X-bit labs

ASUS U3S: Two Notebooks in a Single Case (page 8)

Category: Mobile

by Alexander Britvin

[ 03/16/2008 | 10:26 AM ]

Test Methods

We have changed our list of benchmarks due to the growing popularity of Microsoft Windows Vista and the poor compatibility of the new mobile platform Santa Rosa with Windows XP. Some benchmarking applications are the same as before, though.

So, the notebook’s hard drive was formatted in NTFS before the tests. Then we installed Microsoft Windows Vista Ultimate and drivers from the included disc.

The following settings were used for the tests:

• Sidebar – Off
• Welcome Center – Off
• Screensaver – Off
• Windows Defender – Off
• System Protection – Off
• Windows Update – Off
• Scheduled defragmentation – Off
• User Account Control – Off
• Maximum screen brightness
• Maximum display resolution (1280x800)
• Aero interface
• Windows Vista desktop theme
• 10% volume level

Two power modes were used. First, we selected the High Performance power mode for maximum performance and the shortest battery life. Then we switched to the Power Saver mode for the maximum battery run-down time.

Our tests:

1. Performance benchmarks: synthetic (SiSoftware Sandra 2007, PCMark 2004 1.3.0, PCMark 2005 1.2.0, PCMark Vintage, SYSMark 2007), real-life applications (DivX 6.7, iTunes 7.3, Photoshop CS2, Microsoft Excel 2007, WinRAR 3.7, Microsoft Movie Maker 6.0, CINEBENCH 10), and games (3DMark 2001SE Pro, 3DMark 2003 3.6.0, 3DMark 2005 1.2.0, 3DMark 2006 1.1.0, Half-Life 2, F.E.A.R., Quake 4)
2. Battery life tests (MobileMark 2007)

We replaced our traditional Battery Eater Pro with MobileMark 2007 because the former is not compatible with Windows Vista.

There are three test modes in Mobile Mark 2007:

• Productivity (the system is under a high load)
• Reader’s test (the emulation of the user’s reading a PDF file; the pages are browsed through each 2 minutes)
• DVD playback mode