:c Who knows when were going to get good drivers. Even the 9xxSSF Intel graphics modding community wont help us; not enough people either own the GMA3600 or make enough commotion about the poor drivers provided. My little Acer Aspire One D270 is unfortunately stuck with a GMA3600 that HAS potential, but no good drivers.
I hear you. In regard to the 'potential' of the GMA 3600 chip, I believe Nexuiz (and maybe Xonotic) is the best example of what a Cedar Trail netbook is capable of. I can turn up model and texture detail to their highest settings and play at native resolution, 1024x600. I get framerates around 35-45 fps, but there are momentary pauses from time to time. Whether this is the fault of the graphics or something else, I don't know, but I do know we should have better than what we do now. I get about 1-2 fps in Cave Story. It's a 2D game with no sprite filtering! This is ridiculous, and that's not to mention all the rendering corruption that exists in older D3D games, which netbook users should be playing anyway. In Unreal Gold, Unreal Tournament, and Nerf Arena Blast (all use the same engine), I have been forced to use the software renderer. Glide wrappers crash the games, and the D3D mode adds tons of junk polygons to any 3D scene. In other games, like Motocross Madness 2, I have to play with all settings at their lowest (except resolution), and even then they doesn't run smoothly enough. That's not to mention the texture/polygon morphing that plagues this and other D3D games. 
This is unacceptable. Does Intel want netbooks to die?
The driver issue suggests they are not excited about GMA3600.
I am still wondering why their literature says the Atom N2600 can only address 2 GB RAM, when I have my little D270 and its N2600 equipped with 4 GB (2.99 usable w/32 bit Win 7).
That's not exactly a ringing endorsement by Intel of that CPU's true capabilities.
Woah, same here. I got an Aspire One D270 for christmas and popped a 4gb module in. I then installed windows 7 HP 32-bit and it shows as 2.99GB usable, 4GB installed. Offtopic, woops. Anywaqys, I find in minecraft its actually close to playable, but sooo many glitches... like the rendered background in the main menu is sideways, and spazzes out. Half life 2, settings all turned down it has a decent frame rate...but the bottom of the screen flickers and spazzes out sometimes. Im getting desperate here. PowerVR chips arent bad, i mean being very flexible and have a little tiny bit of beef on them, such as full DX10.1 and 40 Million triangles / second (for the SGX545, also known as GMA3600). Minecraft, yeah I kinda understand the poor frame rates. Half life 2 is very well optimized. In DX7.0, with EVERYTHING including the resolution down at bare bones, it shouldnt be running as low as 10-20 fps at best.
"Anyways, I find in minecraft its actually close to playable, but sooo many glitches..."
THIS.
I've also noticed that the character's hand/arm is either black or has very dim textures, depending on the lighting. The same applies for creatures, which can also be translucent. I haven't played HL2, but I've played many, many other games, such as Doom 3 and Tribes Vengeance, that should be much more than fluid on the minimum settings, but are not. Heck, I expect 'sort of playable' performance out of Team Fortress 2 and Supreme Commander 1/2 (I haven't tried those last two). Something tells me I'm going to end up shelling out several hundred more dollars to get a next-gen netbook, because the Cedar Trail situation will never improve.
Does anyone know what happened to the Atom N2650 and N2850? I don't imagine they'll be released because of the driver issue, but it's nice to think that there'd be a mobile Atom processor that can play Skyrim on paper. 
> Woah, same here. I got an Aspire One D270 for christmas and popped a 4gb module in. I then installed windows 7 HP 32-bit and it shows as 2.99GB usable, 4GB installed.
I received a somewhat cryptic reply from Intel about this in the Intel support community at http://communities.intel.com/thread/33466
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Hello scotsilv,
The memory compatibility is determined by the processor’s design; this does not mean that because of an issue during the manufacturing process, the processor is limited to a specific maximum memory amount value; the main reason of why the limitation, is merely marketing decisions in order to cover the different market segments.
Furthermore, processors that come installed on mobile systems, such as laptops, notebooks, etc… are tray units. These processors are sold to the different system builders, for them to be able to customize the processor as they wish for them to be able to integrate it on the system they have designed. Due to this, the specifications of the processor might vary from vendor to vendor.
From our side, the specifications publicly available correspond to the manufacturing design. If the processor from your system was not customized to support 4GB in total, the system might be able to work; in the mid time, the processor will be forced to run at higher specifications for it to keep up with the memory settings. This can provoke an unstable environment (system hangs, blue screens, restarts, etc) or even a processor failure in the future.
You can always check and confirm the manufacturing specifications at the processor data sheets, page 10: http://www.intel.my/content/www/my/en/processors/atom/atom-d2000-n2000-vol-1-datasheet.html#iid=5819
Our best recommendation at this point, would be confirming memory compatibility with your system builder.
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My D270 has been reliable with a 4 GB module, passed several runs of Windows memory tests, and the CPU runs cool according to SIW etc.
The claim of a 2 GB N2600 limit is, thus, mysterious. I wish an actual digital design engineer who designed the chip could chime in -- but that's probably asking too much.
Kory Hansen wrote:
Does anyone know what happened to the Atom N2650 and N2850? I don't imagine they'll be released because of the driver issue, but it's nice to think that there'd be a mobile Atom processor that can play Skyrim on paper.
Highly doubtful I'm afraid, and an Atom playing Skyrim is about as likely as a new Cedar Trail driver, it's just not going to happen...
Dear community,
Here is another post, please check it out, I guess the more that is going on about this topic, the better the chance that they actually will start doing something for us... GMA 3600 Driver for Windows 8
Acer Aspire One D270 Intel GMA 3600 driver
Intel, do the right thing and deliver proper software for your processors!
There's hope! I saw a video on YouTube of someone playing Unreal Tournament (with DirectX rendering!) on an Acer Aspire One D270. His game worked perfectly. Since Acer owns Gateway, and all BIOS and driver updates (other than for the GMA) for the D270 and my LT4004u are identical, I'm hoping I can install the newer Acer driver and at least get a small improvement.
Kory Hansen wrote:
There's hope! I saw a video on YouTube of someone playing Unreal Tournament (with DirectX rendering!) on an Acer Aspire One D270. His game worked perfectly.
Perfectly at 20fps or so!, not exactly stellar performance for a 13 year old game...
DirectX just isn't what this GPU is built for unfortunately, the Windows drivers have proved this...
After installing the 1075 driver, Unreal Tournament's D3D mode worked. Very slowly. OpenGL 2.0 shading in Nexuiz quit functioning, and Xonotic failed to start at all. I switched back to 1065, installed a third-party OGL renderer, and fragged away. It's very smooth and fluid at native resolution with all eye candy on, something the software renderer and D3D mode couldn't do.
It's sad that we need so many workarounds to make retro games work. 
Hello all,
We are aware of this situation however there are no plans to release a Microsoft* Windows* 8 driver for this video controller.
We suggest that you use the operating system that came originally in your Original Equipment Manufacturer Computer and use the drivers provided by the OEM.
I installed the new 1089 driver on my netbook, and I was pleasantly surprised to find that DirectX performance is much better for D3D 9 games. No graphical glitches have been fixed, and 2D performance is still atrocious, but at least Doom 3, Halo, Warcraft 3, and many other games are much more playable. It's nice to see either Intel or Motion Computing is doing something.
