by Galina Sudareva
05/02/2005 | 10:37 PM
January 19, 2005, Intel introduced its new platform previously known under its codename Sonoma. This release of the next edition of Intel’s Centrino technology was followed by numerous releases of notebook models based on the new platform. As a result, the entire situation in this market changed.
<%BANNER[article]%>This review is about the ASUS M5A model that has all the typical traits of a small-size notebook like small dimensions and weight, portability, compactness, but is not technically impaired as it is based on the new platform. Yes, ASUS based the M5A on the second-generation Centrino technology thus increasing its performance in contrast to its analogs on the older platform.
The M5A looks cute and exquisite. It is a small lightweight smooth-cornered computer colored deep-blue and black with a silvery frame around its sides. The case of the notebook is robust enough as it is made of an alloy containing hydrocarbon fiber. So, the appearance of the notebook is nice, but without any extravaganza or decorations.
When the lid is open, you can see a round blue-highlighted Power On/Off button near the right hinge of the display, a hole of the inbuilt microphone above it, and a Power4 Gear+ button in the left corner. The latter button allows to choose among ten power modes for higher performance or longer battery life. Three modes are available when the notebook is powered from the wall outlet (AC) and seven when it is working on its accumulator (DC):
The indicators of the system status are located not only on the top panel of the M5A, to the left of the touchpad buttons, but are also duplicated on the notebook’s lid. More precisely, the lid has round small windows right above the indicators. So, these indicators are visible irrespective of the position of the lid, which is very convenient.
The system status indicators include: a power indicator (alight when power is attached), a battery charge indicator, a hard disk drive access indicator, and a WLAN connection indicator (it lights up when the integrated adapter sends or receives data packets).
The M5A’s keyboard is made of opaque black plastic with white letters. The functional keys are labeled blue (you should press and hold [Fn] to use them). Because of the small dimensions of the notebook the cursor-controlling keys are joined with the keyboard’s mainland. The PgUp, PgDn, Home and End keys are combined with the cursor keys and are available as you press and hold [Fn] – I think this is the single disadvantage of this keyboard. The functional keys and the Shift keys have a smaller size than usual. The numeric pad and the Windows keys are available, like in an ordinary desktop keyboard. The keys sink down easily to a tangible halt. This keyboard is overall handy, and you quickly get used to the layout. The touchpad unfortunately doesn’t have an additional button for scrolling. The touchpad’s buttons that serve instead of the mouse’s ones are handy, too.
The 12.1” screen with a maximum resolution of 1024x768 offers wide viewing angles, good color reproduction and brightness. The brightness parameter is controlled with appropriate functional keys, and the onscreen 15-grade scale shows you the current setting. The brightness range is quite wide, so it’s easy to choose the most comfortable setting.
There’s nothing on the front panel of the notebook, except the display latch.
The following is located on the left panel:
The right panel of the ASUS M5A carries the following:
These things are located at the notebook’s rear panel:
At the notebook’s bottom you can find the covers of the HDD, memory, ventilation system, and battery cells as well as two stereo speakers and vent holes.
The following table lists the communicational capabilities of the ASUS M5A notebook:
The ASUS M5A notebook is based on the updated Centrino platform that includes a new mobile chipset, a central processor Intel Pentium M, and a WLAN controller. I’ll dwell upon some aspects of the platform shortly, but now I want to offer you a table with the technical characteristics of the ASUS M5A as opposed to the Acer TravelMate 6003LCi which has a similar configuration but is based on the older version of the platform. I think that it’s going to be interesting to compare notebooks on the old and new Centrino between themselves.
The models in question are both based on integrated chipsets: the ASUS M5A on the i915GM (Alviso) and the Acer TravelMate 6003LCi on the i855GME. The new mobile chipset supports the PCI Express bus with such features as high bandwidth and the option of disabling some lanes at low load or in the sleep mode. Different memory allocation technologies are used in the two graphics subsystems. The Acer TravelMate 6003LCi uses Shared Memory Architecture which allows the user to set (in the BIOS) the amount of memory (8, 16 or 32MB) to be given to the graphics subsystem. Of course, the more memory you give to the graphics core, the less memory you leave to 2D applications.
The integrated graphics subsystem of the ASUS M5A deserves a closer scrutiny because it uses Intel’s new graphics core called Graphics Media Accelerator 900 that ensures good image quality, compatibility with a wide range of applications, output to two monitors, expandability (the PCI Express x16 port allows installing an external graphics controller) and optimized use of system resources (Dynamic Video Memory Technology version 3.0) for a balance between the performance of the graphics subsystem and the notebook at large. The technical characteristics of the Intel GMA 900 list the following: up to 333MHz graphics core clock rate, up to 224MB of system memory can be allotted for the graphics subsystem, hardware DirectX 9.0 acceleration, four pixel pipelines with one texture-mapping unit per each, version 2.0 pixel shader support, OpenGL support. The next table will help you compare the integrated graphics subsystems of the old and new Centrino:
The ASUS M5A uses DDR2 SDRAM clocked at 400MHz (the Acer TravelMate 6003LCi supports DDR SDRAM clocked at 333MHz). The Acer has two memory slots, both occupied with 256MB modules (the maximum memory amount supported by this notebook is 2GB). One of the slots can be found at the bottom of the notebook, under a cover. The other slot is hidden under the keyboard and in order to access it you have to unfasten two screws at the bottom of the case (marked with the letter “K”), remove the panel near the screen hinges and shift the keyboard out of its place towards the screen. The ASUS M5A has only one memory slot, which is occupied with a 256MB module. Additional 256 megabytes are integrated directly on the mainboard, so the maximum memory amount you can have in this system is 768MB.
The new integrated audio standard High Definition Audio from Intel is implemented in the Intel 915 Express family of chipsets and, accordingly, in the ASUS M5A. This technology was developed for multi-channel recordings with support of 7.1-channel speaker systems. Two audio streams can be reproduced at once, and older audio files can be reproduced in the 7.1 format. Dynamic reassignment of the connectors is supported, too. That is, the system automatically determines the type of the device attached and configures the connector accordingly.
I measured the temperatures of the notebooks with an infrared thermometer as they were doing the Multimedia Content Creation Winstone 2004 test. Here’re the results:
I tested the performance of the notebooks in their preinstalled operating systems: Microsoft Windows XP Professional (ASUS M5A) and Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition (Acer TravelMate 6003LCi). Before the tests I disabled the power-saving and network services, audio subsystems, antivirus software, and screensavers. The notebooks were tested at the maximum screen brightness settings and at the maximum resolution of the LCD matrixes.
I used two power modes in my tests. First, I selected the Always On power mode for the maximum performance and the shortest battery run-down time. Then, I switched to the Max Battery mode for the maximum battery run-down time.
Our tests:
The results of the synthetic SiSoftware Sandra 2004 and 2005 and PCMark04 tests are tabled below:
The results of the two versions of SiSoftware Sandra can actually be compared as you can learn from our previous reviews where I ran Sandra 2004 and 2005 on one and the same notebook.
As you can see from the table, the results of the two computers are roughly similar in the CPU Arithmetic and CPU Multimedia benchmarks as the they use Intel Pentium M processor models that have the same frequency (1.6GHz) but differ in the amount of L2 cache memory (1024MB against 2048MB), core, and manufacturing technology.
As for the memory subsystem tests, the ASUS M5A is about 31% faster than the Acer TravelMate 6003LCi in SiSoftware Sandra and about 22% faster in PCMark04. That’s natural since the ASUS uses DDR2 SDRAM clocked at 400MHz, while the Acer works with DDR333 SDRAM.
The hard disk employed in the ASUS M5A (a 60-gigabyte Hitachi HTS541060G9AT00 with an 8MB cache buffer) delivers about 28-34% more performance than the Acer’s 40GB Hitachi IC25N040ATMR04 with a 2MB buffer.
PCMark04 also suggests that the ASUS M5A has a much faster (by about 41%) graphics core than the Acer. It’s natural as the M5A makes use of the new graphics subsystem Intel GMA 900 with 333MHz core frequency and up to 224 megabytes of dynamically allotted memory.
The next table shows you the results of Business Winstone 2004 and Multimedia Content Creation Winstone 2004 tests.
So, the ASUS M5A is about 8% (26% when powered by the battery) faster than the Acer TravelMate 6003LCi in Business Winstone 2004 and 16% (33%) faster in Multimedia Content Creation Winstone 2004. The differences in the configurations of the notebooks, particularly their chipsets, graphics subsystems and hard drives, determine this outcome.
As you can note, both notebooks slow down almost in double when they work on their own batteries.
The same results are diagrammed below for better comparison:
It’s also interesting to compare the performance of the ASUS M5A and the Acer TravelMate 6003LCi in games. Notebooks based on the second-generation Centrino platform have quite different characteristics, including those of the integrated graphics core. The results of the ASUS M5A are indicative of the technical improvements in this aspect.
So, the performance of the ASUS notebook is good in 3DMark 2001SE Pro as the tables below indicate. Two graphics quality modes are used: 1) 1024x768, 16-bit color, Z-buffer and textures and 2) 1024x768, 32-bit color and textures and 24-bit Z-buffer:
The ASUS M5A wins this test, of course. It is about 40% faster than the Acer TravelMate 6003LCi in the first mode and about 58% faster in the second mode. The new platform now supports such subtests as Game 4, Environment Bump Mapping, Pixel Shader 2.0, Advanced Pixel Shader and even performs quite well in them. The higher performance of the ASUS M5A is due to the new integrated Intel GMA 900 graphics subsystem that features a higher graphics core frequency (up to 333MHz), larger amounts of memory supported (up to 224MB), hardware DirectX 9.0 acceleration, four pixel pipelines, Pixel Shader 2.0 and OpenGL support. This core can now run tests from 3DMark 2003 3.40, so here’s a table of the results for this benchmark, too:
I ran Quake 3 with two graphics quality presets:
The Acer TravelMate 6003LCi turns to be about 15% faster than the ASUS M5A with the first preset, but the latter wins the test at the high image quality settings, having a 46% faster frame rate. The results follow below:
I think the ASUS M5A is slower at the low-quality settings because it is a PCI Express platform and its graphics subsystem is also oriented to using this bus rather than AGP. The advantages of the PCI Express interface are going to be more apparent in future applications.
The results obtained in Unreal Tournament 2003 are quite impressive. The ASUS M5A wins here leaving its rival far behind (which ids actually no surprise for us). It’s by 57% faster in botmatch-antalus, 52% faster in botmatch-citadel and 58% faster in flyby-asbestos than the Acer TravelMate 6003LCi irrespective of the power source. For more details, check the following table:
And the diagrams:
So, the new integrated graphics core offers more speed than the core integrated into the previous, i855GME chipset. Intel’s GMA 900 brings you more performance, good image quality, compatibility with a wide range of applications, extended functionality, and optimized use of system resources.
Next I tested the battery life time of the ASUS M5A notebook using Battery Eater Pro 2.50. This time it wouldn’t be correct to compare this notebook to the Acer TravelMate 6003LCi as they differ in the size of their LCD matrixes as well as in the market positioning. I performed this test at the maximum screen brightness and in three modes:
The results follow below:
So, the battery of the ASUS M5A can last as long as 2 hours 49 minutes in the classic mode, 3 hours 27 minutes in the reader’s mode, and 3 hours 15 minutes in the DVD mode, the screen brightness being at the maximum.
This is a good performance, and the notebook suits well the definition of “portable”. The same numbers, in a diagram, for better comparison:
Well, the ASUS M5A gave a good account of itself in our labs. A worthy representative of the series of small-size, portable and mobile devices, the ASUS M5A boasts cute appearance, good ergonomics, and a sufficient number of ports, connectors, etc. Maybe I repeat myself, but again, this notebook has Centrino technology of the second generation with a new integrated graphics core under the hood. And this helps it solve a wide range of tasks and run graphics-heavy applications and games at a rather high speed (for an integrated graphics core, of course).
On the whole, this notebook is going to be a good mobile and portable helper suitable for home and office, for presentations and meetings, for voyages and business trips alike.