Wishful Thinking: WoW On A Netbook
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iTZKooPA on Thursday, April 23, 2009 - 21 Comments Tags: computers that play wow, laptops, mini-notebook, nc10, netbook, no more soup for you, notebook, open challenge, video cards, wireless computing, wishful thinking
iTZKooPA on Thursday, April 23, 2009 - 21 Comments Tags: computers that play wow, laptops, mini-notebook, nc10, netbook, no more soup for you, notebook, open challenge, video cards, wireless computing, wishful thinking 
It's been nearly four years since I put my last laptop to pasture. Although my trusty HP Pavilion dv5000 has treated me very well, it is showing its age thanks to Wrath's slight bump in system requirements. You may recall that many Apple machines were nixxed as supported systems thanks to their choice of Intel's GMA950 on-board video solution. It turns out that the once sexy card in my dv5000 (ATi Xpress 200m) is on the cusp of inadequacy. The hulking laptop can still play WoW at an almost acceptable framerate, so long as I don't mind a level of detail dating back to years gone by. A laggy and crappy looking 1024x768 presentation just doesn't cut it for this gaming snob.
The age and capabilities of the dv5000 isn't the only reason that I have begun shopping around though. The laptop market has become the new focus of computer companies high and low thanks to consumer desires. It's a radically different market than it was two years ago thanks to the influx of R&D dollars. And lately, an entirely new market has sprung forth, the "Netbook" line. If you aren't a technogeek, fret not, a Netbook isn't some new toy or technology that you will be forced to use or follow (hello Twitter). It's a sub-category of the laptop market that combines the wireless connotations of the internet with a very small laptop.
I know what you're thinking. How can I expect a netbook, a machine designed with low battery consumption in mind and target capabilities of e-mailing and websurfing, to run World of Warcraft? It's quite simple really, if you check the latest line of netbooks, nearly all of them sport a mobile version of the GMA950 that is superior to the original release. So getting barebones support of WoW is certainly not out of the question. In fact, some models sport GPUs on the level of the Xpress 200m, but fail in other aspects. As consumers its our job to tell companies what we want, and although I am just one customer, I am one customer that can explicitly tell you what he wants and knows how realistic those requests are.
So ASUS, Acer, HP, Samsung, Apple, are you listening? Because here it is: I want a netbook that can run games from five years ago at a good clip. I want a netbook with a 92%, or larger, size keyboard with a minimum resolution of 1024x768. But, it must remain capable of a solid battery life (4+ hours). Why not just get one of your beefier - weight and power - laptops? Because that isn't what I want.
Let your engineers play with the integrated chipsets from Intel and the mobile versions of discrete cards from Nvidia (hello ION) and ATi. Lord knows they want to, tinkering is in their nature. I understand that the battery will be eaten alive while playing those games, that isn't the issue. Just make use of the mobile chipsets that disables the power hungry components of said devices when they aren't in use. The flash videos on ProjectLore.com do not require 3D rendering components to be on. Oh, and I certainly understand if this mild "gaming" netbook is a bit more expensive than the other offerings.
My request is not outlandish or unrealistic in any way. This episode of wishful thinking can be realized if some company puts in the research to create a netbook that is superior to a better-than-average laptop from four years ago. I would never want to "upgrade" to a laptop that can't actually do something the old guy can. I'm chomping at the bit for my desires to be realized simply because we are so close to that point. As it stands now the ASUS EE PC 1000HE is in my sights with its stellar battery life and 2GB max RAM, but that GMA950 pisses on my excitement. Why couldn't they have rolled with a X3100?!^one*()
Sorry for the ++nerd in this post, but the topic has been on my mind a lot lately. I will be doing some serious traveling over the summer and obviously my laptop - whichever it may be - will be coming with me. While any machine will allow me to write and browse the web, how could I live without my WoW? Just look at pixiestixy.
Reader Comments (21)
i facing pretty much the same dilemma, the idea of carrying around a nice 10-12inch netbook that can play wow like candy makes me drool. especially for guys like me that travel 6 months out of the year.
Jesus, do you research/analyze everything in your life to this level?
BRONZE PLEACE
I play WoW on my laptop and i havent had any lagg and its from 2007 :p
I've played on my Wind. Just don't expect to raid, go to Dalaran, play BG's, or set graphics above the lowest.
Got 12-14 FPS in Ironforge, 16-18 while questing, but 2-4 in Dalaran.
You wouldn't want to play on it for very long due to keyboard size and screen size, but it is more than capable for checking the AH, hitting a couple dailies, etc.
Oh, and my Wind is running OS X, so it was the Mac version of WoW. I'm not sure how the Windows version would do, but have no reason to believe it would be any different.
I have an Acer Aspire One and use it to check my auctions/mail when i don't feel like booting up my desktop machine for just a few minutes. All settings are on minimum but i don't have any lag in Dalaran which is reasonable for me since it's middle of the road as far as the specs go.
Ok all the technical specs kinda went over my head but i play on a laptop and i haven't had any problems with lag or graphics.
(well i say no problems but i do lagg if running background stuff but that's an internet problem and my graphics card has a glitch that keeps causing the screen to freeze up)
I have a laptop dating back to 2008, so not that old just over a year or so now. And i have no major problems within SW,IF,etc, But yes Dalaran does take my fps down to basically sometimes i cannot move. BG's are fine for me with the exception of wintergrasp due to the fact that so many players play, mind you its fine early hours of the morning, when less players are on obviously.
Alliance get lag bad ( my main faction) but i believe horde get it even worse, having spoken to a few RL friends who play horde. . And i do always got one spike of bad lag, which is as i am heading to the final boss in UK, whereby you can mount up and down the long path, there is always where i am left behind. But apart from that. It is all good.
Next expansion though Dalaran, will most probably improve for people with low fps. As a new major city will be built, I am guessing.
I still play on my G4 Powerbook Pro Mac laptop. At this point it is quite old, and I run with almost all settings at minimum. It still works fairly well, although in 25 man instances on bosses my framerate will go down quite a lot, so button mashing to make sure my skills are actually used will happen more often than not. Still, everything is playable and I've been successful in many raids. Luckily I'm mainly a dps so I won't get screwed if I can't get off a heal fast enough or grab aggro fast enough because of a tiny bit of lag or slow framerate.
Bought myself an Acer Aspire 6920g a while ago. WoW works great on it with most gfx settings on max / medium. Me mate used to play on the laptop and me on my own computer, he could easily raid / pvp / quest etc with it.
You know I think a mac might work for you because Mac's last very long and are very fast running WoW ( I have one as my desktop) I think the only problem is that its cant play that many games like Warhammer and Age of Conan , although WoW is enough for me
I am running on a HP DV2000 from about a year ago and I do perfectly fine in all places except Dalaran, the bane of my wow exsistance. Drop down to about 1FPS there on most nights, morning times are okay though.
Pff I play 1024x768 and I like it.
I use an Acer Aspire 6920 and I have the game run on near highest settings.
The one thing is it is Windows Vista and has a Realtek chipset for audio. The problem with this is Realtek on Vista causes massive memory leaks and so I am getting my old computer up and running so I can run vent on it and have no memory leaks since I won't have audio on my laptop.
i get 56 while in dalaran......and my graphics are at ultra and my graphics card is only decent
I dont like to play on my lappy cause it tends to roast my nuts
I just bought the Acer Aspire One notebook and I am so happy with it. It runs SO FAST. This is a little notebook with a beautiful crisp picture, fast speed, and a lot of memory. It took a long time to reload all the game, patches, etc., 2 days. But, it is worth it. This is a whole new fast experience for me. I bought a Plantronics headset/microphone and it sounds great. I plan to plug in my old monitor and mouse for playing WOW.
But, one of the best things: AT&T wireless that does not drop a connection. This is way faster than Comcast, and I was not expecting that. Sorry for rattling on, but I am so jazzed. Thanks, :-)
Love my Alieware Area 51 lap. I need 2G more of memory but other than that it's golden.
The Nvidia's Ion platform is a motherboard with support for Atom that runs at lower power then Intels G945 solution.
With a dual core atom and the Ion platform, you should be able to get playable WoW on a netbook. If any manufacters out there take advantage of the SLI capabilities of it though, you could add in a discreet graphics card, like the 9500m and run it in SLI with the Ion 9400 and it should even be acceptable at high settings at 1024x768 resolution.
For me, that would be ideal, as the Hybrid SLI will power off the discreet card while I'm just using the internet, so battery power can still be 4+ hours easily, and if I want to game, I can get acceptable performance from the discreet card.
Either way, I'm eagerly awaiting Ion based systems with a dual core Atom processor. You get just the right combination of battery life (8 hours should be easy on this platform) and with the 9400 (which is onboard, not discreet), a nice bit of graphics performance that will do 1080p video, which NEEDS to have an HDMI connector on it, and a built in IR port would be nice. Also, XP Media Center at least for the OS.
I'm holding out for the Nvidia Ion like the above poster. I think it will out-perform the current netbooks.
It seems current netbooks can run WoW on all the lowest settings, but I'd rather have a little more "oomph" that the Nvidia Ion will provide.