HP Mini 311 Ion-Based Netbook Review

Name: HP Mini 311 Ion-Based Netbook Review - Page 5
Brand: HP

by Shawn Oliver — Monday, December 14, 2009, 02:15 PM EDT

Gaming Benchmark (ET: Quake Wars)

Page 5: Gaming Benchmark (ET: Quake Wars)

HotHardware's Test Systems

Covering the bases

HP Mini 311
Atom N270, 1.6GHz, FSB 533MHz
2GB DDR2-800
NVIDIA Ion
On-Board Ethernet
On-Board Audio
250GB Seagate HD 5400 RPM SATA
Windows 7

Asus EeeTop ES2002
Atom 330, 1.6GHz, FSB 533MHz
2GB DDR3-1066
NVIDIA Ion
On-Board Ethernet
On-Board Audio
250GB Seagate HD 5400 RPM SATA
Windows 7

Zotac MAG HD-ND01
Intel Atom 330
NVIDIA ION board
2GB DDR2-800
NVIDIA ION
160GB Toshiba HDD (5400 RPM, 8MB cache)
Windows 7

Acer Aspire Revo
Intel Atom 230
NVIDIA ION board
2GB DDR2-800
NVIDIA ION
160GB Toshiba HDD (5400 RPM, 8MB cache)
Windows Vista

Enemy Territory: Quake Wars

OpenGL Gaming Performance

Enemy Territory:
Quake Wars

Enemy Territory: Quake Wars is Based on an enhanced version of id's Doom 3 engine and viewed by many as Battlefield 2 meets the Strogg, and then some. ET: Quake Wars also marks the introduction of John Carmack's "Megatexture" technology that employs large environment and terrain textures that cover vast areas of maps without the need to repeat and tile many smaller textures. The beauty of megatexture technology is that each unit only takes up a maximum of 8MB of frame buffer memory. Add to that HDR-like bloom lighting and leading edge shadowing effects and Enemy Territory: Quake Wars looks great, plays well and works high end graphics cards vigorously.

So few netbooks have shipped with 2GB of RAM and an Ion GPU that we're forced to compare the Mini 311 to a handful of Atom-based nettops that we've seen in the past. Not surprisingly, the Mini 311 is the weakest of the bunch. Even at 800x600 with all details set to "medium," the game is simply unplayable. The demo reel completed without crashing, but it stuttered the entire way through. Put simply, you won't achieve high enough frame rates on the Mini 311--unless by "gaming" you're talking about less taxing titles like World of Warcraft and the like.

Tags: Nvidia, Netbook, Notebook, HP, laptop, Mini, mini 311

HP Mini 311 Ion-Based Netbook Review

Gaming Benchmark (ET: Quake Wars)

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