X-bit labs

New Powerful Alternative to Asus W6 Series: Asus W7J Notebook Review (page 9)

Category: Mobile

by Alexander Britvin

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

Performance

As usual, we will first run synthetic benchmarks.

The SiSoftware 2007 suite features an updated enhanced-functionality interface, runs on three platforms (Win32 x86, Win64 x64, WinCE ARM), contains 13 tests and 34 informational modules, and supports a large range of devices thanks to the developer’s collaboration with Intel, AMD, ATI, SiS and VIA. The program is supported in six languages and has a free Lite version for personal and educational purposes.

PCMark 2005 carries on the tradition of complex benchmarks of the series and uses fragments of real-life applications as tests. This makes it somewhat more relevant for end-users as opposed to all-synthetic benchmarks. After running a series of 11 tests on the different components of the system, the program calculates an overall performance score in units called PCMarks. PCMark 2005 can check a computer out at processing HD video and encoding audio, and offers enhanced tests of the CPU and hard disk under multi-threaded load. The overall score is calculated by the formula: PCMark Score = 87 x (the geometric mean of the basic tests) , where the geometric mean is calculated as (Result 1 x Result 2 x…)/the number of results.

SiSoftware Sandra measures overall performance of the system as well as that of each of its subsystems, while PCMark benchmarks the computer performance in office and office-related applications and also produces performance scores for the main subsystems (CPU, memory, graphical, and disk subsystem).

It is the first time we have two dual-core mobile processors from different generations (on the Merom and Yonah cores) but with the same default clock rate of 2.0GHz. So, we can see the difference between them in pure CPU tests. The Intel Core 2 Duo installed in the ASUS W7J is obviously superior to the Yonah-core CPU installed in the ASUS Lamborghini VX1. The former CPU performs faster even when the notebooks both lower their CPU clock rates to 1GHz in the battery-saving mode. This is the consequence of improvements implemented in the updated micro-architecture of the Merom core.

In the multimedia subtests of the SiSoftware Sandra suite the Intel Core 2 Duo is far better than the Core Duo due to its 128-bit SSE execution units. The rest of the results are predictable: the memory subsystem of the Lamborghini VX1 is preferable due to its higher frequency and larger amount. The hard drives yield similar performance, and the graphics subsystem of the ASUS W7J is just a little slower than the Nvidia GeForce Go 7400VX due to the minor difference in the GPU frequencies.

The Business Winstone 2004 test runs scripts of the following real-life office applications, several scripts at a time to simulate multi-tasking: Internet Explorer, Outlook, Word, Excel, Access, Project, PowerPoint, FrontPage, WinZip, and Norton AntiVirus Professional Edition.

The Multimedia Content Creation Winstone 2004 test evaluates performance of a computer in the following multimedia applications: Windows Media Encoder, Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Premiere, NewTek LightWave 3D, Steinberg WaveLab, Micromedia Dreamweaver MX, and Micromedia Director MX.

The following table and diagrams show the outcome of these tests:

It’s no secret that PC Magazine ’s benchmarks put most of their load on the CPU. As a result, the Intel Core 2 Duo wins this test for the ASUS W7J. Neither the larger amount of system memory clocked at the highest possible frequency nor the better graphics card can help the ASUS Lamborghini VX1 in this competition. The notebooks’ results decrease according to the CPU frequency drop in the battery mode. So, the faster execution of SSE instructions and the two times larger L2 cache of Intel’s new mobile CPU are factors that are very hard to beat.