ASUS Eee PC 1005PE: Pineview Arrives

Has Graphics Performance Improved?

The initial results in PCMark look like the GMA 3150 is really no better than the GMA 950, and the tests in 3DMark pretty much confirm that. See for yourselves:

SM3.0 doesn't work on the 3150, so 3DMark06 only generates a partial result, but that's better than what we managed previously with GMA 950. 3DMark03 has the 1005PE tied with the M1022 and trailing the 1005HA slightly, but they're all so slow it doesn't really matter. 3DMark05 does show a 20% improvement for 3150 vs. 950 (1005PE vs. 1005HA), but 20% faster than dirt-slow is still dirt-slow. Meanwhile, the ION LE in the HP Mini 311 is over five times as fast in 3DMark03, nearly eight times as fast in 3DMark05, and pretty much an order of magnitude faster in 3DMark06 (which it manages to run properly, unlike the 3150).

The 1201N ups the ante and improves on the HP Mini 311 by 17% in 3DMark05/06, as well as being able to run Vantage (DX10 is enabled in the ION but not the ION LE, unless you hack the drivers).

Our experience with actual games echoes what we see here, but we can provide a few more details. First, forget 3D gaming on the GMA 950/3150 unless you want to run titles that are from 5+ years back. Second, the GMA 4500MHD is better, but it still has a ways to go. Interestingly enough, we could run more games with the latest Intel drivers, but performance is still less than half what the 9400M (ION) can provide. That's the bad news (for Intel).

As far as ION goes, we have some good news (for NVIDIA). Single-core Atom is still insufficient for most games, but the Atom 330 in the 1201N adds just enough to make gaming borderline possible on some titles. Batman averaged 24FPS on the 1201N at 800x600 and minimum details, but there were areas where Batman would run in slow-mo (around 10FPS) and other areas where performance was closer to 30FPS. You could play the game, but it leaves a lot to be desired. WoW on the other hand isn't as demanding in terms of the CPU, so you should be able to get your MMO fix that way (though large raids are likely to cause problems).