ASUS Transformer Book T100 Review: Redefining the Entry-Level Windows Notebook
by Anand Lal Shimpi on October 18, 2013 12:00 AM ESTCPU Performance
The Atom Z3740 in the T100 features a 9% lower base clock and 22.5% lower max turbo frequency than the Z3770 we previewed back at IDF. Given how good of a job Bay Trail does turboing up to max frequencies under normal use, I’d expect proportionally lower scores in our tests.
I’ll start with our cross platform browser based benchmarks before moving on to a look at the Z3740 vs. Z3770.
Note for all of these benchmarks I’ve used Google’s Chrome browser. IE11 integrates well into the modern UI of Windows 8.1 but is otherwise a pretty terrible browser by comparison. I think the modern UI Chrome experience on 8.1 isn’t as good, but it’s a better/faster/less-finicky option. Out of all of our tests only SunSpider seems to run quicker under IE11, whereas Chrome wins everywhere else. I think it’s a bit insane to switch between browsers based on the benchmark being run, so we’re sticking with Chrome across the board.
Lightly threaded performance is actually quite comparable to the Chromebook 11, which was a bit surprising. Throw a multitasking workload at the two notebooks and you'll separate the boys from the men though:
Chrome under Chrome OS performs extremely well for obvious reasons. But here the T100's additional cores and solid memory interface really come in handy when multitasking, there's hardly any performance penalty for this sort of multitasking on Bay Trail while the dual-core Cortex A15 based Chromebook needs serious help.
The T100 remains extremely competitive compared to the Chromebook 11 and definitely compared to Android tablets.
Next up is putting the Atom Z3740's performance in perspective compared to our earlier FFRD data:
In all of these tests we see nearly perfect scaling compared to the Atom Z3770. Turbo frequencies are regularly hit when under load, and as a result see see proportionally lower performance from the T100. I would’ve liked to have seen the Z3770 used in the T100, but not if it meant a higher price, an optional dock or a worse display.
GPU Performance
I didn’t have a ton of time to go through gaming performance on the T100, but with a quarter of the EUs of Ivy Bridge it’s clear that you shouldn’t expect a GPU monster out of Bay Trail. In our cross platform graphics tests however the T100 is quite competitive, although not industry leading by any means.
I did see some choppy animations at times and indications that the GPU (or its drivers) weren’t up to snuff, but that’s exclusively in classic desktop mode. In the modern UI, the Atom Z3740 was very smooth.
Storage Performance
Our Android IO tests rely on Androbench with a relatively limited LBA span. I increased the difficulty of the test a bit under Windows 8.1 but still kept it reasonable since we are dealing with eMMC solutions. I’m testing across a 1GB LBA span and testing for a period of 1 minute, which is an ok balance between difficulty of workload and sensitivity to the fact that we’re evaluating low-class SSDs here.
Sequential read and write performance is competitive with the high-end examples we’ve seen in the Android space. Random read performance is similarly good, while random write performance is appreciably better than what we’re used to in Android tablets. It is good to see ASUS/Intel/Microsoft concerned about random write performance, but I’d still like to see a 5 - 10x increase in these numbers with a focus on sustained performance before I’m truly happy.
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vista1984 - Friday, October 18, 2013 - link
people are just finding a better mix functioned device. i am sure most people here have a power desktop that can beat yoga pro's performance easily, and also have an ipad or android tablet can beat yoga pro's portability and battery life easily. but we are tired of switching between and trying to find one device that can be a tablet + netbook with enough power and long battery life.Arbie - Friday, October 18, 2013 - link
Process Lasso will seriously boost response = apparent performance, where that's a concern. I'm still running two old Asus eeePC netbooks with weak processors and PL makes a huge difference. It takes them from PITA to passable, or even pleasant except when the slow HD bogs down.I can't say enough good things about Process Lasso, and just realized that here is a good place to mention it. Because these new Asus machines run Windows, they can run PL. With that and the fast storage I'd bet the lower CPU grade won't mean much in pactice.
sirfergy - Friday, October 18, 2013 - link
Could you elaborate on why IE11 is terrible? I hate generalizations like that w/o any data to back them up.Klimax - Friday, October 18, 2013 - link
Frankly, it doesn't make sense. Chrome might have been at some point better, but I don¨t think it is true for some time.He might want to update his knowledge, it is out of date by quite few years.(And the only thing Chrome had was Javascript performance, nothing else)
Braumin - Friday, October 18, 2013 - link
I agree I actually prefer IE11 even in desktop mode.Chrome is great too I just think they are both great. Not sure why there's all the hatred.
Drumsticks - Friday, October 18, 2013 - link
Me too. I just got 8.1 and I'm unbelievably impressed with IE11. Scrolling is awesome (finally!) and performance is quite snappy.cylemmulo - Friday, October 18, 2013 - link
It is listed to release today but no stores carry it and Amazon won't do saturday delivery, I guess I will have to wait until Monday, I wish the review had some actual games on the performance I'm curious to see how it does on some older ones.tential - Friday, October 18, 2013 - link
Because of the pricepoint of this laptop and the fact that it's running full windows, I find most of these benchmarks to be UTTERLY useless.I am not crossbuying a laptop with keyboard vs a tablet.
I think this is more for us looking to upgrade our laptops vs other entry level laptops (like haswell entry level). Feel most of these benchmarks are quite useless when it comes to comparisons. I'd rather see it compared vs
Core2Duo
Ivybridge Celeron
Haswell Celeron
Other <350 laptops.
Dunno how I can compare an Android laptop I can't use anything with(exaggeration) compared to Windows.
Also, slightly annoying that these companies think 2GB of ram is acceptable. Just add another 2GB and put it at cost rather than need to make a margin on EVERY single thing. 2GB of ram would add what? 10-20 dollars extra tops? Probably less since they buy it in bulk...
tential - Friday, October 18, 2013 - link
Can't edit, I know it docks and is used as a tablet as well but man, it's running windows. Other things aren't. I need to compare it to other windows devices!!! =DBrianChase1776 - Friday, October 18, 2013 - link
This^^I want to buy the product for web browsing and light gaming in bed. The only laptop I ever owned (broke after a year) was an HP with a Core2Duo 1.8gig processor, 4 gigs DDR2, and an 8600M GS on Windows Vista. The laptop was fantastic at even moderate to heavy gaming and I could play Far Cry 2 at an enjoyable frame-rate at pretty high settings (I know the game sucks, but the visuals it could pull off blew my mind on a laptop). So I'd rather see how it stacks up to a ~4 year old laptop in terms of performance because I won't end up buying it if I can't play: STALKER, Mount and Blade, and AI War on it.