Netbook for WOW

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Hi was looking for a netbook to play wow on go with toggle.

Been reading reviews etc and been told 2gb ram best but can seem to find any netbook with this. also seen asus netbook with dedicated graphics, but again been told atom holds this back.

which would you recommend?
 
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most net book chipsets cant handle HD videos so good luck

but the newer ION Nvidia chipset netbook smight be worth a punt but the screen is tiny

try the newer AMD ultra thin laptops instead:D
 
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You can't run WoW properly on a netbook, it's quite a cpu intensive game, more so than it is gpu intensive, while the gpu part of the ION chipset could run WoW the cpu is hopelessly underpowered. I’m afraid you’re going to need something with quite a bit more punch.
 
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Unless there's some super powerful battery out there on a netbook I don't think you'll get 3 hours gaming out of anything. Also when on battery the laptop/netbook will perform a lot lower than it could do from mains power (usually).
 
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i have seen some vids on you tube of netbooks with wow on? dont laptops have very limited batteries tho? i mean i would like to be able to play for like 3 hours atleast
You'll get it to run the old content 'ok' especially the old Azeroth content, but the Burning Crusade stuff will punch it in the guts and the Wrath of the Lich King content will floor it and kick it in the guts, especially if it's busy when you're playing.

As for gaming on a battery, you’d have to customise the power profiles to do this, or run it on a high-power profile (XP doesn't allow much configuration in this regard, and this is what most netbooks run out of the box, although I recommend W7) but I doubt you'll get 3 hours as you're going to be pushing a machine like this to the limit.

It is 'possible' but I don't think you'll have much fun doing this.
 
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most net book chipsets cant handle HD videos so good luck

Web based HD videos like YouTube don't run well but when using software like Media Player Classic 720P stuff plays fine on most netbooks. :)

Oh and playing WoW on a netbook would suxx0r! I guess if you wasn't raiding some netbooks could handle it quite well, raids would be like a slideshow.
 
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i dunno, this video seemed pretty convincing to me, sorry, you guys probably know more then me, but remember he's only using the 1gb of ram and probably has the european version of the netbook with the atom n270, not the n280 which is in the UK version.
 

Aod

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people need to bare in mind that the Atom isn't a very good processor. in fact, the original 1.6GHz Atom is barely any faster than the 900Mhz "celeron Mobile" (pentium M in disguise) it replaced.
 
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see its weird people always tell me that, but for general use my netbook is the fastest computer on the desktop ive ever used
 
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see its weird people always tell me that, but for general use my netbook is the fastest computer on the desktop ive ever used

For basic office tasks, Atom's are quite ok, running windows XP they even seem quite zippy for said basic office tasks, but they are not powerful processors, and their in order execution units really hamper single threaded power a lot. The only reason they seem at all sprightly around a basic windows desktop and MS office environment is because they have hyper-threading, and that sort of environment does not require a particularly powerful single threaded capability, but it does benefit a great deal from basic SMP capability, which is exactly what hyper-threading does.

Don't mistake the 'fair' performance as a basic desktop cpu as decent performance when you need a machine that is required to straight up crunch numbers relatively quickly, which is what WoW or any other game would ask of the cpu, it simply can't process the volume of data in a single thread, that it needs to, quickly enough, it'll get choked up quite easily and then bring the system to a grinding halt.
 
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@markuss

i think the point is that it will be fine running about in fairly empty areas, but as soon as the game gets busy (not really reflected in said video), i.e. instances, cities or raid it will not be particularly playable.
 
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i can get ~3hrs of play from about 75% of the 9cell charge on a lenovo T500 (using the intel gfx, more like 3hrs for 100% charge on ati) you might try the T400 with 9cell, led backlight and the ati 3470 card, probably worth 4hrs or so on a full charge. (this is with cpu locked at 800mhz, fyi - ~4fps with high detail/res on intel gfx in dalaran 14 or so with ati, 40 with full cpu+gfx speed
)

make sure you get a P8xxx cpu, not T, as the extra power draw will hurt battery life a LOT while gaming
 
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For basic office tasks, Atom's are quite ok, running windows XP they even seem quite zippy for said basic office tasks, but they are not powerful processors, and their in order execution units really hamper single threaded power a lot. The only reason they seem at all sprightly around a basic windows desktop and MS office environment is because they have hyper-threading, and that sort of environment does not require a particularly powerful single threaded capability, but it does benefit a great deal from basic SMP capability, which is exactly what hyper-threading does.

Don't mistake the 'fair' performance as a basic desktop cpu as decent performance when you need a machine that is required to straight up crunch numbers relatively quickly, which is what WoW or any other game would ask of the cpu, it simply can't process the volume of data in a single thread, that it needs to, quickly enough, it'll get choked up quite easily and then bring the system to a grinding halt.

thing is theres a video of someone playing hl2 ep2 on high on an aspire revo (dual core atom, ion graphics) on youtube and they have world reflections etc on. how is that possible
 

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thing is theres a video of someone playing hl2 ep2 on high on an aspire revo (dual core atom, ion graphics) on youtube and they have world reflections etc on. how is that possible

remember that HL2 isn't an MMORPG, which are CPU heavy.
 
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