Playing EU on a 10.2" netbook - my findings

So, we all know that EU uses a lot of power from you computer and that people keep complaining about how much trouble they have playing the game on their computer. Well I have done a test, let me explain.

A while back Nvidia announced their new ION Graphics Processors for Intel Atom processors. Until then all the netbooks were just slow little laptops only capable of doing some office work and surf the WWW. With the ION "platform" Nvidia claimed they could play Full HD (1080p) movies where previously netbooks could only play dvd quality movies and maybe 720p. They even claimed you could play simple games on it. Well I have been following this platform and a few months ago a company called Point of View launced their first ION based netbooks. I thought this was very interesting because of the ION platform and the fact it had a HDMI port on it (which is not allowed if you use the standard Intel platform). But with Windows 7 on its way I decided to wait a bit longer with buying one. Well 2 weeks ago the PoV ION netbooks with Windows 7 arrived and I ordered one right away (this one) and this weekend I got it delivered by mail.

So I opened the package and played around a bit with my new toy. It will take a bit getting used to because of the smaller keys, but I will manage. Not long after I started it for the first time I tried playing a 1080p movie which I had sitting on a harddisk somewhere and it didn't have any problems with it, so that promise they kept :)

After that triumph I thought ... could it ... nah it can't ... well have to try anyway ... and I installed EU on it. I copied the game directory from my PC onto a portable harddisk lugged it into the netbook and started the clientloader. First I took a look the Your Computer section on the client loader and I saw this:



So, windows 7 is not supported yet, we knew that, I have a lack of memory (it uses 256 Mb for video memory), I figured that before I started and the ION graphics is supported .

I then opened the options screen and selected safe mode pressed OK and clicked LAUNCH.

Launching the game took a LOT longer then it takes on my PC, but after a while (must have been no more then 20 seconds) I got the login screen so I entered my login, password and goldcard number. After this it again tok a bit longer then I'm used to on my PC, but after a few seconds I saw PA appear before my eyes . Almost instantly I got a message telling me my system memory is running low and that I should decrease 'avatar quality' or upgrade my system :).

To see what this thing could do I increased the 'avatar quality' from low to medium (don't like the all white avatars) and to my surprise that worked pretty good.

So, I started running around a bit without any trouble or lag what so ever and after a while I used a TP to Orthos and didnt have any trouble with that either.

I will try and do a little hunt sometimes these few days and let you people know how that goes, but from what I can see so far this ION platform from Nvidia is pretty good even for playing EU but a bit more memory wouldn't hurt, but thats only about $50 so thats not really a problem either.

I will also run FRAPS to see what kind of fps I get on this monster :)

 

well Windows 7 Starter is made for netbooks and as far as I know can ONLY be bought on a netbook. It is a striped down version of Windows 7 and runs pretty smooth, but then again the system specs needed for windows 7 are pretty low compared to Vista whatever version you have.

 

these are the minimum system specs needed for Windows 7 (any edition):

• 1 GHz 32-bit or 64-bit processor
• 1 GB of RAM (32-bit) or 2 GB of system memory (64-bit)
• 16 GB of available disk space (32-bit) or 20 GB of avaiable disk space (64-bit)
• DirectX 9 graphics device with WDDM 1.0 or higher driver.

And for netbooks Microsoft has a few rules to:

Not to exceed 10.2″
1 GB RAM
250 GB HDD or 64 GB SDD
Single core processors that do not exceed 2 GHz frequency, and have a CPU thermal design power that is less than or equal to 15 W, not including the graphics and chipset.

 

Update

Today I ran EU fro about 1,5 hours on my netbook. Didn't do much, I walked around a bit TP to a few places and chated with a friend. I have FRAPS installed and it runs at about 13 fps with everything at low and avatar quality on medium.

One think I found out is that the keys on the keyboard are placed a bit weird, I keep missing the space bar and need to look at the board to find the shift key because it is as small as a letter key, but that will take a bit of getting used to I guess.

 

Yes 13 fps is not very good, but it feels different then on a PC and some how 13 fps on the netbook feels better then 25 fps on a PC. I will try some other places to, maybe those are better. I will also play around a bit with settings to see what that does.

No idea about temps, I do know there is a bit of hot air coming out of the side of the netbook.

But at least this netbook is a good choice for those people wanting to check auction and chat a bit with friends in game when they are on the move.