Sony VAIO and HP Compaq: Two Office Notebooks in Our Lab --- TheThirdMedia Hardware

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:

640x480; 16 bit; Lighting:Vertex; Detail:Low; Texture Quality:16 bit; Texture Filter:Bilinear;
1024x768; 32 bit; Lighting:Lightmap; Detail:High; Texture Quality:32 bit; Texture Filter:Trilinear.

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:

Classical ?the system bears the maximum and evenly distributed load
Readers' test
DVD viewing test

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:



	TheThirdMedia Hardware → Mobile Guide → Mobile Article > Sony VAIO and HP Compaq: Two Office Notebooks in Our Lab