ASUS U30Jc: Refining Thin and Light Performance
by Jarred Walton on May 18, 2010 11:23 PM ESTASUS U30Jc Gaming Performance
Thanks to the discrete GeForce 310M GPU, the U30Jc is also capable of handling most games at native resolution. In most cases, modern titles will need to run at low/minimum detail to achieve playability, but older titles and less demanding games will allow you to turn up some of the settings. We also added Battlefield: Bad Company 2 to our gaming results thanks to reader requests.
All of the games we tested were at least playable at 1366x768, with one exception. Mass Effect 2 really stresses the GPU subsystem on low-end GPUs, so it chugs along at sub-20 FPS in many areas. Likewise, we tried Dragon Age: Origins and found that it runs in the upper teens—a different engine than ME2, but apparently Bioware makes games that run similarly. Battlefield: Bad Company 2 is borderline playable, hovering just below 30FPS; what's interesting to note is that even with a much more powerful GPU, the M11x turns in lower frame rates in BFBC2. Battlefield games have always been rather demanding on the CPU side of the equation, and BC2 appears to continue that trend.
Of the remaining titles, Batman is able to run at Medium or High detail depending on your preference for smooth gameplay (you'll get short dips into the teens on High). Empire: Total War manages to deliver acceptable performance at Medium detail, and the current Optimus driver prevents us from choosing anything higher. (It appears that ETW looks at the capabilities of the Intel HD Graphics for determining available quality settings, even though it's definitely running on the 310M.) Left 4 Dead 2 runs fine at Medium but takes a pretty sharp drop moving up to High and there's definitely choppiness during the zombie mob sequences. Stalker looks like a 2005 game on minimum detail; bump things up one notch (low + dynamic object lighting) and you're looking at 2007 quality and equivalent performance. Anything more than that and you drop into the low 20s and teens.
As a gaming system, the U30Jc works okay but there will certainly be titles where performance is too low to run at 1366x768. Mass Effect 2 runs much better at 1024x600, but moving to a non-native resolution results in some fuzziness. If gaming is an important criterion for you, we'd recommend looking at other options. The Alienware M11x does quite well in games and should work for a while, provided you don't run into a driver issue down the road. Most other gaming capable laptops are going to be 14" or larger chassis, like the 14" Sony VAIO VPCCW22FX (i3 CPU with GT 330M) or the 15.6" Acer 5740G. ASUS also has a 14" ASUS N82J (i5-430M CPU with GT 335M) coming out that should still last 6+ hours on battery while combining a much more powerful GPU with Optimus Technology (something the Sony VAIO currently lacks).
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zac206 - Wednesday, May 19, 2010 - link
This laptop seems interesting. I would wonder how the MSI X360 would do against it, as it seems to have similar specs.GullLars - Wednesday, May 19, 2010 - link
A good review here, seems like a decent laptop for some uses.I would love to see how it does if you swap the HDD for a SSD.
Jarred, If you still have the U30Jc in house an Intel SSD (or SandForce), would you consider swapping the drive and repeating the test suite? It would be much appreciated.
Doing so would likely increase productivity noticably, and increase typical battrey life through the "hurry up and go idle" principle.
A $100-200 SSD like x25-V/M would likely double (or more?) the PCmark Vantage total score, putting it firmly in the lead ahead of the Lenovo T410, with a good lead, possibly even in first place with double the score of second place.
JarredWalton - Wednesday, May 19, 2010 - link
Does it need to be an Intel SSD? Because I have a Vertex I can slap in there if that's okay....GullLars - Wednesday, May 19, 2010 - link
Sure, go ahead and put in the vertex. Remember to set AHCI mode.It will give a bit lower scores, but should still give a decent points boost.
Looking forward to it.
Will you post it as an extension/edit to the article, or maybe a new short one?
JarredWalton - Wednesday, May 19, 2010 - link
I'll post it as a separate follow-up I think, as it's going to take a few days to rerun some of these tests.Kegetys - Wednesday, May 19, 2010 - link
Too bad they didn't improve the screen at all, I have an UL30VT and the machine is fantastic except the poor quality display ruins it. Very bad viewing angles, poor contrast and entirely useless outdoors. The machine could also fit a 16:10 screen fine (huge bezels on top and bottom) and the added vertical space would be welcomed for desktop use. You wont enjoy movies with the screen anyway so 16:9 has very little use in my opinion.teohhanhui - Wednesday, May 19, 2010 - link
The glossy screen is a major deal breaker for me :(Looking at Dell Vostro 3300/3400 instead.
Modeverything - Wednesday, May 19, 2010 - link
I was just curious as to why a few of the laptops change between benchmarks? Doesn't this make some of the testing inconsistent?JarredWalton - Wednesday, May 19, 2010 - link
I'm guessing you're referring to the previously missing Studio XPS 16 and Acer 5740G results on the application and 3DMark pages. Sorry about that. I added them in as they somehow got left off my spreadsheet. Mea culpa. If there are any others missing, let me know.blyndy - Wednesday, May 19, 2010 - link
What about the Dell Vostro 3300?(http://www.dell.com/content/topics/topic.aspx/us/s...
Same size, same RAM/GPU, better cpu (i5-520M), 500 GB HDD, bluetooth. No HDMI (it's available on the 14", 15" and 17" models) and ships with only a 4-cell battert (an 8-cell is available), but it picks up eSATA and express-card, fingerprint reader and double mouse trackpad buttons (and it looks ten times better!) for $933.
I think that its miles ahead for the money, and the 17" model has the option for a GT 330M (although the 17" display show an unnerving amount of flex in this video at 44 secs: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g2HW0yMzbG8)
These Dells 3x00's are 8/10, they would be a 9/10 if the screens where matte, and the 17" would be a 10/10 if it offered a GTS 350M with GDDR5 :)
It would be great if Anandtech could do a review of one of them.