Good netbook for DoD?

I'm thinking of getting a cheap netbook. I don't care much about high end gaming, just as long as it can run League of Legends and Dungeons of Dredmor. Does anyone else have experience running Dredmor on a netbook? How's the performance? Is there any slowdown?

I looked around some and found these two yesterday-- they seem decent enough. Would they work? If you know of any others that also fit this $500 price range, that would be great (as long as they do not have displays smaller than 1024x768).

http://www.amazon.com/Acer-Aspire-A...ref=sr_1_5?s=pc&ie=UTF8&qid=1336164514&sr=1-5

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=2008030&Sku=A180-173122

And here's my current laptop for comparison: http://reviews.cnet.com/laptops/dell-latitude-e6400/4505-3121_7-33200149.html#reviewPage1 As you can see, it's pretty terrible-- i actually get slowdown in Dredmor half the time because of heating issues. These netbooks are a huge upgrade in comparison.

 

I actually play on an Asus Eee PC (over my local network, even!) sometimes, and I get zero lag. This is my netbook, and I've been incredibly happy with it so far. Doesn't look like they have any more available on Amazon, but you could check somewhere else. I got mine for ~$300, with shipping and tax, so it's pretty affordable.

 

I think that Acer Aspire is amazing spec for a netbook and would be capable of running much more demanding games than DoD.

I have the Acer Aspire One which i bought nearly 2 years ago with a 10.1" screen (1024x600) and the Intel Atom processor which is waaaaaay less powerful than those you listed and it runs the game fine although i did upgrade the memory from 1gb to 2gb which makes a lot of difference.

I hadn't noticed just how much netbooks have improved over the last 2 years but i'll still keep mine for a while yet, It plays a lot of indie type games really well plus quite a few of the older classics as well (fallout, baldurs gate, x-btf, etc.)

 

Honestly I find the idea of a netbook almost insulting. It reminds me of TV dinners. They may cost less, and be convenient, but you pay for it in other ways.

I look for 1920*1080 resolution with LED backlit LCD panels as a top priority. Beyond that it must have multiple cores of no less than 1.5 Ghz and no less than 4GB of RAM. If it also has a *Real* GPU, you can probably scrape by with most anything you want to do for another five years.

Understand that when I say a real GPU I mean that it is not the so called Intel integrated garbage that means next to nothing, and that it uses it's own video RAM that is entirely separate from the RAM of the system itself.

If you want a gaming system to play real games at real graphical settings then you will need to spend about 1500 USD right now. It will be a triple or quad core CPU operating at around 2Ghz or more, and you should divide the battery life expectancy by four to come up with something accurate for that sort of use.

Do not even look at laptops/netbooks that use a mechanical hard drive. SSD or no sale. Period. If you drop a netbook or laptop with a mechanical hard drive there is about a 50% chance it will be dead. With a SSD there is about a 10-20% chance that one of the fans will need repaired or replaced, but the rest should be fine. SSDs are cheap enough these days. And CPU speed is not increasing despite the claims of major manufacturers like Intel and AMD. Look at the average CPU speed over the last five years. No noticeable change. They only manage to improve on power consumption, heat dissipation, and number of cores. Speed is essentially locked.

Ouch. I did not mean to post a wall of text here. I get carried away at times...

 

Let me go ahead and say it, there is no notebook currently available for sale that does what I would expect. You are going to be stuck with crappy integrated Intel fake GPUs in 90% of the systems out there. And for about six years now Intel has been pretending they offer real performance, but it simply is not there. If you want a gaming system it is not going to be using Intel graphics. And that is a fact.

I could not find any portable system made or sold by any company that uses a SSD for the data drive, uses a multi gigahertz multicore CPU, uses real 1920*1080 resolution, and uses a real video accelerator.

The reason for this is beyond my understanding. People like to play games and be mobile. But there is nothing that allows for both mobility and gaming.The closest I could come to what I was looking for was a desktop built for low power consumption using a few car batteries and an inverter to power the thing. You could wheel it around with you on a dolly, but it would not be a laptop or notebook at all. (Ironically, even counting two hundred dollars for the batteries and inverter, it would still cost a lot less than some of the pretend gaming portable systems out there. And it would outperform them by a factor of ten, while using only another 10-15% more power than a so called green system.)

 

I was looking at portable systems only. To build a desktop would cost no more than $800 and would be able to play anything made.

I rarely look at laptops and notebooks. Netbooks are aparantly like E-machines except portable. The only things they have as a claim to fame are low cost and battery life.

But you are right. I was not really helpful. I cannot be. I would never advise anyone to buy a netbook. I would tell them to save up to buy a real PC if they did not need it portable, or a real laptop if they needed it portable. But the posts I made above were pointing out that there is no such thing as what I would call a real laptop these days.

 

...then you're not very well qualified to answer his question, now are you?

 

The reason I am fixated on 1920*1080 is that it will not have to scale 1080P videos to fit the screen. Thus increased battery life since scaling can be a pretty hefty task. I know this is not the purpose of the thread, but like most threads I figured it could handle more than one real subject.

I know it gets harder and harder to get that many pixels in a laptop, but when 1600*900 is common, I cannot think it would add more than an extra inch or two at most to the size to have full 1080 resolution. Pixel size is not a fixed amount between all monitors, so it is possible to get a monitor that is full 1080 that is the exact same size or even smaller than these.

I play DoD in a window mode. Not the full 1920*1080 resolution of my monitor. I would do the same with a notebook.

From what I can see, scaling would not be as much of a drag on performance as I first thought. (Providing it has a real GPU it can do the scaling in it's sleep.) But there are still performance degradations if the aspect ratio is not the same. So long as you get a 16:9 monitor, the scaling is a pitiful task on any GPU, even the fake Intel GPUs.

I rarely look at laptops. That is true. But that in no way means everything I have said is a lie or is misleading. It is just advice that may not apply fully to the desires of SkyMuffin.

Sorry if I am getting everyone upset. I will cease and desist from this thread from now on if my ranting is not welcomed. I saw this and looked at the links and started thinking surely there are plenty of systems that would meet the desires of SkyMuffin and also my picky tastes.

Let me know if I am unwelcomed here, and if I am I will unwatch the thread. Hell I will delete my posts here too if that is the case.

*Edit* On my 5850 GPU playing a standard definition video with a low bitrate and using GPU scaling to convert the original 4:3 aspect ratio to 16:9 as my monitor defaults to takes right at 8-12% of the GPU power. That would be a real chore on a netbook, and even more if it is having to use the CPU for the task since it is not going to have a real GPU.

 

I don't mind the discussion haha.

Actually, I found quite a few Netbooks around the 600 range that have 4gb or more, dual core, and graphics cards that weren't the crappy stock Intel ones. Sure it's not going to be SUPER GAMING DEVICE 4000, but I grew up on old games and new games don't interest me that much. Also, my girlfriend has a PS3 so that covers most things.

And really, go look at the stats for my current laptop (in the first post)....anything is an improvement over it haha. It lags playing League of Legends with all settings on the lowest. So I'm not too picky...budget is fine with me. I ordered my netbook yesterday and it should come in tomorrow. Since it works on Fax's Netbook I am sure it will on mine, since its specs are better.

 

To clarify: it runs on my netbook over my wireless network. I don't even have it installed on my netbook. Which should tell you something.