The Highest-End Notebooks, 2009
by Jarred Walton on October 14, 2009 3:10 AM ESTSystem Performance
We'll begin with a look at general system performance using PCMark and applications that can take advantage of the multi-core processors.
The three desktop replacement notebooks place at the top of our performance charts in PCMark, video encoding, and 3D rendering benchmarks. Not surprisingly, the desktop i7-975 offers far more performance in video encoding and 3D rendering tests. The i7-920XM also outperforms the Core 2 QX9300 in CPU intensive tasks despite its lower clock speed, albeit by a small margin, so given the choice Core i7 is better than Core 2 Quad. However, let's talk about PCMark for a minute.
The Eurocom M980NU looks very slow compared to the two other notebooks in PCMark. The reason is really quite simple: it doesn't have an SSD. Eurocom initially shipped us a system with an SSD, but we had some problems (apparently a flaky GPU) and the second system included a conventional hard drive. While there's no denying that SSDs are faster than hard drives, at least if you get a good SSD that doesn't degrade performance over time, PCMark places an unusually high weight on hard drive transfer rates -- which means things like the RAID 0 SSDs in the D900F really skew the results. Here are the detailed results for the notebooks.
| PCMark05 Breakdown | ||||
| AVADirect D900F | Clevo W870CU | Eurocom M980NU 1GPU | Eurocom M980NU SLI | |
| PCMark05 Score | 14730 | 11053 | 8382 | 8953 |
| HDD XP Startup (MB/s) | 67.38 | 22.57 | 8.36 | 8.53 |
| Physics and 3D (FPS) | 328.1 | 247.2 | 242.6 | 240.0 |
| 2D Transparency (Win/s) | 8082 | 7975 | 4711 | 6538 |
| 3D Pixel Shaders (FPS) | 820.3 | 792.6 | 825.7 | 773.0 |
| Web Rendering (Pages/s) | 4.900 | 2.914 | 2.619 | 2.762 |
| File Decryption (MB/s) | 91.60 | 75.25 | 68.44 | 68.05 |
| 2D 64 Line Redraw (FPS) | 2394 | 1734 | 1258 | 2365 |
| HDD General Usage (MB/s) | 38.09 | 35.58 | 6.05 | 6.49 |
| Multitasking 1 | 1000 | 739 | 630 | 627 |
| Audio Compression (KB/s) | 4745 | 3451 | 3287 | 3276 |
| Video Encoding (KB/s) | 792.2 | 594.6 | 449.5 | 445.9 |
| Multitasking 2 | 1000 | 698 | 734 | 750 |
| Text Editing (Pages/s) | 213.2 | 139.1 | 144.9 | 152.5 |
| Image Decompression (MP/s) | 45.93 | 34.18 | 36.21 | 36.01 |
| Multitasking 3 | 1000 | 879 | 754 | 755 |
| File Compression (MB/s) | 14.91 | 9.02 | 10.62 | 10.62 |
| File Encryption (MB/s) | 88.03 | 56.28 | 66.57 | 66.73 |
| HDD Virus Scan (MB/s) | 113.4 | 153.6 | 97.6 | 97.6 |
| Memory Latency (MAcc/s) | 13.88 | 12.70 | 9.55 | 9.55 |
| PCMark Vantage Breakdown | ||||
| AVADirect D900F | Clevo W870CU | Eurocom M980NU 1GPU |
Eurocom M980NU SLI |
|
| PCMark Vantage | 12128 | 9637 | 5245 | 5599 |
| Memory | 6429 | 6693 | 4050 | 4249 |
| TV and Movies | 5527 | 4426 | 3668 | 3918 |
| Gaming | 15570 | 12264 | 4870 | 4925 |
| Music | 10494 | 8486 | 3954 | 4160 |
| Communications | 8917 | 6369 | 5072 | 5215 |
| Productivity | 15368 | 10663 | 5222 | 5358 |
| HDD Test | 18361 | 15111 | 3490 | 3956 |
Not surprisingly, the D900F is the fastest option almost across the board. The only areas where it loses are PCMark05's HDD Virus Scan and PCMark Vantage's Memory tests. It also ties one of the other notebooks in a few tests (within 3%). The M980NU on the other hand should have done a lot better in the graphics tests, but the only area where it matches the D900F is in 2D 64 Line Redraw. While 3DMark is really good at punishing your GPU, PCMark doesn't appear to place nearly as much weight on graphics performance. Even better is the "Gaming" test suite in PCMark Vantage, which is clearly more of a hard drive benchmark -- unless you actually think the D900F is more than three times as fast as the M980NU SLI setup?
Put another way, don't place too much stock on PCMark's overall score. It's just a number, and these systems are all more than fast enough to handle just about any task you might want to do. Gaming and graphics are clearly the forte of the M980NU, and SSDs won't actually make your system three or four times as fast -- although you might be able to launch five applications at once and have them load 10 times as fast. Let's move on to our other tests.
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MonicaS - Friday, October 30, 2009 - link
I think the best way to get a high end laptop is to build one. Obviously you are very limited in what you can with a laptop over a desktop, but still the options are enough. The obvious upgrades are HD and Ram. On that note you can Raid to SSD's and put in some serious ram on a 64 bit machine and have a incredibly fast machine. The other benefit of this is that you can basically pick your own laptop to upgrade and not have to buy fugly one.Monica S
Los Angeles Computer Repair
http://www.sebecomputercare.com">http://www.sebecomputercare.com
Shadowmaster625 - Thursday, October 22, 2009 - link
"Unfortunately, 60GB isn't enough space to install even a small subset of our gaming benchmarks"All you have to do is move the game folders to the big drive when you're not using them, and move them back over to C:\Program Files when you need to use them. It takes all of 2 minutes (or 10 seconds for a multitasker) and is surely smarter than wasting hundreds of dollars on bigger SSDs, no? Are we that lazy?
Draxanoth - Thursday, October 22, 2009 - link
I see a lot of complaints for no good reason in these comments. If you don't like them, don't buy them. Complaining about something you don't own nor want sounds like bitterness at the price tag.I have an M570etu, which is the dual core version of the GTX280 Clevo model with the orange trim. It's a lot better looking in person, those pictures are awful. 3.2ghz I think but I'd have to check. My battery life is 3 hours non-gaming. It easily functions as both a mobile and a gaming machine. I don't have any problems with Call of Pripyat in HD either. i7 in a laptop is overkill, and if you want one with a decent battery life that's a poor choice. Why is anyone surprised by that?
Meaker10 - Saturday, October 17, 2009 - link
You can already get official mobile drivers for all laptops for windows 7 the same version as the desktop set for the HD 2,3 and 4 series.JarredWalton - Saturday, October 17, 2009 - link
True, but the real question will be whether this is a one-time thing (because Win7 is launching and ATI has to have valid drivers or they'll be in deep trouble), or if this is a change going forward. I'm inclined to think it's just for the Win7 launch, since they don't provide mobile drivers for anything besides Win7. Vista and XP users are still the vast majority of people and will be for a good while to come, and there are laptop users that literally haven't received updated ATI drivers in years.I'll keep an eye on things, and hopefully ATI will change their stance officially at some point. At present, searching for ATI Mobility Radeon drivers for XP and Vista only gives you the choice of X1800 or earlier GPUs. It looks like perhaps the integrated HD 3200 on laptops might also have up-to-date drivers in XP/Vista, but discrete GPU laptop owners are out of luck for now if they don't upgrade to Win7.
jmhorridge - Saturday, October 17, 2009 - link
I and my work colleagues must regularly fly to other countries for a week or two, and there perform computations (economic forecasting) that can occupy a quad-core for 2 or 3 hours. These big DTR laptops (or luggables) are the only way to get the job done. Battery life is not an issue -- always used plugged in.An mATX system (with monitor) would weigh twice as much, might not suit all voltages, and, in a suit case, would bust the flight weight allowance. However, everyone is allowed to carry on a laptop -- no matter how big.
I'm very pleased to see such machines reviewed.
Mark Horridge
Kishkumen - Friday, October 16, 2009 - link
"it appears most notebook manufacturers are convinced users aren't interested in matte LCDs anymore."Then they are wrong and I will not buy their product. I've passed up some pretty awesome notebooks over the past couple of years. Looks like I'll be passing up many more. If I'm the only one who can't stand glossy displays, then so be it, but I'd rather go without then pay good money for something that is the visual equivalent of fingernails on a chalkboard for me.
EBH - Thursday, October 15, 2009 - link
Falcon NW should have been in the review. Their machines > than any Aienwarehttp://www.falcon-nw.com/">http://www.falcon-nw.com/
JarredWalton - Friday, October 16, 2009 - link
I'm not sure why you say Falcon is so much better than Alienware. They're basically the same thing as AVADirect, but with far fewer options.Fragbox DRX = Clevo D900F with custom paint.
Fragbox TLX = MSI MS-1722 (GX720) with custom paint.
I/O = MSI MS-1361 (X340)with... yup, custom paint.
AVADirect also offers all three of those, with optional custom paint. Pricing definitely isn't in favor of FNW, though perhaps they have better customer service. Let's see, using as close to identical options as I can get (including custom paint on the AVADirect models):
D900F AVADirect = $4545
Fragbox DRX = $6086
MSI GX720 AVADirect = $2229
Fragbox TLX = $2625
MSI X340 AVADirect = $1292
I/O = $1727
I think the main draw of Falcon is if you want a special paint job with some custom image (i.e. not just the Exotix Single Color option). That can add over $1000, but at least then you have something truly unique. Anyway, inasmuch as performance and features are concerned, Falcon was in this review, albeit indirectly. The same goes for WidowPC and ProStar and anyone else that uses whitebook chassis.
nortexoid - Thursday, October 15, 2009 - link
I'm sure most would be better off buying a desktop (of the same caliber) and a cheap netbook for mobility, and for the same price as these ghastly beasts.The only market I can see for these things is someone who goes to LANs more often than he should, and who would rather port around a 10lb+ notebook than a desktop + LCD or all-in-one. But this has to be a very small niche market.