Everquest on a netbook

I've got a netbook in my bedroom that I usually use for browsing and older programs that won't work on Windows x64. It's one of those mid-range ones, with the hyperthreading Atom, 1GB RAM and Intel graphics.

I've got Doom and a few other games on here, but nothing I can just pick up and putz around on for an hour or two before bed. You know, something more involved and social than Peggle. I was considering putting Everquest on this machine, since it's now F2P and it's one of the few big MMOs that would actually run well on this netbook. Or is it?

What do you guys do for netbook gaming?

It depends on how your integrated graphic card deals with graphic acceleration.

How well can my netbook run Everquest?

Depends on how well your netbook can run Everquest.

Thank you for your invaluable input.
For the record, it's an Intel GMA 3150.

I dual-boot DOS on mine and run Doom and a bunch of other DOS games (Tyrian and Blood come to mind). I can also use it to play with thumbs even though it's friggin' hard.

Bucket said:

Thank you for your invaluable input.
For the record, it's an Intel GMA 3150.

Thank you for your sarcasm. Now that I know more about your graphic acceleration, I can tell you good luck for running anything more demanding than Quake III Arena.

You mean the game that came out 9 months after Everquest? Sounds about right.

Also, Intel GMA has the advantage of ten years of advancement in acceleration and shader technology compared to what Q3A was being run on in its day. I would guess that counts for something.

It's a crapshoot, really. You have pretty much the CPU power of a Pentium III, and a graphics card which is only good for up to DirectX 7 or OpenGL 1.1 games and offers the "acceleration" of exactly zero texture and pixel pipelines for 3D stuff.

Some games (even Football Manager!) may refuse to start entirely depending on how video memory is managed/allocated on your particular netbook.

The only way to find out is to install Everquest (or a demo) and try it out. If it runs at all, it will run very slowly as the (weak) CPU tries to make up for the missing OpenGL/Direct3D acceleration.

Bucket said:

You mean the game that came out 9 months after Everquest? Sounds about right.

Also, Intel GMA has the advantage of ten years of advancement in acceleration and shader technology compared to what Q3A was being run on in its day. I would guess that counts for something.

Actually, I thought that when you talked about Everquest f2p there was only the game derived from EQ2. So, now you have your answer isn't it?

Still, being disrespectful with someone trying to answer your questions isn't very smart. Couldn't we have a normal social interaction please?

Bucket said:

Also, Intel GMA has the advantage of ten years of advancement in acceleration and shader technology compared to what Q3A was being run on in its day. I would guess that counts for something.

You mean it came 10 years after, but that doesn't mean that it will have better acceleration than ANY video card made before that date, or, for that matter, even a video card made before 2000: check out the specs, with its two unified shaders in total it might be better than a first-gen GMA, but it would barely hold a candle to even to a Riva TNT2, and would be totally incomparable to even a first-generation Ati Radeon or nVidia 4.

Why even ask us? Just install the game and see if it's playable.

I find it difficult to compare the performance of weak, new cards to old cards because they often focus on different things. An olde Rage 128 Pro might run some old games better than a new GMA, but it will suck trying to draw the Windows XP desktop (I've done this, sadly). I suspect 8 MB is just not enough memory for however Windows buffers desktop GUI elements. :D

I know from experience that at least on XP, the Desktop can work in a pure framebuffer mode, e.g. having just enough video RAM to hold a given resolution and color depth, and not much more. Acceleration is still possible even with these constraints (e.g. color fills, some limited BITBLT operations, even with ancient VESA drivers) but yeah, don't expect e.g. video overlay to work smoothly.

That being said...I've used a PCI Ati Rage Pro 128 with 4 MB in an Athlon 939 mobo with a bad AGP/PCIe slot: it worked, video was displayable but with a ridiculous CPU usage (50% instead of a fraction required).

Maes said:

You mean it came 10 years after, but that doesn't mean that it will have better acceleration than ANY video card made before that date,

I find that's usually true... on a short timeline. When I traded in my GeForce 7800GT for an 8600GT, that was a waste of money. But my newer laptops run Doom 3 noticeably faster than my "high end" rig did at launch time.

Well, in the case of an 8600 vs a 7800 it was (pardon) a rushed move: the mid-range models (-600 series) of the next gen almost never outperformed the high-end (-800 series) of the previous gen.

But the Intel GMA is a wholly different beast...actually nope, not even a beast: more like a scared runt among big beasts and mini-beasts (which can still rip it to shit at anytime).

Apparently, SOE recently released a patch making it impossible to play EQ1 on a netbook. Not the game itself, mind you, but the game launcher. It refuses to start without a minimum resolution of 1024x768. Some people are saying that if you can manage to increase the resolution temporarily (I can't) then you can play the game normally. The other option is to attach an external monitor to play - which negates any reason I had to put the game on the netbook in the first place.

Good job, Sony.

EDIT: And now this thread is the 2nd Google result for "everquest netbook won't start". Another indication of how helpful SOE has been about this issue.

Bucket said:

EDIT: And now this thread is the 2nd Google result for "everquest netbook won't start". Another indication of how helpful SOE has been about this issue.

Do you use a Google account? It tends to fit the results depending on your history.

So I got EQ working on another machine, and... oh my lord...

This is the most horrible UI I've seen in a game ever. It's an obtuse and cluttered mess of endless buttons. I remember playing EQOA on the PS2 and I don't remember it being nearly as bad. In fact, that game was downright spartan compared to this. I've looked around, and it looks like there's a community of people who spend as much time playing the game as they do creating custom interfaces. Even if I did download one of those things, I'd still have to change the whole control scheme to account for my touchpad or lack of numpad.

OK, I think I need a different game.

ROCK & LOAD
COCK BEEN BLOWED
IN YOUR MOUTH,
MANJUICE EXPLOAD

There aren't a lot of ancient MMOs you can still play. You could always play Meridian 59. :p

Oh crap, I completely forgot I had a copy of Guild Wars. It's not really up my alley, but it'll be much more forgiving on this hardware. I'll go find my external DVD drive and give it a shot...

you can always check out Ashen Empires.