What games can you play on a standard netbook?
If you haven’t heard, gaming isn’t exactly a strong suit among netbooks. You see, these shrunken, new-fangled laptops are designed for emailing and web-browsing. If you look closely under the hood, the specs aren’t particularly impressive:
- An Intel Atom 1.6GHz processor
- Windows XP Home or Linux OS
- An 8.9” or 10.2” screen
- 1GB of RAM
- Mobile Intel 945GSE Express Chipset with ICH7M
Of course, that’s not saying that playing PC games are impossible on a netbook. What’s out of the question is that you can’t play games like Crysis on such a device—not the currently available ones, at least. If you’re willing to abstain from bleeding-edge games and set your eyes on less demanding ones, then you’re making progress.
Oh, don’t forget that handy USB DVD drive for installing your games.
The games that work on netbooks vary, depending on the device’s specs and the game’s minimum requirements. The all-encompassing way is to compare these two and see if the netbook meets the basics.
Some examples:
Games released from 1999 to 2005 are practically assured if you were to run them in a netbook with a 1024×600 WSVGA display, Intel Atom 1.6GHz CPU, and 1GB RAM (say, an Asus Eee 900). Titles such as Age of Empires 2: The Age of Kings (circa 1999), Deus Ex (2000), Grand Theft Auto: Vice City (2003), and even Galactic Civilizations II: Dread Lords (2006) would run smoothly.
Empire Earth II? Perhaps, but it won’t be as pretty. Warcraft III is a definite yes, especially if you’re a Defense of the Ancients nut. Quake III works like a charm, while more recent hits like Puzzle Quest and World of Goo would likely have no problems.
Just be careful in handling The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, its requirements are quite beefy even with today’s netbooks. And World of Warcraft? You can run it with good frame rates, for sure. Just be prepared for the slideshow when joining 40-man raids.
For more graphic-intensive netbooks, Asus introduced the Atom-powered Asus N10J-A1, and the Asus N10J-A2, which come with an Nvidia GeForce 9300 graphics card and 2GB RAM. The A2 comes with 320 GB and retails at $763. The A1 has 160 GB and retails at $673.
Sure, you’ll be able to play prettier games on it, but better bring a spare battery or charger in case your power runs out. You can conserve batteries by switching off the graphics card but if gaming is what you’re after, why should you?
On the other end of the gaming spectrum are your really old DOS games, which you can play on your netbook. Just download and install DOSBox to emulate 286/386 environments, run the DOS game/s that you still have, and voilà! More gaming options.
Of course, even with today’s most powerful “gaming” netbook, you still won’t be able to play Crysis on it. Or Fallout 3. Or Grand Theft Auto IV. Or any PC game that involves using multiple CPU cores. When time comes that netbooks become powerful enough to run those system hogs, another batch of new games won’t be able to—it’s a vicious cycle.
Photo Credit: Zone 365
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Filed under: Netbooks