Nvidia ION Netbooks

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Im looking to pick myself up a netbook maybe in the next month or so just for light browsing/msn/music and the odd old game when i want to just lie in bed.

Ive read places that the ION net books can run WoW allright, not amazingly but not too bad, is there any truth to this or would i be better with a slightly faster laptop with a low end graphics chip?

any help would be appreciated, bout £350-£360 budget, not much i know but dont need too powerful a laptop
 
A N450 + Ion2 (16 pipelines) netbook (Acer 532g, Asus1201PN).

The current 1201N has a dual core atom (N330), as well as Ion, but its battery life isn't amazing.

Basically, I'd wait for the Asus Pinetrail to come out. For light gaming, HD playback, and general cocking about, it looks very good.
 
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I wouldn't buy anything with atom single core for any sort of gaming. If it's not going to be used on the road (as Olivier says the battery life isn't great) then the dual core eee pc 1201N is definitely worth a look. Plenty of vids of them running games on youtube.
 
The Ion2 (if I'm correct) comes with two versions, 8 pipelines for the 11'' netbooks, ans 16 pipelines for the 12'' netbooks. That's a marked difference, and the 50% performance increase from the Ion one platform only account for the 16 pipeline. The 8 pipeline Ion2 is actually slower than the current Ion netbooks.

In any case, a netbook for gaming would not be great, I would think WoW / Guid Wars would be just about playable, given the weak processor. The dual core 330 + Ion looks a better match, at the expense of battery life.

So in the end, what's the point of ion2 netbooks? They would perform better than the integrated Intel graphics, but not enough for decent gaming.

If they made dual-core atoms with turbo boost, integrated graphics and Nvidia Optimus, that would be ideal, but that will never happen! Maybe AMD / ATI could fill the gap.

I'm looking at notebooks for the balance between power and mobility (PL30JT), but that's around £600 at least.

I would consider the 1201N for your needs, although I think it's a stretch. Most videos of the 1201N I've seen running WoW are where there is barely anything happening. I wonder how it copes under stress. I think even a light gaming laptop is a stretch for under £400, unless you really don't care about battery life and/or build quality.
 
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