Friday, May 11, 2007

 

Revved-Up Performance

Inside Intel's New Centrino Duo and Centrino Pro

(Santa Rosa)
Revved-Up Performance

We used the Dell Inspiron E1705 (Vista) with the previous chipset ("Napa") as our comparison system. For the new Dell, Fujitsu, and the HP dv2500t machines, test results aren't earth-shattering. You'll see gains of 3 to 10 percent with them on Adobe Photoshop CS2, Windows Media Encoder, and CineBench 9.5 tests. As you move to the Gateway, Lenovo, and HP HDX9000 systems, performance gains get into the 10 to 30 percent range, but that could easily be a function of the faster processors. The HDX9000, ThinkPad T61 Widescreen, and the E-265M finished our Photoshop scripts and Windows Media Encoding tests in record time. On SYSmark 2007 Preview Overall, the T61 Widescreen and HDX9000 outscored the Dell Inspiron E1705 (Vista) by 22 and 33 percent, respectively. The Gateway E-265M outperformed the E1705 by a 30 percent margin, thanks in large part to its Windows XP operating system, which has proven to be faster in certain test areas than Vista.

Intel is touting better battery life with its new chipset. On paper, the chipset can dynamically change the speed of the FSB to save power, essentially ratcheting the speeds of the processor and chipset down to a lower gear with what Intel calls its Enhanced Sleep state. Expect to see better battery life and less heat dissipation than the previous Napa chipset. We performed some aggressive battery-run-down tests with a 7-hour DVD made up of video clips from the The Incredibles. As expected, great battery life is still a function of size. Both the Dell Latitude D630 and the Gateway E-265M have monstrous batteries and therefore lasted the longest, surpassing the 3.5-hour mark. None of the new Centrino laptops were uncomfortably warm; all of them had temperature readings, using an infrared thermometer, below 100ºF. To get a better sense of what battery life will be for the new platform, we'll have to wait for BAPCo's MobileMark 2007, an industry-standard benchmark test that'll serve as a better gauge for battery performance. From an anecdotal standpoint, though, the prospects are very good

Labels: centrino

by dayatna at 8:16 PM |