I recently installed STO on an ACER Aspire One netbook (upgraded with 2GB RAM). It was running Win 7 Professional.
The game launched normally, it loaded normally, and I found myself in tactical view. I had lowered the detail to below zero, of course (even used the 'half resolution' option).
The game was, unsurprisingly, unplayable. However, it was not THAT unusable: the graphics stuttered, but a patient (and DESPERATE) person might play.
My question is: could it be possible to add some more options to downgrade graphics requirements on a future patch? It would be totally awesome to be able to play the game on a netbook!
Of course, a new generation of netbooks is about to become available, with dual-core processors and better graphics cards, but it would really warm a lot of people's hearts to run STO on an older netbook.
They'd need to turn it down a lot... and even then, I honestly don't know. Games far older and with far lower requirements than STO run like garbage on even decent netbooks. There is a point where you can't reasonably expect any game to accomodate a system, and a system that's specifically designed to sacrifie gaming and multimedia capabilities in favor of extreme portability is WAY past that point.
Of course, a new generation of netbooks is about to become available, with dual-core processors and better graphics cards, but it would really warm a lot of people's hearts to run STO on an older netbook.
Wait - wouldn't a new generation of processors and cards be able to run the same game better, instead of requiring the devs to invest time into creating reduced options?
A netbook with the Nvidia Ion chipset maybe able to play due to it having a 9400m GPU, the usual intel gma on most netbooks is completely useless for gaming.
See, in Canada, you can get a low price netbook for 230 with tax. You can get a high priced netbook for 300. Let's say the next gen ones will be 300.
I just bought a laptop for cottage season for 350 dollars and it plays STO perfectly.
And yes, netbooks aren't known for graphics.
On a netbook, aka atom based sub 12" book, nope no chance to run sto. But there are a few subnotebooks that can play sto, but they are all in the 800$+ region.
You could get a used m11x off ebay for about 600 with a core 2 duo, and nvidia gt335 graphics card. My buddy has one just like that, It'll rock out crysis at 25 fps on mostly high settings, and its only 11 inches! If your looking for a netbook that games well it may be one of your best options.
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Wait - wouldn't a new generation of processors and cards be able to run the same game better, instead of requiring the devs to invest time into creating reduced options?
Try using this before installing next time
According to this review it can play crysis at 1024x786 at low detail with 17fps http://www.pcpro.co.uk/reviews/laptops/352012/samsung-n510/benchmarks
Even if you could get it loaded, you would need to use pacman graphics and at that point, what would be the point?
http://www.engadget.com/2011/01/06/razer-switchblade-7-inch-pocket-gaming-concept-blows-our-minds/
till something does the job at the size of a netbook we are stuck which is why im considering a xps15
I just bought a laptop for cottage season for 350 dollars and it plays STO perfectly.
And yes, netbooks aren't known for graphics.