by Galina Sudareva
06/17/2005 | 11:34 AM
We took two notebooks of the so-called office class for this review. It means such notebooks must ensure comfortable work in office and multimedia applications in the first place. With performance sufficient for such use, the notebooks are also expected to have small dimensions (so that they could be employed for work “in the field”) and, desirably, an elegant exterior.
<%BANNER[article]%>This definition of the office notebook class is rather vague, and such computers are appealing to many users and are not limited to office use proper.
The two models we took for our today’s tests – Sony VAIO VGN-FS115ZR and HP Compaq nx8220 (for the sake of simplicity hereafter referred to as the Sony VAIO and the HP Compaq) – fit quite well into our definition of an office notebook. They have similar technical characteristics, but differ in their graphics controllers (the VAIO’s NVIDIA GeForce Go 6200 against the Compaq’s ATI Mobility Radeon X600). This makes the comparative testing of these notebooks the more interesting.
The classic-style exterior of the reviewed notebooks can’t but attract your attention. I think I need to describe each of them at length since their design and ergonomics are quite different.
The Sony VAIO notebook has elegant and exquisite looks. The light-gray case with the manufacturer’s logo and the model’s name in the center of the lid (the letters VAIO made of shining metal) stands out against the majority of unassuming black-and-gray cases so widely available on the notebook market, and thus interests the potential user (and the first impression is the most important, as you know). The Sony VAIO looks compact and small for its rather large LCD matrix (15.4 inches). The rounded corners and the smooth outline create an effect of completeness. The designers have definitely paid attention to every little detail in the exterior of this notebook.
At the top right corner of the top panel, you can see a row of buttons and indicators: a small rectangular Power On/Off button, Num Lock, Caps Lock and Scroll Lock indicators, and two quick-launch buttons (they disable the sound and switch to the external monitor by default, but you can reprogram them on the S Button tab of the Sony Notebook Setup utility to launch any application you want).
The Sony VAIO’s full-size keyboard (the functional keys are even grouped in fours as on ordinary keyboards for desktop computers) is made of opaque light-gray plastic; the letters are painted black and are well-readable in dim lighting. The functional keys are marked out with gray (press and hold [Fn] to use them) and their readability is somewhat worse. The keyboard layout is typical for a notebook: the Delete, Insert, Print Screen and Num Lock keys are in the top row, next to the functional keys. The Page Up, Page Down, Home and End keys are placed vertically one above another on the right. A numeric pad and two Windows buttons are available. The cursor keys are not separate from the keyboard’s mainland, unfortunately. The Arrow Up button is rather too close to the End key, which may be uncomfortable at work. Yet overall this keyboard is handy, comfortable and functional.
The touchpad has the color and texture of the top of the case, with the touch-sensitive area being a bit sunken down. The touchpad is accompanied with two buttons (with a rather quick response) instead of the mouse’s left and right buttons. Unfortunately, there is no additional button or joystick for scrolling text.
The widescreen matrix of the notebook has a diagonal of 15.4 inches, an aspect ratio of 16:10 and a maximum resolution of 1280x800. It boasts an excellent reproduction of color, good viewing angles, contrast and brightness. The brightness setting (and the volume setting, too) is adjusted by means of appropriate functional keys. Everything is quite visible on the screen even at the lowest brightness setting. The LCD matrix of the Sony VAIO has an anti-flicker coating, but I think that this “glossy” surface creates even more reflections on the screen.
The following components can be found on the front panel of the notebook:
These things are on the left panel of the notebook:
The right panel carries the following:
The battery cell connector is on the real panel.
At the bottom of the Sony VAIO VGN-FS115ZR you can see the cover of the memory and hard drive cells, a battery cell, a connector for a dock station or port-replicator, and vent holes. So, the upgrade opportunities are rather limited here.
The HP Compaq is designed in a sober, classic style. I’d even call it conservative. The case is black, and the whole notebook is black from head to toe. There’s only a small rectangular company’s logo in the center of the lid that you can count as an embellishment. With straight lines and sharp corners, this inconspicuous model is the opposite of the Sony VAIO.
Opening the notebook’s lid by shifting the spring-loaded latch to the right, you can see a widescreen 15.4” display with a max resolution of 1280x800. It is matte, contrary to the recent “glossy” trend in notebook-making. The matrix has a good color reproduction and viewing angles as well as contrast and brightness. The brightness is controlled with the functional keys, but unfortunately there is no indication of the current level of brightness as you’re adjusting it. The brightness range is very narrow. The screen doesn’t seem to get much darker at the minimum setting.
On the top panel, near the left hinge of the screen, there is a rectangular Power On/Off button and a bright green Power/Idle indicator. Also above the keyboard, there are instant-launch buttons that do the following:
In the center, between the two groups of buttons, there are Num Lock and Caps Lock indicators.
Besides that, the system status indicators are also located on the front panel, and these LEDs are visible irrespective of the position of the notebook’s lid. The second group of indicators includes:
The keyboard of the HP Compaq is made of opaque and somewhat rough black plastic. The functional keys are grouped in fours, like on keyboards for desktop computers. The Page Up, Page Down, Home, End, Insert and Delete keys are a separate block of keys, above the top line of the main keyboard. The letters are marked out in white, and the functional keys in blue (press and hold [Fn] to use them). The cursor-controlling keys are separate from the main keyboard; a numeric pad and two Windows keys are available. The symbols on the keys are somewhat different than usual, so you have to adapt a little. After that, you shouldn’t find it a problem to work with this keyboard.
On the sides of the keyboard, there are two stereo speakers. These are thin vertical rectangles, covered with metal grids.
The touchpad which replaces the mouse in this notebook has two buttons instead of the mouse’s right and left buttons and a scroll bar on the right side. The buttons are curiously designed: they are not flat but slightly bulging. They bend down under your press, performing the necessary action.
A display latch and an IrDA port are located on the front panel of the HP Compaq notebook. The following things are located on the notebook’s left panel:
The right panel of this notebook carries the following:
At the rear panel there are:
At the bottom of the HP Compaq nx8220 you can see the cover of the memory and hard drive cells, a battery cell, a connector for an additional accumulator, a connector for a dock station or port-replicator, a visiting-card holder, and vent holes.
The following table compares the communicational capabilities of the two notebooks:
There’s nothing particularly interesting among the accessories to either notebook. The Sony VAIO is accompanied with such things as a small external power adapter, documentation, a user’s manual, a specification leaflet, a license for Microsoft Works 8.0 with an ID number, booklets with license agreements on using the software and tech support with the addresses of service centers.
The accessories to the HP Compaq include an external power adapter, a phone cable, a splitter for the phone socket, a faceplate for the optical drive bay, documentation, a user’s manual, a booklet with a list of authorized service centers around the world with phone numbers, necessary drivers and utilities, and a disc with Microsoft Windows XP Professional SP2.
Both these notebooks come with numerous programs already preinstalled. I think some applications do require a closer look, others I just name.
So, the following applications are already installed on the Sony VAIO:
The exclusive utilities from Sony deserve a closer inspection:
Two interesting utilities also need to be mentioned:
The software preinstalled on the HP Compaq isn’t as abundant as you get with the Sony VAIO, but anyway you get such programs as:
The following applications are worth mentioning:
The notebooks are both based on the Centrino platform of the second generation. So, it’s the more interesting to compare them between each other since their configurations only differ much in the graphics subsystem.
The following table lists the technical characteristics of the Sony VAIO VGN-FS115ZR and the HP Compaq nx8220.
Both notebooks models represent the latest advances in the notebook industry, being based on the i915PM (Alviso) chipset from Intel. These mobile chipsets use the PCI Express bus that brings such advantages as higher bandwidth and the option of disabling some of the lanes when the load is low or when the system is idle. The Sony VAIO and the HP Compaq use the same model of the central processor. It is Intel Pentium M 740 (1.73GHz frequency, Dothan core, 0.09-micron technology, 2048KB L2 cache, 533MHz FSB). Added the integrated wireless network controller (IEEE 802.11b/g), we really have a Centrino platform here, which is defined as the combination of an Intel Pentium M processor, a mobile chipset, and a WLAN controller.
The Sony VAIO and the HP Compaq use discrete graphics controllers with dedicated memory, the NVIDIA GeForce Go 6200 and ATI Mobility Radeon X600, respectively. Both controllers are attached to the PCI Express interface. The manufacturer claims the GeForce Go 6200 supports up to 128 megabytes of graphics memory. In fact, this GPU has 32 megabytes of dedicated memory, but it can also use a dynamically allocated part of the system memory. This innovation is called Turbo Cache. I want to show you a screenshot of the Everest program that reports on all the technical features of this graphics controller.
As you can see, the NVIDIA GeForce Go 6200 has four pixel pipelines and one vertex processor. The dedicated graphics memory is clocked at 598MHz, while the GPU is clocked at 301MHz. A screenshot of monitoring performed with RivaTuner is presented below to better illustrate the point:
The ATI Mobility Radeon X600 supports up to 64 megabytes of dedicated graphics memory. It has four pixel pipelines and two vertex processors. The memory is clocked at 540MHz, and the GPU at 398MHz. Here’s an Everest screenshot:
As for system memory, the Sony VAIO uses two 256MB modules of PC2700 DDR SDRAM (clocked at 333MHz). Thus, the total amount of memory is 512MB, while the maximum supported amount is 1 gigabyte. It would be better to have DDR2 here that has a higher bandwidth than DDR. So, the Sony VAIO has two memory slots (both are located at the bottom of the case under a special cover that is held on screws).
The HP Compaq uses DDR2 SDRAM clocked at 400MHz. This notebook also has two memory slots, both occupied with 256MB modules (the maximum supported amount of memory is 2048 megabytes). One of the slots is at the bottom of the case under a special cover. Unfortunately, we couldn’t find the location of the other.
The cooling systems of these two notebooks are quiet enough. The only drawback is that the surface between the keyboard and the edge of the HP Compaq notebook would become too hot at times. I measured the temperatures of the notebooks as they were doing our performance tests:
We perform our tests in the OS preinstalled on the notebooks. Before the tests we disable power-saving and network services, the audio subsystem, antivirus software, and screensavers. The notebooks are tested at the maximum screen brightness setting and at the maximum resolution of the LCD matrix.
We used two power modes in the tests. First, we selected the Always On power mode for the maximum performance and the shortest battery run-down time. Then, we switched to the Max Battery mode for the maximum battery run-down time.
Our tests:
First I want to show you the results of SiSoftware Sandra 2005 and PCMark 2004, which are quite high for the class the tested notebooks belong to. As you can see from the table below, both notebooks slow down almost in double (by about 54%) when they begin to work on their own batteries because they automatically switch to the power-saving mode. Below you can see screenshots of the ThrottleWatch 2.0 utility taken on the two notebooks. This utility can keep track of the current frequency and the voltage of the CPU. The screenshots were made as the notebooks were powered from the wall outlet (Always On setting) and from their own batteries (Max Battery).
The voltage and frequency of the CPU in the Sony VAIO in the two power modes
The voltage and frequency of the CPU in the HP Compaq in the two power modes
Thus, the processors of both notebooks step down their frequency from 1729.0MHz to 798.0MHz and voltage from 1.308V to 0.988V when they switch to their batteries. But let’s get back to the results of the synthetic tests.
So, the performance of the two notebooks in CPU Arithmetic and Multimedia benchmarks is roughly the same. It is normal since they use identical CPUs. The HP Compaq uses DDR2 SDRAM clocked at 400MHz against DDR333 SDRAM of the Sony VAIO, and the performance difference between these two memory subsystems is estimated to be about 5% (DDR2 SDRAM has a higher bandwidth). The HP Compaq employs a faster hard drive, so it is 15-16% ahead of the Sony VAIO in the file system performance, too.
PCMark 2004 says the graphics performance of the HP Compaq is 36% faster than that of the Sony VAIO due to the difference in the GPU clock rates (398MHz against 301MHz) and in the graphics memory amount (64MB against 32MB+96MB (Shared)).
Business Winstone 2004 and Multimedia Content Creation Winstone 2004 are important tests since every notebook is expected to run office and multimedia applications at a high speed. These tests run scripts of popular real-life applications, several at a time. Unfortunately, I couldn’t get any results from the HP Compaq in these tests: they just wouldn’t run on it. The results of the Sony VAIO are listed below:
These are good results, although not excellent. The data from the table is presented as a diagram below:
The results of the notebooks in graphics performance tests are quite understandable. The Sony VAIO uses an NVIDIA GeForce Go 6200 controller that can use a dynamically allocated portion of the system RAM in addition to the dedicated 32 megabytes of graphics memory. The HP Compaq sports the ATI Mobility Radeon X600 with 64 megabytes of dedicated memory and this variant proves to be faster in practice.
Both notebooks perform well enough in 3DMark 2003 3.40 as you can see by the numbers in the following table:
The HP Compaq is about 27% faster than the Sony VAIO irrespective of the power source. Note that the performance in Fill Rate, Vertex Shader and Pixel Shader subtests remains almost the same irrespective of the power source. We also tested the notebooks in 3DMark 2005 for a thorough analysis of the graphics performance of the two computers:
The HP Compaq is about 19% faster here, too. There’s a very small difference as the power source changes – the speed goes down by 3-4% only.
The HP Compaq wins the Unreal Tournament 2003 test. It is 10% faster than the Sony VAIO in botmatch-antalus, 33% faster in botmatch-citadel and 20% in flyby-asbestos. The numbers can be found in the following table:
For better comparison, the numbers for Unreal Tournament 2003 are presented as diagrams below:
Next, I tested the notebooks in Quake 3 with two graphics quality presets:
There are no changes: the frame rates are high, and the HP Compaq is the better of the two. Here are the exact numbers:
So, the HP Compaq is 11% and 38% faster than the Sony VAIO in the two graphics quality modes. The results of the notebooks in the graphics tests suggest that the “combined memory” technology – when the GPU has a small amount of dedicated memory and dynamically gets access to some of the system RAM – is not as effective as we might wish. Even though the NVIDIA GeForce Go 6200 works across the PCI Express x16 interface with its high bandwidth, the system memory is accessed by other devices, too, and works slower than the dedicated graphics memory.
Overall, both notebooks are sufficiently fast for running professional 3D applications and modern 3D games at an acceptable speed (but their performance goes down a little in the autonomous mode).
Next we measured the battery life time with the help of Battery Eater Pro 2.50. As usual, we performed the tests at the maximum screen brightness and in three test modes:
So, the battery of the Sony VAIO VGN-FS115ZR can last as long as 1 hour 29 minutes in the classic mode, 1 hour 40 minutes in the reader’s mode, and 1 hour 24 minutes in the DVD mode if the screen brightness is at its maximum. The HP Compaq nx8200 worked autonomously for 2 hours 11 minutes in the classic mode, 3 hours 20 minutes in the reader’s mode and 2 hours 57 minutes in the DVD mode.
The performance of the HP Compaq is impressive, especially considering that this machine doesn’t pretend to be a sub-notebook (for which the battery run-down time is one of the basic parameters). The Sony VAIO looks unassuming in comparison. The results of the notebooks in this test are visually presented in the next diagram:
Sometimes it’s not simple to make a conclusion. The tests I’ve performed today suggest that the separating line between office notebooks and desktop-replacement notebooks is becoming ever thinner. The former can now deliver good performance in graphics applications which you could earlier have with desknotes only.
And still, the Sony VAIO and the HP Compaq belong to the office class rather. They run office and multimedia applications at a high speed and can handle professional graphics applications, too. They are handy at work and offer you excellent functionality. They can also work in the field as well as in office.
The Sony VAIO looks gorgeous and its ergonomic qualities are up to the mark, too. It also features a big hard drive and an optical disc recorder. Its disadvantages are a rather low performance in games due to the graphics controller employed and a short battery life time (it might be better), and the lack of an infrared port.
The HP Compaq features good performance, excellent battery life time, numerous ports/connectors/communications, and a handy touchpad. Its drawbacks are the over-conservative exterior, the not-very-convenient keyboard (but you get used to it after some time) and the eject button of the optical drive.
If we compare these two notebooks (taken at random for today’s review), we see that you have got a choice between the appealing design of the Sony VAIO VGN-FS115ZR and the higher performance of the HP Compaq nx8220 in graphics applications.