Netbooks Are Losing Steam?

[DamageX]

Although I'm not a Mac user, I would have to agree that the iBook G4 12" is a nice form factor. A 14" laptop is bigger than what I need (it's true I have small hands) yet I much prefer a proper 4:3 12" screen over the shorter 16:9 screens that all the netbooks have. Also the integrated graphics in netbooks is usually pretty weak. I have a 12" NEC laptop (Versa S820) with a Pentium M and ATI graphics. It weighs less than 3lbs and I can take it to my brother's and play Half-life 2 deathmatch over WLAN.

[DamageX]

I'm not much of a gamer, but I did a couple of months of WoW on a laptop with an Intel 945 chipset back in 2006 or so, and it ran nice and smooth with the quality settings turned up pretty high.  I'm sure games are more hardware intensive than they were then, but I imagine integrated graphics are more powerful as well.  Ideal? Probably not.  Usable? Most likely.

I heard that Intel is just now coming out with a chipset that works with Atom so they can finally ditch the 945. The problem with the 945 and Intel graphics in general is the very low polygon counts. The fastest version of the 945 can't handle as many triangles as a GeForce 2 (decade-old hardware). So it isn't just a matter of having to turn down the detail level or use a lower resolution, games with complex models will have low framerates at any resolution, even games that are now pretty old. Intel offered discounts to manufacturers who bought their CPUs if they bought their crappy graphics as well. The proliferation of crappy graphics reduced the number of choices available on the market for those of us who would prefer to have something that performs at least as well as a mid-range desktop card from several years ago. It is something I find frustrating.

[DamageX]

If intel really marketed video chips and developed them as much as they could, with their chip fabrication capabilities nvidia and ati would have a tough time competing.

Riiiiight... I'll believe that when I see it.

there are several posts here that talk about performance etc. that are totally missing the point of netbooks it was aimed at them.

Just because netbooks are not focused on performance doesn't mean we can't talk about their (lack of) performance in comparison with other products.

The main problem with this chipset and modern games is shaders, not polygon pushing power. the 945 does not have shaders so any game that needs wont work.

You don't know what you're talking about. For all it's worth, GMA950 "supports" shader model 3. The question is not why it can't run modern games, the question is why it can't even run older games at a playable speed, and the answer which I already pointed out is polygon count. GMA950: 10Mtriangles at best, GeForce 2 MX: 17Mtriangles.

[DamageX]

Intel has far more and better chip fabrication facilities than nvidia, ati, and matrox combined.

lol, especially considering that nVidia has TSMC manufacture their parts and AMD spun off their manufacturing operations.

no hardware t&l

Exactly. It's missing a decade-old feature. That's my whole point.
http://www.notebookcheck.net/Intel-Graphics-Media-Accelerator-950.2177.0.html

[DamageX]

lol you are dancing around my point.

I don't know what your point is. I stated that polygon counts are a serious weakness of Intel's graphics and you contradicted me.

this doesn't mean they are incapable, incompetant of whatever.

No, you're right, I'm sure Intel has the resources to be competitive at a higher level in the graphics market. But they aren't doing it, instead they have been flooding the market with cheap low-end products. If their integrated graphics is good enough for you, that's fine, but I would rather avoid it because I believe the other vendors' parts are better. I don't play that many PC games, but I play Half-life 2 and some other source-engine games and these old Intel parts without transform & lighting just don't get the job done. I had a laptop with the 915 chipset which is almost the same thing and most maps would run really slow. Maybe the 400Mhz version of the 945 would just barely suffice, but it is not clear which laptops (if any) have the 400Mhz version as opposed to the lower clocked versions. Further, since it is made with the old 130nm manufacturing process it would also be less efficient than something like a GeForce Go 7300.

I think the Pentium M was a great CPU for small laptops and I was just annoyed at the time that so many of them were stuck with the GMA 900 for graphics. That's why I have to rant about it, you see.