X-bit labs

New Powerful Alternative to Asus W6 Series: Asus W7J Notebook Review (page 10)

Category: Mobile

by Alexander Britvin

[ 03/06/2007 | 12:16 PM ]

SYSMark 2004 SE is intended to reveal a system’s performance under different types of load. It simulates a user who is solving practical tasks in a few popular applications. Multi-threading is taken into account. The benchmark issues a few ratings that are indicative of the system performance under different loads. SYSMark 2004 SE is mainly positioned as a tool for testing desktop systems and includes applications that are not often run on mobile computers. That’s why the results for each test load are shown separately:

The 3D Creation script simulates a user who is rendering an image into a BMP-file in 3ds max 5.1 and is also working on web-pages in Dreamweaver MX. After these operations are done, a 3D animation is created in a vector graphics format.

This test puts an emphasis on CPU performance and it’s natural that the ASUS W7J has an advantage here. When the notebooks switch to their batteries, their performance is lowered by half in accordance with the CPU frequency drop that occurs in the power-saving mode.

The 2D Creation script simulates a user creating a video out of a few RAW-format fragments and audio tracks in Premier 6.5. Waiting for the operation to complete, the user is also modifying an image in Photoshop 7.01 and then saves it to the hard disk. When the video clip is ready, the user edits it and adds special effects in After Effects 5.5.

Each of the three applications utilized here is optimized for multi-core processors. We see the new architecture being just a little better than the older one.

The next test simulates the work routines of a professional web-master. The user unzips the content of a website while using Flash MX to open an exported 3D vector graphics clip. Then the user modifies it by including more pictures and optimizes it for faster animation. The resulting clip with special effects is compressed with Windows Media Encoder 9 to be broadcast via the Internet. Next, the website is compiled in Dreamweaver MX while the system is being scanned for viruses with VirusScan 7.0 in the background.

This test is CPU-dependent, too. The notebook with an Intel Core 2 Duo looks preferable.

The next script simulates an ordinary user who’s receiving a letter with a .zip attachment in Outlook 2002. While the received files are being scanned for viruses with VirusScan 7.0, the user looks through his e-mail, enters some comments into the Outlook calendar, and then opens a corporate website and some documents with Internet Explorer 6.0.

It is overall system performance that’s important here, not just the speed of the CPU. The ASUS Lamborghini VX1 proves it has a mightier configuration overall.

In the Document Creation script the user is editing text in Word 2002 and is also using Dragon NaturallySpeaking to convert an audio file into a text document. This text document is then converted into PDF format with Acrobat 5.0.5. And finally, the document is employed in a PowerPoint 2002 presentation.

We’ve got a CPU-dependent test again and the Merom wins it quite expectably. When the notebooks switch to their batteries, they suffer a performance hit proportional to the CPU frequency drop.

The final script from SYSMark 2004 SE includes the following: the user opens a database in Access 2002 and creates a few queries. Documents are archived with WinZip 8.1. The results of the queries are exported into Excel 2002 and are used to construct a diagram.

Operations performed in this script seem to suit the new micro-architecture ideally. Just take a look at the diagram.