Featured Game: Left 4 Dead

Not for cheapo netbooks

Year: 2008

Genre: First-Person Shooter + Survival Horror

Recommend: Depends

If you're wanting to play Left 4 Dead on a netbook, be prepared to spend a little money, 'cause anything with GMA in the name ain't gonna cut it. Those with ION or Radeon graphics, though, can gear up for some epic zombie-destroying fun.

What you'll need

Review and Awards

For the most part, Left 4 Dead raked in positive reviews from all around the board, with an average of 89% from aggregator sites. IGN praised the game, saying "It's almost pitch perfect in how it captures the tension and the action of a Hollywood zombie movie." Gamespot disapproved of Left 4 Dead's "limited map selection," and felt the game got repetitive at times. Left 4 Dead acquired no less than 5 "Best Multiplayer Game of 2008" awards, among others.

Tips

Avoid the witch.

No, really, don't do it!

 

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 Second-Gen Fusion Processors: Brazos 2.0

In this lovely month of June, AMD rolled out the successor to Zacate, Brazos 2.0. Not much is new in this release, merely higher speeds. The E1-1200 is meant to replace the E-300, bumping up the CPU speed by 100 MHz and the GPU by 12 MHz. For some reason AMD downgraded the memory controller in the E1-1200 to DDR3-1066 instead of DDR3-1333, like the E-300 had. The E-450 has been upgraded by the E2-1800, with a 50 MHz increase in the CPU clock. The GPU has been pushed up to 523 MHz without boost and 680 MHz with boost. These are 3 and 13% gains, respectively. AMD chose to keep the DDR3-1333 memory controller here. Overall, Brazos 2.0 is not much of an improvement, but if cost is not a factor, there's no reason to buy an older Zacate machine.