Qualification

A series of qualifications goes on before the actual race to determine what place the car will take at the start. The success in a qualification largely depends on the right configuration of the car. Let's see then how the reviewed notebooks are configured.

The Acer Ferrari 3200 and the ASUS A4S00K have similar configurations, so it will be the more interesting to compare their results in our tests. The notebooks are both based on the AMD Mobile Athlon 64 2800+ (1.6GHz frequency, 0.13-micron ClawHammer core, 800MHz HyperTransport, 512KB L2 cache).

As a disk subsystem, the Ferrari 3200 uses an IC25N080ATMR04-0 HDD from Hitachi (4200rpm, 8MB cache buffer, 80GB capacity), while the ASUS A4S00K employs a Hitachi HTS548080M9AT00 drive (5400rpm, 8MB cache buffer, 80GB capacity).

Where these notebooks differ the most is in their chipsets: the Acer Ferrari 3200 is based on the VIA VT8383/5 Apollo K8T800(M) chipset, and the ASUS features the NVIDIA nForce3 150.

Each notebook has two memory slots. These are occupied with two 256MB PC2700 modules in the Acer Ferrari 3200 (the maximum supported amount of memory is 2048MB for both notebooks). One of the slots is located at the bottom of the case, under a special cover. The other slot is under the keyboard and you have to loosen the two fastening screws at the bottom and remove the decorative panel with the power-on button to access it. The decorative panel is held with four more screws which should also be unscrewed.

In the ASUS A4S00K one slot is already occupied with a 512MB module of PC2700 DDR SDRAM. To access it, you should remove the bottom cover of the notebook.

Both notebooks make use of discrete graphics processors with dedicated graphics memory and thus allow the user to enjoy modern 3D games with all their special effects. The graphics processor is the same in these computers (the ATI Radeon Mobility 9700), but the amount of the graphics memory differs - 128MB on the Ferrari 3200, and 64MB on the A4S00K.

The configurations of these notebooks use integrated DVD-RW drives with the following speed formulas: 24x CD read, 4x DVD read, 8x CD rewrite, 2x DVD rewrite, 16x CD write, 4x DVD write (Ferrari 3200), and 24x CD read, 8x DVD read, 10x CD rewrite, 4x DVD rewrite, 16x CD write, 4x DVD write (ASUS A4S00K).

The Ferrari 3200 uses a network controller from Broadcom, while the ASUS ¨C from Marvell. Acer's notebook also boasts the support of the Bluetooth interface.

As for the efficiency of the cooling systems, I measured the temperatures of the notebooks with an infrared thermometer as they were passing through the Multimedia Content Creation Winstone 2004 test:

• Acer Ferrari 3200: 31^oC top, 38^oC at the output of the cooling system, 40^oC bottom;
• ASUS A4S00K: 33^oC top, 40^oC at the output of the cooling system, 41^oC bottom.

The next table summarizes the technical characteristics of the reviewed notebooks: