CyberpowerPC's Compal PBL21: The Shark's New Teeth
by Dustin Sklavos on July 11, 2011 12:30 AM ESTGaming Performance
For testing the Compal PBL21's NVIDIA GeForce GT 540M, we'll run through our "medium" and "high" testing suites. It's fast enough that it'll handle any of our "low" presets with aplomb; at the same time, the 128-bit memory bus and DDR3 attached to the GPU will, as you'll see, basically ensure that the PBL21 can't really game at its native resolution. While we don't show minimum framerate results, suffice it to say even if the game is able to exceed an average of the magical 30fps at 1080p, it's a muddy experience.
Generally speaking, the NVIDIA GeForce GT 540M is a practical improvement over the last generation's AMD Mobility Radeon HD 5650. The blows traded between the Dell XPS 15 and Compal PBL21 can be mostly attributed to differences in drivers the units shipped with, but either way the two are essentially comparable. At these framerates, the medium presets are really where the GT 540M is going to be most comfortable; 1080p performance is rocky, and that old GPU killer Metro 2033 takes its toll at any resolution.
1600x900 is really about the limit a GPU with a 128-bit memory bus and DDR3 is going to hit before things get too shaky, and the Compal PBL21 bears that out. 1080p is a lost cause at our "high" preset. If you're willing to fiddle with the settings in most of your games 1600x900 is probably going to be the sweet spot for compromising between performance and image quality, but the GeForce GT 540M is just not powerful enough to drive games at 1080p.
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DanNeely - Tuesday, July 12, 2011 - link
It's true, and if that was litigatible class action lawyers would've been circling Sony like sharks years ago. the first PS3 game to upsample came out only a year or two after the console launched. The clueless brigade of the internet press concluded that it meant that PS# hardware was maxed out and that the console would be fated for a very early replacement.shooty - Monday, July 11, 2011 - link
"Noise levels are comfortably low even under extreme load..."Is the this the only mention of noise or did I miss something? Noise levels are important in a notebook, can you please have a comparison graph of this notebooks noise levels idling and under load? Similar to what is done for graphics cards.
Thanks
aranyagag - Tuesday, July 12, 2011 - link
why is it that except apple no one is capable of giving a 16:10 or taller screen -- am I the only one that does not spend all the time on the notebook watching movies?and even for 16:9 movies I prefer the onscreen menu to remain visible-- and not hide the movie.
Kakureru - Tuesday, July 12, 2011 - link
last time I had a Compal laptop, the support was complete crap.I was left to my own devices as I had to fix obscure built in un replaceable components
with the life cycle of less than one service pack cycle...
I would be willing to invest another look if that has changed.
StrangerGuy - Wednesday, July 13, 2011 - link
WTF...vendors still wanna build laptops with glossy surfaces in Q3 2011 despite we saying a million times that we don't want out laptops to be fingerprint and scratch magnets.