Gaming Chromebooks might finally be on their way

The new worst gaming platform?

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Thebest Chromebookstend to be low-cost machines that can handle simple computing tasks, although there are some premium machines. One thing they all have in common is basic, integrated graphics, but that might change with the arrival of a gaming Chromebook with dedicated graphics, according to a new leak.

A Chromebook spotted byChrome Unboxed, which is codenamed ‘Mushu’ and which may be part ofIntel’s Project Athenaprogram that aims to shape the next generation of thin, light and powerful laptops, appears to include a dedicated graphics processor. It’s not clear which chipmaker is behind the GPU, butAMDandNvidiaare likely candidates.This would be a first for Chromebooks, and would enable such machines to deliver new levels of performance in some applications, one of which would be gaming.

Power play

The idea of a Chromebook getting a discrete graphics processor may seem a bit out there – or at least it would have seemed that way a year ago.

Editing spreadsheets, streaming Netflix, writing up documents, and browsing the web are typical tasks for a Chromebook. What they all have in common is a lack of any need for a powerful, dedicated graphics processor; they don’t even need a very beefy CPU.

There’s still a market for powerful Chromebooks such as the originalPixelbookand theSamsung Galaxy Chromebook, though. And that’s the side of the market where we could see a dedicated graphics processor show up.

Photo and video editing could benefit from an upgrade over integrated graphics, as could gaming. Considering thatValve and Google are working to bring Steam to Chromebooks, a dedicated graphics processor starts to make a lot more sense.

Existing Chromebooks, even on the premium end of the spectrum, will only be able to run a small number of games from the already reduced library ofSteamgames readily supported on Linux, and that would change with the arrival of a dedicated graphics processor.

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And, depending on how well Valve andGoogleget Steam and its library working on ChromeOS, we could be looking at our first gaming Chromebook this year – we don’t expect it will be anything close to thebest gaming laptops, though.

ViaLiliputing

Over the last several years, Mark has been tasked as a writer, an editor, and a manager, interacting with published content from all angles. He is intimately familiar with the editorial process from the inception of an article idea, through the iterative process, past publishing, and down the road into performance analysis.

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