Netbook Network

Although the Eee 1215n sports an Nvidia graphics chip, it’s not necessarily a gaming computer. Previously on Netbook Network was a walkthrough of the 1215n’s exterior – now, we’re going to test its graphics performance. I ran four benchmarks of Half Life 2: Episode 2 and recorded framerates along the way to see how well gaming goes on the machine. Even though it’s still a netbook at heart with its Intel Atom processor, it proves to be quite capable.

Under the hood, the Eee 1215n has an Nvidia ION2, Intel Atom D525 (Dual core, hyperthreaded) @ 1.80 Ghz, and 2GB of RAM. It’s running Windows 7 Professional, and the copy of Half Life 2: Episode 2 came from Steam.

Update: The drivers I used were the stock drivers that came with the device. The new Nvidia 260.99 drivers are far superior, and I’ll have a new post with new benchmarks soon!

The benchmark that I ran was a 3-minute gameplay session. 3 minutes may not seem like very much, but I think I had covered most of what you would see in-game. I ran Episode 2 under both DirectX level 8.1 and 9.1, with the latter being much more graphics intensive. The game was run at 1280×720 in windowed mode. I used Fraps to record my benchmarks, which recorded the framerate at each second onto a spreadsheet – then, I took the spreadsheet and made a graph out of it.

This chart here shows the framerates of Episode 2 under DirectX level 81 (click to enlarge).

For Test 1, I ran the game under Medium settings, no HDR (High Dynamic Range), no AA (Anti Aliasing), and no AF (Anisotropic Filtering). For Test 2, I ran the game under High settings, Bloom ON, 4xAA, and 4xAF. The latter test is definitely a little harder on the graphics card.

So it turns out that I got an average framerate of about 15-30. It’s definitely playable, and even pretty smooth in some cases. It appears that putting less strain on the graphics card gets you a more variable framerate, while putting more strain on the graphics card gets you a more stable framerate. Test 1 had a higher framerate on average than Test 2, which is expected, but the difference isn’t noticeable. The thing about DirectX 8.1 is that the game is a lot less pretty, but you don’t lose that much quality. Some people won’t even notice the difference between DirectX 8.1 and DirectX 9.1, so what the above benchmark proves is that the 1215n is definitely capable of gaming. Maybe not as smoothly as a gaming PC, but it’s definitely capable of playing stuff at decent framerates.

I changed the game to run under DirectX 9.1 (which looks much better than DirectX 8.1), and here are the results.

The framerate in these benchmarks varied a lot less than the framerate using DirectX 8.1. I’ve got the same setup: in Test 1, I have Medium settings, no HDR, no AA, and no AF. For Test 2, I’ve got High settings, Bloom ON, 4xAA, and 4xAF. It’s quite clear (as shown in the chart) that Test 2 is harder to render.

With DirectX 9.1, I seem to have gotten an average framerate somewhere between 10-20 FPS. It’s still playable, but it’s not very smooth. What it proves, however, is that the Eee 1215n is capable of playing games at pretty high settings. It may not be smooth, but it’s definitely capable. Do keep in mind that the 1215n is a netbook, not a gaming machine – the results I have above are actually quite impressive.

Well, there we have it. The 1215n has proven to be a pretty good multimedia machine, capable of playing modern games at pretty good graphics. It should satisfy most light gamers looking for a machine that is cheap and easy to carry around, but those who are looking to play things like Crysis will have to look elsewhere. I’m going to put up some more benchmarks soon of some other games – Source Engine isn’t the only game engine on the planet!