Netbooks: Good for Gaming?
Computers keep getting smaller and smaller. In the past few years the world has largely abandoned desktop PCs for laptops. Just as that transition has neared completion, notebooks got poleaxed by netbooks. We've yet to see how far the trend will go, but there's no denying that netbooks have gained tremendous popularity in the past year. These minuscule computers don't pack much in terms of horsepower or storage, but they make up for it in price. Some netbooks cost as little as $200, making them almost throwaway items. You might not be happy if your laptop bag walked away with one of them in there, but you certainly wouldn't be shedding tears.
It should go without saying that the netbook's small screen, tiny keyboard, and anemic processor don't make it the ideal gaming machine. But if you have one for typing on the go or browsing the Web in a cafe, the option to play games certainly doesn't hurt. A game like Crysis is out of bounds, but there are plenty of games on the market that don't need computing brawn to entertain you when you're stuck in a boring class. (Not that we’d ever recommend playing games in class, of course.)
Within the netbook category you'll find a few classes of hardware. Once we toss aside screen sizes and other miscellaneous features, netbooks fall into three broad categories. The weakest netbooks on the market feature a VIA processor and graphics chip. We didn't have one on hand; but after reviewing CNET's test results, we surmised that it wouldn't be worth the effort to see what kinds of games run on them. The VIA processor is considerably slower than the ubiquitous Atom, and the Atom doesn't exactly get the juices flowing to begin with. You can find the VIA processor in older-generation netbooks, most of which aren't sold anymore. (Ed - New VIA Nano-based netbooks are on the way that should compete close to parity with Atoms.)
The second, and largest, category of netbooks has the 1.6GHz Atom N270 or N280 processor paired with an Intel onboard graphics solution. The onboard graphics chip truly destroys any chance of modern 3D gaming. The Eee PC 1000H we had for testing falls into this category. You'll also find some netbooks with Intel's Celeron processor paired with its onboard video solution. These netbooks cost anywhere from $250 to $600.
The final category of netbooks is the most expensive ($600-plus) and also the most capable. They have the Atom paired with a GeForce 9300M graphics chip. They are far from ideal gaming machines, but the added GPU horsepower lets them do much more than the average netbook. In the near future you should be able to find netbooks with the GeForce 9400M--and at considerably lower price points. We used the Asus N10J to represent this category.
The one thing all netbooks share is the lack of a DVD drive, which makes installing disc-based games troublesome. You could lug around a USB DVD drive, but it's certainly not convenient. Outside of Web-based games, a digital download service will easily get games onto the hard drive without any extra hardware. We tested a pile of games from our Steam account and detailed the results on the following pages.
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