X-bit labs

Dual-Core Budget Platform: Asus A6Rp Notebook Review (page 10)

Category: Mobile

by Alexander Britvin

[ 06/07/2007 | 09:44 AM ]

Since ASUS A6Rp is based on the integrated Radeon Xpress 200M chipset, we tested the notebooks in all versions of 3DMark: 3DMark 2001SE Pro, 3DMark 2003 3.6.0, 3DMark 2005 1.2.0 and 3DMark 2006 1.1.0.

3DMark uses its own rendering engine to create a set of 3D scenes that load the graphics subsystem in various ways. Compared with the previous version, 3DMark 2005 uses Shader Model 2.0x/3.0 instead of Shader Model 1.x, provides full compatibility with Shader Model 2.0, includes more complex tests (over a million polygons per each frame), and employs normal maps. 3DMark 2006 brings support for HDR, Uniform Shadow Maps, and multi-core CPUs. It is overall oriented at Shader Model 3.0, but two out of its four graphics tests work within the Shader Model 2.0 framework.

The integrated graphics core of the Radeon Xpress 200M chipset is preferable to GMA 950 but cannot stand a comparison with even the weakest discrete graphics core from the ATI Mobility Radeon 1000 series. It is good that the power-saving options are not set up too aggressively and the notebook doesn’t suffer a big performance hit on switching to its battery. The Radeon Xpress 200M graphics core cannot pass tests that require support for Shader Model 3.0 due to its limited capabilities, but the ASUS A6Rp does much better in the Batch Size Tests than notebooks with GMA 950.