Posted:2006-06-09 By notebook review Number of View:111146
SAMSUNG X11 REVIEW NOTEBOOK
PERFORMANCE BENCHMARK
By :notebook review
Posted:2006-06-09
xtreview is your : Video card - cpu - memory - Hard drive - power supply unit source
A representative of the new generation of Samsung notebooks, the Centrino Duo-based X11 follows the X1 model in exterior design:
The color scheme of the new model just copies
the X1, but this is the only thing they have in common. The X11 is a
classically designed notebook you don’t have to get used to after
you’ve switched to it from some other model. When closed, the X11 is a
copy of the X1:
It is just a little thicker. It may seem strange, but the thicker
X11 looks somewhat more appealing than the X1 while the extra
centimeter of thickness brings the user quite an advanced
configuration: a full-featured Intel Core Duo processor
(T2300), a most recent mobile hardware platform, a 100GB hard disk
drive, and a discrete last-generation graphics controller from Nvidia
(GeForce Go 7400 TC). I guess all this makes up with interest for the
slight increase in the notebook’s thickness.
Well, if you are not
comparing the two models side by side, you don’t immediately see that
the X11 is thicker, especially from the front:
Just like the X1, this model has nothing except a card-reader on its
front panel. It’s the rear view that betrays that the notebook has got
fatter:
The X1 was no thicker than its battery, but this model has about 5
millimeters above and below the battery. All the connectors are on the
sides of the case. The connectors on the left panel are almost the same
as on the X1’s one…
…except
that there’s no USB port here and the speakers are in their usual
place. But the power adapter connector is in the screen hinge:
That’s
an original and convenient solution, at least it’s easy to connect the
power adapter by touch. The left panel carries an optical drive, the
three available USB ports, and video output.
You can use only one of them at a time unless you attach standard connectors.
The keyboard is ordinary:
No innovations here, it is quite comfortable in use, but the additional keys near the arrows surprised me somewhat:
Well, I can understand they just found no other place for the
Context Menu button, but the additional Fn key should be there to allow
you to adjust the screen brightness and sound volume with one hand. But
however I tried I couldn’t figure out how to put my fingers down to use
this key comfortably. Maybe you’ll find the answer to this riddle?
Keyboard status, HDD and WLAN activity indicators are on the right:
There are two LED indicators on the front panel: Power and Battery Charge.
The touchpad is classic, with a large sensitive area, a vertical
scrolling zone and big handy buttons that feel nice to the touch:
Samsung seems to be very fond of stickers:
The first sticker reports that the notebook
is equipped with a Bluetooth 2.0+EDR adapter; the last two are
obligatory. As for the Nvidia logotype, there’s nothing to boast about
because the GeForce Go 7400 TC cannot compete even with good old
X600/X700 not to mention the mobile 6600 Go with its nearly ideal price/performance ratio. The reason is simple: all these graphics
adapters have dedicated graphics memory rather than eat some from
system RAM. However good a graphics core may be, its advantages are all
negated by its using slow system memory.
I’ve said everything
about the display in the previous section because the X11 produces the
same picture as the X1. The X11 suits for office work quite well, but
if you compare it with the leaders of today’s tests, the difference is
striking. Well, even without any comparisons, it’s no fun to view
photographs on either of the two Samsungs.
The bracket of the lid lock looks cute here:
The battery is simply a joke:
It’s the same reduced-capacity battery the X1 comes with, but the X1
was equipped with an ultra low voltage Pentium M and had a much more
modest configuration. When used in an X11, this battery is more like an
integrated UPS than a mobile power source. I wonder if additional
batteries will be included in mass-shipped versions of the X11, because
without them it is sort of transportable desktop notebook.
The conclusion is this: the X11 is a good notebook designed by the
classic guidelines, but equipped with a low-capacity battery and not
the best of displays. Regrettably, Samsung positions this model quite
high, so you cannot expect it to come at a modest price. Considering
this, I can’t recommend it for purchase. The company may try to make it
more appealing by including a normal battery and putting an appropriate
price tag that would make up for the low display quality. I wouldn’t
hope much for that, though.
Performance
First I checked the notebooks in Business Winstone 2004 and Content Creation Winstone 2004 benchmarks
Samsung X11 winstone benchmark
And here are the results produced by PCMark04:
Samsung X11 pcmark performance
The results of the Photoshop CS are indicative of the overall performance of the CPU, platform and hard drive:
Samsung X11 adobe photoshop
The well-balanced LW40 is almost as fast as the two notebooks
on the new platform. Other notebooks are slower. The two slowest models
shouldn’t be used to run such applications at all – they are only
capable of performing office tasks like processing text and
spreadsheets, browsing the Web, etc.
The next test shows what you can expect from these notebooks in gaming applications:
Samsung X11 gaming benchmark
performed this test using the maximum display resolution of each
notebook, except for the LG T1 (I used 1280x800 with it because
1440x900 would have been too much for its integrated graphics core).
The Acer TravelMate 3222WXMi is the best and can cope with modern games
if you don’t use the highest graphics quality settings. Among other
notebooks, only models with the X600 are interesting. The Samsung X11
is second after the TravelMate 3222WXMi but I doubt it’s going to be
that fast in real games.
I also published the results of the CPU
subtest to show you that 3DMark03 favors the Centrino Core Duo
platform. This is indicated by the Samsung X11’s results. This platform
is the most promising one when it comes to games, considering that all
the leading game developers have confirmed support for dual-core
processors in their upcoming products.
And now, the results of the most important test:
I put the results the notebooks achieved in Reader’s mode and under
maximum load into one diagram because the difference between the two is
indicative of how well the manufacturer set up the power-saving
parameters. The Sony VGN-FJ1SR looks best here as it yields you its
full computing power under max load but is very economical in Reader’s
mode. Besides the Sony, there are two more leaders: LG’s T1 with a
high-capacity battery and an L series Core Duo processor which features
low power consumption, and ASUS W3H00V. The latter proved to be a bit
of a cheater, though. Even under max load with the portable/laptop
power management scheme selected this notebook never increased its CPU
frequency higher than 1.3GHz.
It’s all clear with the first two diagrams, but then there are some things I’d want to single out. The LW40 is very fast in the memory test; it’s the best Centrino-based notebook I’ve seen in this benchmark. The Acer TravelMate
3222WXMi is unrivalled in the graphics subsystem test just because it
has the fastest graphics adapter among the tested notebooks.
Nvidia’s
GeForce Go 7400 is downright disappointing. If you need fast graphics,
buy a notebook that has dedicated graphics memory. Graphics subsystems
of other kind (with such suffixes as TC, HM) are not much better than
integrated graphics and cannot ensure high performance in 3D. In the
disk subsystem test the notebooks rank up according to the spindle
rotation speed of the hard drive they use.
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