ASUS Z63A Whitebook Laptop Review

The Benchmarking Continues

AquaMark 3

Comments: The ASUS Z63a takes a substantial lead over the Compaq with it’s dated nVidia GPU in this graphics-intensive benchmark. The Aquamark 3 results also confirm what we saw in Super Pi: the ASUS Z63a notebook is as fast as my overclocked desktop in the CPU benchmark. With graphics cards considered, however, the desktop blows away the PPK in overall score (39,500 versus 7,700).

How limited are the Intel GMA900 graphics in everyday usage? Let’s run a few graphics-specific benchmarks and find out.

FutureMark 3DMark03

Comments: I searched the FutureMark 3Dmark03 database for other notebooks using Pentium ?M’ processors and 512 MB ram or more, but equipped with ATI x300 or x600 Mobility graphics cards (tests run at 1024x768x32 and not overclocked). Note that these were 15.4? and 17? notebooks. I calculated the average scores for each (27 tests of x300 and 36 tests for x600). The Compaq’s GF4-420 is hopelessly outclassed in this benchmark. The ASUS’s GMA900 integrated graphics hang in there, but the Mobility Radeons show 1.9x and 2.8x performance margins, respectively.

FutureMark 3DMark05

Comments: The Compaq’s Geforce4 420 graphics chipset lacks PixelShader 2.0 technology, and would not run this benchmark. I searched the FutureMark 3Dmark05 database for other notebooks using Pentium ?M’ processors and 512 MB ram or more, but equipped with ATI x300 or x600 Mobility graphics (tests run at 1024x768x32 and not overclocked). I calculated the average scores for each (18 tests of x300 and 19 tests for x600). The 3Dmark 05 version uses newer, more 3D-intensive game benchmarks (DirectX 9.0c). The results show a much larger spread between the ASUS Z63A’s Intel GMA900 graphics and the Mobility Radeons compared to 3Dmark03, which uses older DX 9a games. The Radeons show 3.5x and 4.7x performance margins in 3Dmark05, respectively, compared to only 1.9x and 2.8x margins in 3Dmark03.