Digital Home Thoughts: Gaming on a Netbook? Surely You Jest!

"I don’t spend a whole lot of time playing games, but I do enjoy playing them. You can’t even get graphics-intensive games to load on most netbooks, but they’re playable on the Mini 311. In this video you can see that Call of Duty 4 plays smoothly on low settings."

The HP Mini 311, though not available yet, is one of the first netbooks that will be released using the Nvidia ION chipset. One of the big draws about ION, aside from potentially offering 1080p video playback, is the 9400M class GPU. While it will not be able to run games with the highest quality settings, it is way faster than the antiquated GMA950 that comes with most netbooks. Way faster. I mean, 3D games no longer look like someone using a slide projector. Notebooks.com even has a video demonstrating Call of Duty 4 to give you a real world example of what you can expect. I doubt that any hardcore gamer would settle for what the HP Mini 311 provides as their primary rig, but being able to start up the occasional game without having to cart around a behemoth is very attractive. At an estimated starting price of $399, there is little reason to pick from the older generation netbooks.