The Glade 4.0

Picked up an ASUS Eee 1215n yesterday for portability. (Intel Atom D525 dual core w/hyperthreading, 2GB RAM, 250GB HDD, nvidia ION2 switchable graphics using "Optimus" tech.) They call it a "Netbook" due to its size and battery life, but...it's really more of a sub-notebook. Still, at $485, it seemed like a good dea. I expected it would run some older games on medium settings.

Turns out it runs a lot more. I'm getting 20fps on Dragon Age: Origins with the graphical detail maxed (Although I'm not maxing AA/AF) running at 1366x768.

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Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
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Wow, Ive been eyeing that badboy for a while now, I cant seem to find the old SU chipsets netbook's anywhere anymore

Figured could do WoW no issues and maybe some TFT2, but Dragon age at 20 FPS? Think ya got me sold on my first netbook

I heard some pretty awful things about battery life on it? 4-6 hours on it? Less more?

Battery Life is about 6 hours for regular surfing or application use at half screen-brightness. The moment the Ion2 kicks in (gaming or HD video will generally force it to switch away from the intel integrated chip), you're looking at 3 hours, tops. While this isn't spectacular, the previous 1201N, which had less horsepower than the 1215, couldn't turn off the discrete graphics, so had a max of 3 hours. This is a big improvement.

Dragon Age, on more intensive tryouts, doesn't maintain that framerate at those settings. Heavy action slows it to a crawl. Still, it's very playable on medium settings 1280x720, which for a netbook, is wonderful. Source engine games (HalfLife2 and Portal) run absolutely maxed. This is no surprise, given their age, but this little thing is no slouch. Haven't managed to install SC2 yet - without an optical drive i'm relying on blizzard's download app, which will take a while.

The keys on the keyboard are nearly full sized. I don't suffer any appreciable drop in my touch typing speed.

SetFSB lets me overclock the CPU from 1.8GHz to 2.2GHz without any change in voltage or heat generation. More than 2.2GHz gets unstable. I haven't bothered testing GPU overclocking, since just about every 3D app i've tried is CPU limited.

The D525 Atom is not slow at what it's designed for. If you want to do any video or audio encoding, this is not the computer for you. Irritatingly (first time setup issue only), installation of apps uses the same type of math that encoding uses, it would seem. Installations are slow...once you get past them, it runs quite well.

My lone complaints (but I'd heard about these before, and decided I could live with them. This is just a verification that the complaints are legit) - The keyboard has a bit of 'give' or 'flex' to it, it could be more solid. Also, with something this portable, I don't approve of the glossy screen. Sunlight will make even this very bright LED-backlit screen hard to read. Also, the viewable angle on the screen is very narrow, especially vertically. If you don't tilt it at your face properly, forget viewing it.

I'm a little confused by this sudden appearance of 1366x768 LCD screens. It's not exactly 16:9. 1360x765 would be 16:9. It's a tiny difference (something akin to 16.01:9), but it's still an odd choice.

_________________
Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

Probably as a widescreen evolution of 1024x768.

Awesome, thanks Talya!

Thats exactly what I wanted, think you just sold me on it. Being able to play TFT2 at work, and other Source games, would work for me!

I agree with you on the 1366 x 768 crap, Im so sick of seeing those and pushing them as 16:9

Playing HalfLife2 now --for the first time ever-- on this little beast. Maximum resolution, maximum eye-candy (although I did leave anti-aliasing disabled. On a 12" monitor with this resolution, do you think it would help things look any better?) Sure, the game's several years old, but it's pretty and the framerates never stutter. Seems like a good way to experience halflife2 for the first time.

_________________
Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █