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| Performance with Half-Life 2 Episode 2
and Enemy Territory: Quake Wars |
| Gaming Performance |
|
To touch on gaming performance, we chose
two games that draw moderately on system resources, Half-Life 2
Episode 2 and Enemy Territory: Quake Wars. We then ran a
pre-recorded demo of each at a resolution of 1280x800. The resulting
performance achieved is indicated in frames per second in the graph
below. For comparison, we've
included results for the Core i5-540M/Intel Graphics Media Accelerator
HD-based laptop we looked at in our Intel Arrandale Core
i3/i5 article.
Here we see more of the expected: an evolutionary bump in frame rates, but nothing revolutionary. We think it'll take a whole new
Ion architecture or an entirely new
Atom (rather than just a speed-bumped one) to see super high frame rates on a netbook. Of course, we're complaining that a netbook -- a machine that was
never, ever built for gaming -- can't play 3D titles good enough, so that in and of itself is telling. At least the 1215N
can handle some of the better games from last year at decent resolutions, but modern titles will bring the system to its knees. Then again, any gaming is better than no gaming when it comes to a sub-$500 netbook.
