Performance
As usual, we will first run our 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. SiSoftware Sandra measures the overall performance of the system as well as that of each of its subsystems.
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). 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 fully 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? divided by the number of results.
Comparing the Intel Pentium Dual-Core T2060 with Intel’s Core Duo and Core 2 Duo or with AMD’s Turion 64 X2 with similar clock rates, we can see that it is expectably slower than the full-featured Core Duo which has a larger cache and a higher bus frequency. The new Pentium is almost as fast as the Turion 64 X2, though. In the battery mode the frequency of the Pentium Dual-Core T2060 is reduced from its default 1.6GHz to 0.8GHz, which is reflected in the notebook’s test results. The results of the memory and disk tests are normal.
The graphics core integrated into the Radeon Xpress 200M chipset performs quite well against Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 950 and does not suffer a big performance hit when the notebook switches to its battery as ATI’s discrete mobile solutions do.
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 and the ASUS A6Rp is considerably slower than the Acer TravelMate 6463WLMi that features a Merom-core processor. The difference wouldn’t be so big against an ordinary Yonah. The notebooks?results are lower in the battery mode in proportion to the CPU frequency reduction.
