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Crystal A410 Barebone - the MSI way |
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Written by Stuyo
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Thursday, 13 March 2008 |
Page 7 of 9
Page 7 - Games
We decided to test MSI Crystal A410 with few games after all. It relies on integrated ATI video controller, ATI Xpress 200M to be more precise. This as you might know isn't a very powerful video accelerator, but we wanted to check the results with the 2GB of ram and the relatively powerful processor anyway. First we tested with Half Life 2.
The game is a tad old, but it was out about the time of the release of tis chipset. The settings of the game were all on High, with AntiAliasing, Anisotropic Filtering and HDR turned off. These were the results we got at the following resolutions:
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At lower resolutions the game ran just fine, but should you hope on detailed picture, this barebone will surely disappoint you.
After Half Life 2 we tested few more games. In Warcraft III: TFT the game was normal and ran smoothly at 1024x768 with maxed out settings. We also tested World of Warcraft - on lower details and a resolution of 1024x768 it ran fine, still as a heavier game it had some issues. The more interesting thing we did was to test both games with the touchscreen. It might not have be the most handy way, but it sure was fun! The biggest problem was the right button simulation (the best setting for us was to set the 1 second press to be interpreted as right button). Major problem was also the scrolling of the screen in the games, but World of Warcraft was completely playable, though if you play only with mouse (touchscreen in tis case) you won't go much in the battles.
We also tested one new game, Imperium Romanum. We choose it because it was released just when this review was in the making and it is a new game, using new graphic effects and it's a strategy - i.е. one of the "lighter" for the hardware games. Well, we can say it ran, we can also say that if you are calm enough you can play it, but as whole, realistically looking that's not exactly true, not on this configuration at least.
As a conclusion for this paragraph, Crystal A410 could be used for playing games from the recent past, though that's not exactly it's role. But in the role of second computer, should you ever feel the desire to play a little of Warcraft III or the good old Quake 3: Arena - sure, this MSI creation will be just right.
