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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JarredWalton - Thursday, May 20, 2010 - link
I'll try running that once as a reference point. Is there a way to loop a PowerPoint slide? I'm guessing that's what you mean: external display, PowerPoint, and battery power right?Furuno - Friday, May 21, 2010 - link
Yes. And for looping the slide, you can set it by going to the Slide Show menu and pressing the Set Up Slide Show Button, and there's should be a loop continuosly checkbox in the dialogue box. Oh, and you'll need to adjust the Advance Slide option under Transition Menu.Best regards,
Furuno
MacGyver85 - Thursday, May 20, 2010 - link
Excellent article, thanks for the thorough and honest review.The only thing that keeps me away from buying these (or any) laptops is the abysmal display quality.
Maybe you guys could literally set the bar for the manufacturers ?!
You could add bars to the display graphs that would say: abysmal, decent, good, industry leading quality or something similar.
That way we'd see at a glimpse what is worth buying and what is not in this category.
Hopefully it will encourage more manufacturers to give higher priority to a good panel instead of those extra few percentages of processor performance.
Setsunayaki - Friday, May 21, 2010 - link
4 hours of DVD playback time isn't so bad, though the idle state gives us a 550 minute battery life.The important thing with a laptop, which is being challenged lately by the latest cell phones is application speed.
An example:
Task: Taking an image on site and sending it to all your friends.
I used to use laptops for this, way before cell phones had cameras....I used to take a picture on a digital camera, then upload them to my laptop by USB. I then would have to find some Wireless Network out there...or Wired Connection to deal with the internet...and then send an email to everyone with Attachment. This takes forever on a laptop....
Today I can just get to the site or target location.....I can sneak around and take an image with a phone....and then I can use the 3G coverage of an area and send an email with that attachment to everyone to everyone in my list...All in the time it takes for a laptop to start up and set up.
The more laptops try to take the role of mobile-desktops, the farther they will drift from the concepts of what mobility (and stealth) brings to the table, and the slower they will become each generation against cell phones.
There is a reason why more people today buy an iPhone or GooglePhone these days....
Specially the idea that voice recognition software is becoming more and more common....Its fun to be able to say something and have it record a note, or dial a number....
I can say "I need to buy eggs and bread" and walk into a store and play it back.....than having to type it.
The more they try to make a laptop into a mobile-desktop, the more mobility it actually loses and the slower it becomes vs the cell phone craze...Yes, its amazing how a $3000 laptop doesnt hold a candle to the speed one can do things on the IPhones and other Phones out there that compete against it.
T2k - Monday, May 24, 2010 - link
Seriously: LIGHT at almost 5lbs?I hope Asus paid a lot for this piece - it would be awful to realize you just made a complete fool of yourself publicly for chump change...
Alexo - Saturday, July 10, 2010 - link
Can you get your hands on a PL30JT?Supposed to have an i5 processor and a matte screen, maybe a little better battery life as well.
I would love for you to review it (or even a quick comparison with the U30JC).
Thanks,
Alex.
mrmbmh - Saturday, September 4, 2010 - link
very very useful article for me!I've found Vaio S Series a good competitor against this laptop...same weight...same processor...same graphic chip... but there are a few articles about S series.. and seriously... This website is one of the few websites I can trust :)
So can you read an article about S series? I love U30jc but as you mentioned it has a poor screen... I think vaio makes better displays...
thanks anyway...