System setup and notes
Hardware and Software
Test Platforms
| System | Alienware Area-51 m5700 laptop | Dell Inspiron XPS Gen 2 laptop | Rock Xtreme Ti laptop | Shuttle SD11G5 SFF system | AMD Athlon 64 desktop system |
| Processor(s) | Intel Pentium M 770 | Intel Pentium M 770 | Intel Pentium 4 570 | Intel Pentium M 770 | AMD Athlon 64 4000+ |
| Mainboard | Intel i915PM Sonoma | Intel i915PM Sonoma | Intel i915P PCI-Express | Shuttle FD11 | ABIT AX8 VIA K8T890 PCI-Express |
| Memory | 1GByte (1x1024MB)PC4200 DDR2 SODIMM | 1GByte (2x512MB) Samsung PC4200 DDR2 SODIMMs | 1GByte (2x512MB) Samsung PC4200 DDR2 SODIMMs | 1GByte (2x512MB) Corsair XMS2-5400UL | 1GByte (2x512MB) Corsair XMS3200XL | Memory timings | 4-4-4-12 @ 533MHz | 4-4-4-11 @ 533MHz | 4-4-4-11 @ 533MHz | 4-4-4-11 @ 533MHz | 2-2-2-5 1T @ 400MHz |
| Graphics Cards | GeForce 6800 Go 256MB | GeForce 6800 Go Ultra 256MB | Mobility RADEON X800 XT 256MB | Intel GMA950 64MB | GeForce 6800 GT 256MB (desktop) | Disk drive(s) | Fujitsu 80GB 5,400RPM | Fujitsu 100GB 4,200RPM | 2x 60GB Hitachi 7,200RPM in RAID0 | 160GB Western Digital 160JB | 160GB Western Digital 160JB | Screen | 17-inch WXGA (1440x900) | 17-inch WUXGA (1920x1200) | 17-inch WSXGA (1680x1050) | 20-inch Dell 2001FP (1600x1200) | 20-inch Dell 2001FP (1600x1200) | Operating system | Windows XP Home SP2 | Windows XP Home SP2 | Windows XP Home SP2 | Windows XP Professional SP2 | Windows XP Professional SP2 |
Benchmark Software
ScienceMark 2.0 (7th February 2005)
HEXUS.in-house Cryptography Benchmark
HEXUS Pifast Benchmark
Realstorm Raytracing 2004
CINEBENCH 2003 multi-CPU render
HEXUS.in-house MP3 Encoding Benchmark using LAME 3.97a (Intel HT compiler) - 701MB WAV
picCOLOR 32-bit v4.0
KribiBench v1.1
Simpli Software's HDTach 3.0.1.0
DOOM 3 Timedemo 1
3DMark05 b1.2.0
Half-Lfe 2 - HEXUS custom benchmark (prison demo)
Notes
We'll be looking at comparative performance against another couple of laptops featuring 17-inch wide-aspect screens and fast graphics cards. The Dell Inspiron XPS Gen 2 uses an identical CPU and mainboard, although does run with a faster GeForce 6800 Go 256MB graphics card. Rock's effort uses a desktop Pentium 4 570 coupled to an ATI Mobility Radeon X800 XT. We've also added in results from a decent desktop system and from Shuttle's ever-so-cute SD11G5 small form-factor system that, like two of the laptops, accommodates Intel's S479 CPUs.
No problems to report during a weekend of testing. The BIOS, as expected, didn't allow any frequency manipulation at all. Clock speeds of the lineup were as follows:
3801.5MHz - Rockdirect XTI 3.8 - Intel Pentium 4 570 - ATI Mobility Radeon X800 XT 256MB
2411.1MHz - ABIT AX8 (VIA K8T890) - AMD Athlon 64 4000+ - NVIDIA GeForce 6800 GT 256MB
2138.2MHz - Shuttle SD11G5 - Intel Pentium M 770 - Intel GMA950
2133.4MHz - Alienware Area-51 m5700 - Intel Pentium M 770 - NVIDIA GeForce 6800 Go 256MB
2129.5MHz - Dell Inspiron XPS Gen2 - Intel Pentium M 770 - NVIDIA GeForce 6800 Go Ultra 256MB
