Gaming on the Intel Atom

chanman

First, some background: Last year, I built myself an Atom 330 machine to mess around with Ubuntu. After I got bored of that (roughly 2 minutes after installation was finished), I loaded it up with Windows XP. This is my secondary PC (my main machine is the Core 2 Duo E8400 that everyone who built a gaming PC circa mid-2008 seemed to end up with).

Before it temporarily ended up as the 'guest internet terminal' in the guest room, I had two PCs, two screens, two keyboards, and two mice sitting on my desktop. My delusions about using it as a work computer lasted about 2 seconds. Reviews of the Atom usually focus on how the anemic processor and even more anemic integrated graphics combined to produce a platform incapable of completing modern benchmarks.

Fair enough. I found the machine almost ideal though for my retro-gaming. Mechcommander, X-Com, Close Combat 3, Warhammer 40,000 Chaos Gate, Alpha Centauri, The Dig, Command and Conquer (original), and Plants vs. Zombies all ran fine on it. My friend's identically configured system somehow manages to run Sid Meier's Pirates!.

Does anyone else bother trying to game on the Atom? Come on now, at least some of you must have netbooks that you have tried squeezing entertainment value from, like blood from a very slow stone.

nescientist

Postin' from an n330 Ion netbook that I've (seriously) been playing Fallout 3 on at playable levels. But I've spent way more time in Civ4... and I've also installed Baldur's Gate 2 & Planescape:Torment on this machine so I'm pretty well set for the forseeable future.

Stormwatcher

Wow, having an Atom on a desktop must hurt.
Well, I don't have an Ion like the dude above, I have an Asus 10" with an Atom, and I have mostly DOSBox games and older windows games. Fortunatelly the shitty GMA950 is perfect for running the "lost" windows games like MechWarrior 3, Crimson Skies and Dungeon Keeper 2.

Turn base stuff and indie/flash games are also good.

chanman

Mmmm Crimson Skies. Yet another game that needs a sequel. I don't have Ion, and I've seen the slowdown in flash games (no joke). That old integrated graphics does have one real benefit when retro-gaming, however. I've had some legacy (Pentium-era) games shit themselves trying to figure out a Core 2 Duo or an nVidia 9600GT, but the Atom is humble enough that they actually run.

slash000

Something I've always wondered was how well the "Netbook Mode" worked in Torchlight. They do, in fact, have a mode specifically for running the game on netbooks. Which I find to be an interesting option though I've never seen it running in practice.

chanman

I've seen it, I haven't been brave enough to try it.

chanman

slash000 wrote: »

Something I've always wondered was how well the "Netbook Mode" worked in Torchlight. They do, in fact, have a mode specifically for running the game on netbooks. Which I find to be an interesting option though I've never seen it running in practice.

I've tried it, and it's quite marginal.

TeeMan

Gog.com is a great place to start because I also play a fair few games on my netbook. If you enjoy point-and-click adventures, these are perfectly suited to netbooks and I've been playing The Longest Journey for a long goddamn time now (as the title aptly suggests) and it's certainly not something I would have played on my desktop.

If you've got a mouse, older FPS's translate pretty well too, in terms of Duke Nukem 3D, Quake and Blood.

Other games that are great to pick up and play are Audiosurf and Beat Hazard off Steam (if you've got an internet connection to work with). A lot of the "Indie" games on Steam work pretty well on my modest netbook.

While we're on the topic actually, can anyone recommend any Metroid-Castlevania-esque games that could work on a netbook? I played a freeware game called Iji not that long ago and it was fantastic.

LoveIsUnity

TeeMan wrote: »

Gog.com is a great place to start because I also play a fair few games on my netbook. If you enjoy point-and-click adventures, these are perfectly suited to netbooks and I've been playing The Longest Journey for a long goddamn time now (as the title aptly suggests) and it's certainly not something I would have played on my desktop.

If you've got a mouse, older FPS's translate pretty well too, in terms of Duke Nukem 3D, Quake and Blood.

Other games that are great to pick up and play are Audiosurf and Beat Hazard off Steam (if you've got an internet connection to work with). A lot of the "Indie" games on Steam work pretty well on my modest netbook.

While we're on the topic actually, can anyone recommend any Metroid-Castlevania-esque games that could work on a netbook? I played a freeware game called Iji not that long ago and it was fantastic.

Cave Story fits the bill in case you haven't played it, and Iji is amazing as you already know.

DiannaoChong

Diablo 2.

I have never gotten torchlight to run properly on a netbook, or any linux machine.

I am limited becuase I still use linux on my netbook, but man: Diablo 2. It's all you need. It's calling you.

Edit: If you like being infuriated, you could try quake live (free online quake 3).

surrealitycheck

You could probably try stuff like Arcanum, Baldur's gate 1 and 2, icewind dale, etc. All those juicy old-fashioned 2d rpgs.

chanman

TeeMan wrote: »

Gog.com is a great place to start because I also play a fair few games on my netbook. If you enjoy point-and-click adventures, these are perfectly suited to netbooks and I've been playing The Longest Journey for a long goddamn time now (as the title aptly suggests) and it's certainly not something I would have played on my desktop.

If you've got a mouse, older FPS's translate pretty well too, in terms of Duke Nukem 3D, Quake and Blood.

Other games that are great to pick up and play are Audiosurf and Beat Hazard off Steam (if you've got an internet connection to work with). A lot of the "Indie" games on Steam work pretty well on my modest netbook.

While we're on the topic actually, can anyone recommend any Metroid-Castlevania-esque games that could work on a netbook? I played a freeware game called Iji not that long ago and it was fantastic.

I've got some of the old Lucasarts adventures from Steam. Audiosurf was... kinda slow for me, but YMMV. I didn't like the control in the Beat Hazard demo though.

Also, Jagged Alliance 2, Majesty, X-Com, Plants vs. Zombies, and Close Combat 3

Also, Jagged Alliance 2,

0blique

Torchlight was very marginal for me, somewhat playable but in the 10-20 fps with all the settings turned down and the low res textures mod. I only have an N270, though, so the newer ones will have better results. I've also gotten Diablo 2 to play well, as well as audiosurf and the monkey island remake.

Stormwatcher

Netbook mode on TL is a bad joke.

Thrack

I built an Atom 330 / Nvidia Ion based Home Theater PC around christmas. It plays blu-rays and 1080p H.264 videos like a champ but I still regret not trying out any games on it before giving it as a gift. I want to know what it's capable of.

Joe K

nescientist wrote: »

Postin' from an n330 Ion netbook that I've (seriously) been playing Fallout 3 on at playable levels. But I've spent way more time in Civ4... and I've also installed Baldur's Gate 2 & Planescape:Torment on this machine so I'm pretty well set for the forseeable future.

An ION is a totally different platform than the Atom, the NVidia graphics processor greatly enables its ability to do ANYTHING graphics related.

I was pretty close to Atom negotiations, and the purposeful restrictions that Intel placed around their GPU were *insane*, and not based in reality. They were very worried about competing against themselves and their larger form factor. I mean, an Atom is enough to run just about every "office" app out there, but you aren't allowed bigger than a 11.2" screen. By Intel's decree.

Juc

I think provided it's an Atom/Ion combo thingy, you're set for most games.

I know we did some testing on an ion/ atom 270 nettop for Mass Effect 2, and it barely ran under our min performance cutoff, I always figured that if we had a dual core one that it'd run the game perfectly fine.

In general I'm pretty impressed by the performance of ion/atom machines, it's incredible bang for your buck.

El Guaco

I started a thread a few months back on this topic (search: netbook gaming). People lost interest after awhile, probably because there's not much to talk about once you realize they're pretty good at playing most games that don't require a recent 3D video card.

Edit: http://forums.penny-arcade.com/showthread.php?t=108146 (There might be some useful info in there.)

chanman

El Guaco wrote: »

I started a thread a few months back on this topic (search: netbook gaming). People lost interest after awhile, probably because there's not much to talk about once you realize they're pretty good at playing most games that don't require a recent 3D video card.

Edit: http://forums.penny-arcade.com/showthread.php?t=108146 (There might be some useful info in there.)

Thanks for that!

One of the things my Atom reminds me of actually, is my departed P3-800 (bought used, and flogged that clunker straight through to 2008) with integrated graphics. The clock speed is faster, and there's 5 times more RAM (384 MB vs 2 GB), but the lack of 3D horsepower and CPU choking past a certain point are very reminiscent of that computer. Might just be time to dust Starsiege and Mechwarrior 3 off again. I do love me some giant bipedal death machines.

TeeMan

El Guaco wrote: »

I started a thread a few months back on this topic (search: netbook gaming). People lost interest after awhile, probably because there's not much to talk about once you realize they're pretty good at playing most games that don't require a recent 3D video card.

Edit: http://forums.penny-arcade.com/showthread.php?t=108146 (There might be some useful info in there.)

Wow, thanks for this too!

edit: especially this link http://gamingbolt.com/2010/01/05/100-games-to-play-on-your-netbook-or-home-computer/