Getting Busy with the Chromebook: A Gaming Experience

The Chromebook was put to the test by running several popular games and emulators, including Asphalt 9 and Crash Bandicoot. The results were mixed, with some games performing admirably while others struggled to run smoothly. The Chromebook's performance metrics revealed that it is CPU-bound, not GPU-bound, which explained why some games ran better than expected.

Playing Asphalt 9 was a particularly challenging experience for the Chromebook. Despite being stuttery and not running well, it was still playable. However, as a game of high expectations, it fell short in terms of performance and overall gaming experience. On the other hand, Crash Bandicoot, which is often considered one of the more demanding games for emulators, ran surprisingly smoothly.

A 3Dmark Slingshot benchmark, which tests the capabilities of mobile processors, revealed that the Chromebook's performance was comparable to a high-end smartphone. This led the author to try emulation on their device, with RetroArch being the first emulator to be successfully launched. However, issues persisted, including getting the Xbox controller working, and the author had to resort to yelling at the software before eventually resolving the problem.

In the end, the author managed to get a PS1 game running using RetroArch, which ran smoothly considering its limitations. The display was small, but the author noted that settings could be adjusted to improve performance. With the launch of a more demanding game, Gran Turismo 2, it became clear that the Chromebook's capabilities were being pushed to their limits.

The final hurdle in testing the Chromebook's gaming prowess was GeForce Now, a popular cloud gaming service. To the author's surprise, GeForce Now ran smoothly on the Chromebook, even when streamed over Wi-Fi, which is often a bottleneck for such services. The performance was surprisingly responsive and the output looked reasonable. Plugging the device into an Ethernet connection did not seem to make any significant difference.

The author concludes that the Chromebook can actually produce a decent gaming experience with GeForce Now, despite its limitations. This is particularly notable considering the general perception of Chromebooks as being underpowered devices. The fact that they could handle modern games like Gran Turismo 2 suggests that the hardware may be more capable than expected.

In light of these findings, the author reflects on how affordable and accessible gaming options can become with modern technology. They note that for half the price of an Apple machine with 8GB of RAM, one can get a device that can game relatively well. This highlights the rapidly changing landscape of mobile technology and the blurring of lines between devices.

The author concludes their video by thanking viewers for watching and inviting them to subscribe for more content. They acknowledge that this was just a fun experiment and encourage others to try running different games on their own Chromebooks.

WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: entoday in another episode of dawid does dumb sarcasm which a lot of you seem to  miss and then get weirdly triggered by for some reason we're gonna have a look at a  laptop that i bought new from best buy for less than a hundred dollars and then we're  gonna do the only thing i know how to do with it we're gonna try and game on itthe seller took the time to use tamper evident tape which  i mean isn't all tape closing a box technically tamper evident but anyway let's open it upwow never mind that tampering is evident hey it's a lenovo again hashtag definitely not sponsored  that that bit wasn't sarcasm by the way now obviously for less than a hundred dollars  we're getting a chromebook which i don't know if that really counts as a real laptop but i  guess that's something for the galleries to find out in the comment section down below  now this little lenovo chromebook is interesting because it's got a cpu in it that's not by intel  or amd and then we've got four gigs of ram 64 gigs of emmc memory and we've got some  integrated graphics in that non-intel amd cpu and also we get a frankly massive 11.6 inch hd displayoh look at how cute this little 45 watt power brick is and that's one of the massive advantages  of a chromebook because everything's so low powered you can make everything teeny weeny and  super portable and then we have the mickey mouse air power plug again it's so littlehow the hell did this only cost a hundred dollars this is such a cute little laptop  wow that feels rugged as helloh it's such a cute well-made feeling little device for something that costs  less than the tax on a lot of new graphics cards io is apple limited but at least this  doesn't cost eight thousand dollars generally there's a nice mixture of textures even the  little chrome logo is rubberized and feels pretty cool which is very impressive because  for a hundred dollars even if this was made out of used bits of tissue paper i wouldn't really mind  much does not pass the one hand open test you know it kind of looks like a tiny macbookthe keystrokes bottom out quite hard but that is a very reasonable feeling  keyboard actually damn especially again for a hundred dollar device we do have a very  glossy reflective screen brightness may be an issue and like visibility in  in well-lit rooms but we'll see that a bit later we even get this very useful full back hinge  thing that turns it into like a tablet with a keyboard glued to the backyou know even the texture of the trackpad isn't that bad we've got top firing speakers and then of  course we have the standard lenovo hentai begone webcam blocker thing and then on the back we don't  have any ventilation but you know it's because it's a chromebook it puts out less warmth than  the soul of an nvidia exec which i think is a good point to bring up the specs this little lenovo  chromebook is based around a mediatek mt8183 which is an arm-based soc which in mediatek's own  words is an entry chromebook platform that is real promising for the gaming performance of this thingnow for those of you that like to see laptop nudes you're going to be a bit disappointed  because i just couldn't get it open i undid all the screws and then started tugging and  squeezing and pushing while trying to pry the bottom off it felt like  there were hidden screws i couldn't access without breaking something  and i didn't want to hurt the poor little device and even if i did get it open it wouldn't have  made any difference because everything inside is soldered down this really is like a little macbookand right there we can see a very reasonable use case for this little chromebook a little kiddo  book now considering that this is a chromebook meaning it's essentially a cell phone in a  different form factor it means we're gonna have to go about gaming on it a little differently  so let's do it in phases starting off with just going onto the play store and seeing  what basically phone games we can run on it mobile gaming the first one to show up is subway surfers  i cannot believe that's still a thing i actually remember watching other kids play this on their  cell phones while i was at school this has been around for a very long time when i first loaded  into subway surfers it took me a while of shouting at the settings screen to figure out that i had to  use the touch screen to play the game oh okay there we go i am very dumb and after trying to  make excuses for my terrible gameplay okay touch screen's a bit hit or miss i'm not gonna lie  so is the hit detection apparently ah i decided i really like subway surfers okay that sucks let's  not play any more of that next i tried out roblox which doesn't count as a mobile game i don't think  but it runs natively on the device so i do what i want wow here's a very poorly rated spider-man  simulator i feel like i have to try that one now i may never have been in new york before but i can  tell that this is a very realistic depiction of new york i have to buy the gauntlet that  seems like pay to win that person just paid to win with their mom's credit card very nice  unfortunately when things get busy the chromebook starts chugging it's not quite stab bamboo in your  eyes to make it stop bad but unless you're playing emptier game modes it doesn't run very well  well from the performance metrics we can see that we're clearly cpu bound and not gpu bound  if i play it like this it actually works better than using a mouse or keyboardnow a game like asphalt 9 um doesn't run particularly well like it's quite stuttery  it's definitely usable but it's not what i'd call a great gaming experience at all  and just to put the performance of this little soc into perspective i ran the only  compatible 3dmark benchmark slingshot and got this result which is about 20  as fast as a high-end smartphone which immediately made me want to try some emulation on it  initially getting retro arch to launch was really easy but everything beyond that was quite a  struggle for example the only way i could get the xbox controller working with the chromebook was  by actually plugging it in that isn't retroarch's fault but i just wanted to complain about it but  anyway after some mild shouting i eventually got a ps1 game running okay after many hours  of struggling i finally got retro arch running and crash bandicoot is running very nicely now  considering how in the middle of the display the game is it does feel a bit like we're gaming on a  casio digital watch but there are settings to fix that which i'll change while i switch over to a  more demanding ps1 game oh yeah look at that gran turismo 2 action i mean it's running the crap out  of these ps1 games which brings us to the final hurdle all chromebooks must face geforce now hmm  so it's been loading for about 10 minutes now feel like that's a reasonable point to back outdamn this little chromebook can actually run geforce now in a way that doesn't  make it feel like the device i'm gaming on is mid heavy drug bingethat is actually reasonably responsive and it doesn't look like complete garbage we don't have  heavy artifacting going on what makes it even more impressive is that it's just over the wi-fi we  haven't even plugged it into ethernet yet normally with this kind of device streaming geforce now  over the wi-fi looks like it's streaming at 140p but this is way better does it get better  if we plug it into the internet i don't know if anything using the dongle ethernet makes it worse  but it's basically the same really surprisingly usable let's try another game now of course  we need to try fortnite which in my previous experience is one of the better running geforce  now games it's a little stuttery but it's not too bad and in terms of like input lag and stuff  it it feels pretty good the display is very small though so ah yeah fortnight it's not a  great gaming experience you know like it's gonna be harder to see players at a distance and stuff  and the unfortunate thing about geforce now and it being a game streaming service is that its  performance very much depends on where you live which means it doesn't really apply to everybody  which which is a shame but putting that aside i am so impressed with how well this little media tech  entry level soc is running this game streaming because i've seen celeron based chromebooks  really struggle with it and with that what did we learn in today's video well for half the price  apple charges for eight gigs of ram you can get like a mini macbook that can kind of game which  is pretty cool and that brings me to the end of the video thank you for watching if you enjoyed  it consider watching another one a suggestion will pop up in a second and until the next video byeyou