Centrino 2 Laptop Roundup

by Jarred Walton on October 24, 2008 3:00 AM EST

Power Requirements

Power requirements when a laptop is plugged in don't necessarily reflect power requirements when a laptop is on battery power. In particular, high-end GPUs run at lower maximum clock speeds when using the battery power. That may also occur with the midrange GPUs, but it's not strictly required - the Sager NP9262 battery is simply unable to provide enough power to maintain higher clock speeds. Keep this in mind when looking at the following numbers. We test under idle conditions, with a 100% load placed on the CPU via Folding@Home SMP, and finally at maximum load by running FAH SMP at the same time as we loop 3DMark06 (at 1280x800).

System Power Requirements

System Power Requirements

System Power Requirements

Here we see that the U6V consumes 20% to 30% less power than the closest competitor (Acer 6920G), and this translates into the higher Minutes/Whr score. However, most of the other notebooks come with a larger battery so it all more or less equals out. If you want to be green, of course, any notebook will use quite a bit less power than a desktop of similar performance.

Noise Levels

We also ran noise testing using an SPL meter at 24" under the same conditions as our power tests.

System Noise Levels

System Noise Levels

System Noise Levels

The small size and lower power requirements of the U6V don't end up translating into significantly lower noise level. In fact, the opposite is true, and ASUS G50V has the overall lowest noise level in all three tests. The U6V does tie it in the maximum load test, but we really have to congratulate ASUS on providing great cooling for the G50V without making a lot of noise. In fact, even with the "Turbo Extreme" overclock setting enabled, the G50V still runs at the same noise levels. The cooling arrangement certainly appears to have room to spare, which is probably why we are seeing an updated G50Vt with 9800M GTS graphics.

Battery Life Display Quality
Comments Locked

27 Comments

View All Comments

  • JarredWalton - Friday, October 24, 2008 - link

    See http://www.anandtech.com/mac/showdoc.aspx?i=3435&a...">Anand's article on the subject. The MacBook battery life dropped in half with Vista... but then that could just be that Apple didn't optimize for Vista properly. What we would rather see is a Vista PC that can compete with MacBook; I can't think of a good reason why it can't be done, unless Vista just has some junk that refuses to allow power saving features to fully activate.
  • BushLin - Tuesday, October 28, 2008 - link

    I think it is only fair to the other laptop manufacturers that you at least show the battery life of a Mac running Vista alongside their favourable results, I doubt anyone is still allowed to supply review samples with XP... it's not their fault Vista is crap!
  • phreax9802 - Friday, October 24, 2008 - link

    The VAIO SR series claim 6 hours of battery life running Vista. This is a 13.3" notebook with a 6-cell battery. Can you guys verify this claim, ask for a demo unit maybe?
  • JarredWalton - Friday, October 24, 2008 - link

    I'll see what I can do; Anand has had Sony hardware in the past, so maybe he can get me a laptop from them.
  • GoodRevrnd - Friday, October 24, 2008 - link

    Supposedly the SR also has "battery leakage" issues as well where it will drain over time even when it's off. I have a Z series and can hit 4-5 hours myself. That's at about 50-60% screen brightness, wifi on, pretty much everything else disabled, in stamina mode, with the processor pretty much sitting at Super LFM the whole time.
  • danwat1234 - Sunday, May 6, 2018 - link

    Still rocking this laptop today, with an X9100 Core 2 Duo Penryn at 3.45GHZ via multiplyer overclocking. Installed the 17 fin Forcecon fan while I was at it, the same that's comes with the Asus G51VX and G51J for more airflow. 8GB of RAM.
    Still my main machine today. Refuses to die even with a few years of nearly 24/7 GPU & CPU thrashing at 90C +.. The chassis is beat up though, starting to crack on the main chassis around the hinges. But, can get a used 1 on Ebay for cheap.. Batteries no longer made for it so i have a few genuine 9-cell batteries in my fridge.
    About time to upgrade to a Coffee Lake laptop maybe, but I like my Windows 7 setup.
  • falconmarley - Thursday, July 26, 2018 - link

    If you want to long time use your laptop then HP is the best device because its processing system is so fast. And it have more storage and battery life is also good. And the best thing <a href="https://hpetechnicalsupportnumber.com/"> HP Support Assistant</a> always available for customer help.

Log in

Don't have an account? Sign up now