ASUS ZENBOOK PRIME UX31A Ultrabook Review

Windows Experience Index & Test Setup

ASUS sent over a loaner Zenbook UX31A-DH52 for testing purposes. This Ultrabook features a 1.7GHz Intel Core i5-3317U processor that has a maximum turbo frequency of 2.6Ghz. Other highlights include 4GB of DDR3 1600 MHz memory (RAM), and a 128GB solid-state drive. The Intel HD Graphics 4000 graphics are built-in the Intel ‘Ivy Bridge’ processor, so they are integrated and not discrete. The Intel HD Graphics 4000 graphics processor is dynamic and runs between 350MHz to 1.05Ghz depending on the load. This graphics processor should be plenty for regular use and light gaming.

Here are the CPU-Z screenshots for our test rig in case you are wondering what the system settings were. As you can see the 4GB of DDR3 memory was running at 1600;MHz with 11-11-11-28 1T memory and our notebook was updated and running BIOS 212.

When we got the Zenbook Prime UX31A we found that the BIOS was old, so we updated the Zenbook from BIOS 204 to 212. We were shocked to find that you couldn’t update it from the BIOS using EZFlash, but we found that ASUS did have an easy utility that you could run in Windows from the desktop.

Let’s take a look at the Windows Experience Index score as that is
one that you can easily compare to other notebooks at retail stores.

As you can see our ASUS Zenbook Prime UX31A had a Windows 7 Index base score of 5.8 and
the lowest scoring component on the Ultrabook is the Intel HD 4000 graphics that is inside the Intel Core i5-3317U ‘Ivy Bridge’ Processor.