Let’s face it, if you’re looking to play PC games, your best solution is to build your own rig. Gaming laptops are over priced and turn obsolete very quickly. Also it’s a no brainer that your everyday netbook would have a hard time running a basic game let alone a big shot title. However things have changed in recent months, AMD acquired ATI and decided to make a little something called an APU.

APU stands for Accelerated Processor Unit, the way it works is that a CPU has accelerated processing with the help of an integrated GPU, it is very efficient in power and in the same time pushing enough power to play 3D games with impressive results. That’s where this little netbook comes in, HP Pavilion dm1 is running one of these new APUs, while it doesn’t look the part it does have enough potential to be an entry level gaming machine for those who can’t afford a big rig or just need a tiny and capable machines for their travels (it is a mere 2000 AED, by the way).

Graphical Power:

For a netbook its size, the dm1 has an AMD dual core 1.6 ghz processor combined with an AMD Radeon 6310M GPU as a heart. Tests prove that this combination is able to play Left 4 Dead 2 on high with a constant 40 fps, and I personally had some hands on playing Prince of Persia: Forgotten sands on it with no problem. If this little netbook can run these games with little to no effort, that would mean there’s a large library of games to go through.

Flexibility:

Tiny 11.6″ 720p (1280 x 720 pixels) 1366 x 768 pixel screen does have it’s merits, but in the same time can be a little inconvenient to some. the dm1 however has an hdmi port so you can plug it to a larger screen and enjoy 1080p for both your games and your videos, that’s something that even consoles seem to struggle with.

bear in mind that this is still a tiny netbook, so we are not expecting it to be able to run something like Crysis (but we’ll still try), but we are sure that there’s a big library of games to get you going. As you may well know, that we don’t review laptops and computers on Lochal Archade, we do however have a more interesting take for this netbook. What we are planning to do is make a list of games that the netbook can run, we will have intensive testing to see what are the optimum settings in order to run games  at a playable performance on the dm1.

You can help too! suggest the games that you want us to test on the machine, and we will give it a thorough run through and see if it plays well and what settings were we using to make the game run smoothly.

We are now using a different netbook of the same specs (only modified) to see what the hardware can really do, check it out here

Mohammad AlHuraiz

Founder, editor and host of Lochal Archade. Mohammad has been running Lochal Archade for years and working hard in bringing video game-related content to the UAE and the Middle East as a whole.

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Previews

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