We have made some simple tests to see if this PC can really work as gaming machine not as high as a desktop one but enough to run some old games and also the new ones in a smooth and comfortable way. They are some basic tests to know the overall performance of the system.

3DMark 2006 and some games

The result with 3DMark 2006 is hopefully good taking into account that the processor, even working at 2.6GHz, is far from what I would call high end so it affects to the performance of the graphic cards. Now we will check the rest of results with some tests based in games we have made.

Results are grouped by the speeds reached but the differences are quite far from the numbers because in Unreal Tournament 3 and Half Life 2 we have used high quality levels (with no FSAA) and 1920x1200 pixels resolutions. Playing Crysis, the quality levels were in "high" mode but with a lower resolution like 1280x720 pixels. With this information my personal opinion is that this device is perfectly valid for gaming enthusiasts as it brings great performance levels at high resolutions, but for more exigent users may be a bit low taking into account that we will see DX10 taking more importance in the following months. If you want to use it with engines like Source, Unreal Engine 3 and other ID engines, this machine is perfect with its current configuration.

We also care about the overall performance of the system so we have run some tests for that giving some special importance to the performance of its RAID 0 system with 7200rpm hard disks. PCMark, CineBench R10 and the syntetic test from Sandra for the performance of hard drives have been the options chosen.

The results in PCMark Vantage are quite good. The system has a quite balanced configuration that makes it reach a nice score what puts it in direct competence positions with desktop computers of mid and high end. We reach the performance of a high desktop computer in a more compact and attractive format.

In Cinebench R10 we can see that this PC is totally valid for the professionals of the graphic design that need a powerful machine but don’t want to choose a desktop solution. Its performance is good thanks to a brand new processor that throws results we would not expect from a 2.6GHz processor.

What is not as spectacular as expected is the performance of its RAID 0 system. It is clear that its 7200 rpm disks for notebooks can’t offer a improve in performance that justifies their higher prices. Personally I would prefer larger size and 5400 rpm disks as the ideal configuration of the computer. Otherwise, to have a RAID system inside our notebook is an extra we can use to get more security or storage capacity instead of some few MB/s more that will take us nowhere.