because the OS won't let you use it. In order to use more than 2 GB, you have to fork over money to Microsoft to upgrade to Win7 Home Premium or higher. The "bitness" of your OS also determines your RAM ceiling. A 32-bit version of Windows can only handle up to 4 GB of RAM, but a 64-bit copy can go up into the hundreds of gigabytes of RAM, more than you'll ever need. A visit to the 'System' applet in the Control Panel will give you the bitness of your OS.

Other Considerations

Some netbooks have RAM built into the motherboard that can't be upgraded, like the Asus VivoBook X202E or Eee PC X101CH. A Google or YouTube search for reviews of your particular netbook model should reveal whether or not the RAM is upgradable.

If you have a Nvidia ION netbook with 2 RAM slots, you can utilize the ION chipset's dual-channel memory architecture and install two identical sticks of RAM for maximum graphics performance. Some ION netbooks have 1 RAM slot but have additional RAM soldered onto the motherboard. I'm unsure as to whether or not the dual-channel architecture will work in that scenario. I'm fairly certain, though, that a 4 GB stick of RAM won't work in netbooks like these.

The brand of memory you choose won't play a role in performance of RAM, but it might make a difference in reliability. As common sense will tell you, go for a highly regarded brand with plenty of good reviews.

It's better to have a large single stick of RAM than two smaller sticks, i.e. one 4 GB stick vs. two 2 GB sticks in all but ION netbooks. This way, the memory controller only has to pull data from one stick instead of two. Remember that the Brazos (2.0) family of netbooks only support sticks up to 4 GB, so you can't plop in a single 8 GB stick and call it a day.

Memory Recommendations by Platform

Diamondville

Kingston HyperX 2 GB DDR2/533 CL3

For Diamondville netbooks, nothing is faster than this Kingston RAM, and for $39 new (or $27 used), it won't drain your wallet.

Pineview/ION 2 DDR2

Mushkin Essentials 2 GB DDR2/667 CL4

If your netbook only supports DDR2/667, this Mushkin RAM is perfect for you. It runs at a low latency and costs only $33.

Team 2 GB DDR2/800 CL5

If your netbook can go up to DDR2/800, you can step up performance while stepping down in price with this Team RAM for $28. I wanted to find CL4 RAM, but that was only available for desktop RAM.

Pineview/ION 2/N2600

VisionTek Black Label 2 GB DDR3/1600 CL9

While it's not DDR3/800, this VisionTek RAM will underclock just fine, and it's significantly cheaper than DDR2, at $21.

N2800

 

Corsair Vengeance 4 GB DDR3/1600 CL9

Since the Atom N2800 can officially handle 4 GB of RAM, why not max it out? This Corsair RAM is as fast as you can get for $39.

Zacate/Ontario/Brazos 2.0

ADATA XPG Gaming Series 2x4 GB DDR3/1600 CL9

 If your AMD netbook has 2 RAM slots (and many do), you can go crazy with this ADATA RAM kit, but it doesn't come cheap at $73.

Temash/Kabini

Crucial Ballistix Sport 2x8 GB DDR3/1600 CL9

 OK, no one really needs 16 GB of Crucial RAM in a netbook, but there's something to be said for bragging rights. To get this much RAM, you'll have to fork over a hefty $148. Ouch.

Keep in mind that all of these recommendations are based purely on performance. It will be quite easy to find RAM that isn't as fast but is much cheaper. If you don't feel you need to go hog wild with your RAM, don't. It's quite easy to find something more conservative. Also remember to shop around so you can find the best price.

If you have any other questions about RAM upgrades (or if I missed something important), feel free to leave a comment!

The Future of Netbooks: Bay Trail Specs Leaked

Bay Trail is on the move again, barreling right along toward its holiday 2013 launch. Specifications for the next generation of netbook processors have been leaked alongside those for desktop and industrial Atoms, Celerons, and Pentiums, and the numbers look very promising. (Oh, you haven't heard yet? Intel's Silvermont microarchitecture is fast enough to be used in some Celeron and Pentium processors. Woof.)

An interesting thing to notice is the absence of the Atom name in the leaked Bay Trail-M model names. Perhaps Intel wanted to improve the public image of their new mobile chips by avoiding the Atom moniker, which, as you all know, has a bad reputation for being a slow, worthless piece of silicon. It's a smart move, as the names will not only avoid the bad Atom PR, but will be reflective of the architecture's massively improved performance. Basically, Silvermont is all of the improvements the Atom line should've had over its lifespan rolled up into one release, especially in the graphics department. With the slowest of the bunch, the Celeron N2805, Doom 3 will be not only playable on Ultra, but fluid on High settings. That's a huge leap over today's Cedar Trail GPU's (believe me, you wouldn't want to play Doom 3 on them unless you have an unusual tolerance for low framerates), and from the look of things, it will only get better from here.

Featured Game: Full Tilt! Pinball

Now you know where Windows pinball came from

Year: 1996

Genre: Pinball + Arcade

Recommend: YES

Have you ever played 3D Pinball on Windows XP? Of course you have! Many a Windows user, gamer or not, has fond memories of playing it as a kid, myself included. What you may not know is that it's a stripped-down version of a 1996 Maxis game called Full Tilt! Pinball. The Maxis version has 2 additional tables as well as support for additional resolutions, multiple balls in play, and additional sounds; basically, it's a lot more fun than the game bundled with pre-Vista Windows. If you enjoyed Windows' little gem back in its heyday, give Full Tilt! Pinball a try.

What you'll need

This game will run on a 66 MHz processor. Instead of wasting your time telling you about the unimportant system requirements, I'll direct you to the site where I downloaded the game.

Reviews and Awards

Unsurprisingly, Full Tilt! Pinball was dealt positive reviews from multiple critics. Gamespot gave the game only a fair score of 6.5, even though the only negative remark was for the game's soundtrack. (Typo, anyone?) Coming Soon Magazine (who?) dished out an 83% rating, with no subcategory falling below 80%. Oddly, CSM gave the highest subscore to the sound category; apparently tastes differ between CSM and GameSpot.

Tips

If you're anything like me, you'll find that the small screens on netbooks just aren't big enough for most pinball games. I recommend plugging in to an external monitor and running at the max resolution of 1024x768 if you have the option. Disabling visual themes in the Compatibility tab will allow the game to display properly in fullscreen mode.

Here's a table you won't see bundled with Windows

Featured Game: FlatOut

Fun, but could be more fun

Year: 2004/2005 (depends on region)

Genre: Semi-Simulation Racing

Recommend: YES

Requested by NSDCars5

I really like FlatOut. The graphics are superb, the damage modelling is a joy to behold, and unlike some racing games, it provides some challenging gameplay. If only it weren't held back by those criminal GMA 3600 drivers. At 1024x600 on the lowest possible settings, my netbook gets around 15-25 fps. A GMA 3150 netbook can muster 35-40 fps at 800x600 (thanks to NSDCars5 for that data). It's a real shame Intel doesn't seem interested in customer service, because Cedar Trail could be a great platform for older games like this.

What you'll need

FlatOut doesn't care as much about processing power as it does RAM. While you only need 512 MB RAM if you're running integrated graphics (ie, not ION 2), more really helps. 1 GB is the least I would recommend, and 2 GB makes a big difference in versions of Windows past XP.

Reviews and Awards

FlatOut's ratings can be described as "just good." Gamespot handed the game a 7.9/10, applauding the environmental destruction, graphics, and minigames. The reviewer was very unimpressed by the lack of online multiplayer for the PC, as well as it's "middling soundtrack." Speaking of middling soundtrack, IGN slammed FlatOut for its soundtrack in their PS2-version review, with a weak score of 5 for the sound category. The game was also criticized for its lack of creativity and subjective gameplay. Despite this, FlatOut was awarded a 7.5/10, which is still in the Good category.

Tips

If at all possible, stay away from stacks of tires. While you'll build up a nice stockpile of nitro by plowing into them, chances are you'll get stuck and fall back in the race. 

The Future of Netbooks: AMD Beats Intel to Market with Temash and Kabini

Before I start, I want to give a big thank-you to monstercameron, who alerted me to the existence of Temash long before I would've known about it otherwise.

Intel's Bay Trail is all fine and good, but it has one major problem.

It's not here yet.

Fortunately for netbook gamers, AMD's next generation of ultramobile processors is here, and improvements abound. More processing power, more CPU and GPU cores, faster memory controller, lower power consumption, you name it. If you're fed up with your old single-core netbook with crappy graphics, now is a great time to upgrade.

Temash: Quad Core at 8 Watts!

In my opinion, single-core processors in netbooks should disappear forever. AMD, it seems, agrees. Unlike Ontario with the C-30 before it, Temash shuns single-core processors intended for netbooks and tablets and only offers dual or quad-core CPU's. Good thing, too; multitasking on a single-core netbook is no fun at all. But more CPU cores aren't the only things that give AMD a leg up in the ultraportable market. Power consumption is another key element.

As you can see from this table from Liliputing, max power consumption for the two higher-end APU's has dropped to 8W, down a watt from the previous-gen Ontario. That doesn't sound like much, but when you factor in the DDR3L memory support (the L stands for 'low voltage'), it's a pretty big deal for road warriors. Even better is the A4-1200 APU, which has a TDP of 3.9W. A netbook/laptop with this APU would be perfect for a business professional that wants a cheap notebook with very long battery life (and functional graphics drivers).

AMD increased the number of integrated graphics cores in Temash (and Kabini) from 80 to 128. While newer games can take advantage of more cores, it's questionable whether or not a netbook can play these games anyway. After all, Temash's maximum memory bandwidth hasn't changed since Ontario, and neither has its pixel or texture fillrates. Fillrate is very important for older games that rely less on complex shaders and more on textures. For this reason, gaming bottlenecks might move from the CPU to the GPU. I shouldn't complain, though; Temash is faster than Ontario at a lower power consumption, and that's what counts.

Kabini: Skyrim on a Netbook is Now Enjoyable

Have you ever tried to play Skyrim on a netbook? There are videos on YouTube that say it's possible, but how much fun will you really get out of it? Most likely, not much. Kabini will change that. With fast quad-core and dual-core options, more memory bandwidth, and more performance per watt, Kabini will take netbook gaming to a whole new level.

Don't let the names of the new APU's fool you. The E1-2100 is not faster than the E1-1200. But with a TDP of 9W, it shouldn't be. The E1-2100 does a better job of replacing the C-50. Because of architectural changes, the CPU portions of Temash and Kabini are 22% at the same clock speed compared to their last-gen counterparts. Thus, the E1-2500 is 22% faster than the E1-1200, and the E2-3000 is 15% faster than the E2-2000. More exciting are the quad-core options. The A6-5200 should be faster than AMD's own Phenom X3 8650, which was released in mid-2008. To be able to get better performance in a small laptop than a 95W desktop processor is impressive, even if the latter is 5 years old. This new CPU performance is critical for newer games like Skyrim and Rift, and should give those 48 additional GPU cores something to do.

Desktop Equivalents

Since games cite desktop parts in their system requirements, I thought it would be a good idea to compare these new APU's with said desktop parts.

CPU portion:

A4-1200, A4-1250, & E1-2100 = Athlon 64 3500+ (early 2007)
A6-1450 = Athlon 64 X2 4200+ (2007) (can go faster if thermals allow)
E1-2500 = Athlon X2 3250e (late 2008)
E2-3000 = between Athlon X2 3250e and 4050e (mid-late 2008)
A4-5000 = faster than Athlon X2 7550 (late-2008)
A6-5200 = Phenom X3 8650 (mid-2008)

The GPU portion of the APU will perform between a Radeon HD 8350 and a desktop Radeon HD 8400 at the same clock speed. The HD 8180 will be significantly slower than the HD 8350, while the mobile HD 8400 will be only slightly slower than the desktop HD 8400.

Featured Game: Motocross Madness

This was hot stuff back in the day

Year: 1998

Genre: Vehicle Simulation + Racing

Recommend: YES

Maybe you're nostalgic. Maybe you want to see what game graphics were like a decade and a half ago. Maybe you tried Motocross Madness 2 on your Cedar Trail netbook and were disappointed by how poorly it ran, but still wanted to experience the action of motocross (hint hint). Whatever your reason for trying the original Motocross Madness, you will find that it's a fine game that's plenty of fun. Sure, it pales in comparison to its sequel, but come on, this was 1998. This game was da bomb, and it's still enjoyable today. 

What you'll need

For being such an old game, Motocross Madness works well right off the bat. You don't need to mess with compatibility settings, no-CD patches, or anything else that tends to plague games of this age. The only problem I can see so far is the invisibility of player names above the AI's heads and on the scoreboard. Whether this is a driver or a Windows issue, I don't know. (I'll look into it.) The game runs very smoothly, as a game with such simple graphics should.

Reviews and Awards

Motocross Madness has garnered positive feedback from reviewers. IGN gave the game 8/10 (a 'great' score), praising the realism of the game by saying it "portrays the sport in all its agonizing glory -- a fast, maniacal sport that's more fun (and much safer) to watch than it is to participate." Gamespot awarded an even higher score of 8.4/10, still great, proclaiming "this is pretty much everything you could hope for in a motocross simulation, and then some."

Tips

From here on out, I will make my best effort to more tightly integrate this blog and my YouTube channel. That's why I've embedded my gameplay video of Motocross Madness below. Screenshots, like I've used in previous posts, are a dime a dozen, but a video really shows what you can expect from a game. Feel free to check out my other videos here, and their descriptions. I put important info in the descriptions (because I don't like too much fluff in my videos, and text uses next to no bandwidth), so read them!