Does anyone of you own an Asus Eee PC 900 with Microsoft Visual C# 2005 Express and XNA 2.0 on it?

Will this work?

Doubt it. You would have to be running xp on it, as XNA requires directx and .net, which Linux doesnt have (save for Mono, but its not official so you may get loads of errors), and due to it low-powered nature, I do not think the graphics card is up to scratch. Sorry.

You can definitely run Windows XP on the Eee PC. However the graphics card is labeled as "Intel UMA" which I didn't find during a Google search to see what it supports. If it supports DirectX 9.0c and shader model 1.1 then you are all set. You could probably call Asus up and ask them that and I'm sure somebody there could give you the answer.

It looks like that has an on-board graphics chipset, Intel UMA. Usually this type of setup doesn't support the necessary shader model required by XNA Game Studio.

Nick Gravelyn:

However the graphics card is labeled as "Intel UMA"

Unfortunately Asus couldn't help me ("Maybe...", "What is shader model 1.1.?") but I found another site where the graphics card is labeled Intel GMA 900:

Brack Electronics

And this onboard chip should support DirectX 9c and Shader 2.0:

Notebookcheck

It's up to you, but I wouldn't be inclined to spend my money on the claims of a website other than the manufacturer. There is every chance in the world they are correct, but I personally wouldn't stake money on them. I would continue trying with Asus or maybe even Intel to see. If you called up Intel and said you were looking at the Eee PC and asked them, they might be able to assist you better.

Good point, Nick.

I will try again to ask a manufacturer.

I’ve actually got one of these sub notebooks. I had not really thought about putting the XNA framework on it but after reading this I am going to give it a try. The device manager lists the video adapter as a 915GM which seems to support directx 9 ( 915GM spec) though I am not sure if it supports pixel shader 2.0. Anyway I’ll give it a go later and let you guys know if I works out or not...

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Update: just downloaded c# express, XNA 2.0, and the rpg stater kit to my Eee 900, It compiled the game and ran just fine.

It works! I installed XNA 2.0 and the TorqueX Engine and I compiled several projects successfully :-)

I hate to revive an old thread but since this comes up very quickly when Googling "eee pc xna" I figured this would be a good place to add this info.

I just bought an Eee PC, model 1000HE.  I have installed XNA Game Studio 3.0 on it along with VC# 2008 Express, and I wanted to warn others that it doesn't quite work the way I expected.  My expectations were based on the fact that it works fine on my MacBook, which uses GMA 950 and 64 MB of shared RAM for graphics, and that according to the spec sheets, the Eee 1000HE also uses GMA 950 (supposedly with dynamic memory allocation...I can't set anything for it in the BIOS).

I am currently working on a project that is 100% 2D, and that works as expected.  However, when I tried to run Snake360 on it, i noticed very quickly that many of the polygons did not draw, or drew partially.  All of the 2D appeared correctly, but most of the 3D did not, or appeared sporadically.  When I attempted to actually start the game, it crashed in the Draw() method with:

Exception: Cannot access a disposed object.
Object name: "Texture2D"

I'm not sure if this is due to the fact that my textures are very high-res and I'm running into problems with the amount of video RAM, but that's my best guess.  Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be any setting I can change to help with this.

So: to anyone looking to grab an Eee PC for some XNA on the go, be warned that your 3D projects may not run as expected. 

I was actually thinking about getting one of these. But your post changed my mind! Thanks.

While we're on the subject...
I'm considering getting a netbook to work on XNA projects while away from my desktop. I've narrowed it down to two I really like:

Samsung NC-10
Samsung NC-20

The biggest difference is that the NC20 uses VIA chips, while the NC10 uses the Intel Atom CPU and integrated graphics. The NC20 also costs $100 more, but that's not really an issue. My main concern is that I've never used VIA chips at all, and the NC20's CPU is clocked a 1.3GHz compared to the NC10's 1.6GHz. But the NC20 has an 800MHz FSB compared to the NC10's 533MHz FSB, so would that even them out?

Any idea which would be better? I know I won't be playing Crysis on it; it just needs to compile XNA projects, and maybe run them if I'm lucky (I think they both support Shader Model 2.0).

If you want to run any sort of game on a netbook I would wait for the new Nvidia Ion chipset to come out.  It'll use the same Atoms that every other netbook uses but will be able to run new games and HD video.  Right now you're lucky if you can run 5 year old games at the lowest settings and Hulu is very painful.

My experience with Via has been almost universally poor.

Btw: if you have 3D graphics problems with the Intel 950, try updating the drivers. Unfortunately, Intel stopped supporting the 950 drivers for XP two years ago, so there won't be any new updates, but you can at least download the latest. They also stopped updating drivers for Vista last year.
And, also unfortunately, a minimal install of Vista Business takes about 10 GB of a hard disk, which on an 8 GB or 16 GB netbook is a bit of a drag...

Thanks guys. I've been doing some research and nVidia's ION platform seems too good to lock myself into Atom too fast. I guess I'll wait a couple months and see what comes up.

The only problem with that is that then Vista will be put on everything. I can't win...

Fortunately you probably have an XP disc laying around.

nikescar:

Fortunately you probably have an XP disc laying around.

Of course. A year and a half ago I stocked up on XP licenses. ;-)
I wish I were kidding...

Installation will be the trick since netbooks don't have optical drives.

Back on topic, I read that ION netbooks should be coming out around May. No word on what Samsung is up to, but I can't imagine them not adding something with it to their line.

There's been a lot of rumors about when Ion is coming out but if it is May that sounds good.  I'm surprised netbook makers haven't jumped on this already.  I suspect it has to do with "Nvidia vs. Intel" shenanigans.

As far as I understand it, Ion is simply a chipset that combines with the Intel Atom processors. Thus, you still get the same CPU, but you get a GeForce 9400M integrated graphics controller. You might still not be able to decode 1080p H.264 or VC1 (because of the CPU), but it's likely to perform better than VIA or GMA 950 based systems.

You're right, it is a chipset with a 9400M integrated.  The thing is it will do all decoding in the hardware taking all but a very small amount of the load off the CPU.  It'll also run most modern games at around medium settings with acceptable framerates.