Dell Studio XPS 13 Ultraportable Notebook

Name: Dell Studio XPS 13 Ultraportable Notebook - Page 6
Brand: Dell

by Shawn Oliver — Wednesday, May 06, 2009, 07:19 AM EDT

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Futuremark PCMark Vantage

Continuing our testing we use Futuremarks PCMark Vantage benchmarking suite, and again, all tests were conducted on the Studio XPS 13 with Performance Mode / Hybrid SLI enabled.

Futuremark PCMark Vantage

'Memories', HDD, Gaming and Communications

Futuremark PCMark Vantage 'Memories' Test Description:
Memories 1 - Two simultaneous tasks. CPU image manipulation and HDD – importing pictures to Windows Photo Gallery
Memories 2 - Two simultaneous tasks. GPU image manipulation and HDD – video editing using Windows Movie Maker
Memories 3 - Video transcoding – DV to WMV9 - Transcoding from DV (720x480p 35.38Mbps) to a portable player (SD WMV9 320x240p 1.0 Mbps). Uses two cores if available.
Memories 4 - Video transcoding – VC-1 to WMV9 -Transcoding from media server archive (HD VC-1 1280x720p 11 Mbps) to a portable player (SD WMV9 320x240p 1.0 Mbps)

This is one of the rare cases where we see the Studio XPS 13 fall behind our other two systems; given the exceptional performance in real-world use though, we're chalking it up as a fluke.

Futuremark PCMark Vantage 'Hard Disk Drive' Test Description:
HDD 1 - Windows Defender
HDD 2 - Gaming
HDD 3 - Importing pictures to Windows Photo Gallery
HDD 4 - Windows start up
HDD 5 - Video editing using Windows Movie Maker
HDD 6 - Windows Media Center
HDD 7 - Adding music to Windows Media Player
HDD 8 - Application loading

In the Hard Disk Drive test, the Studio XPS 13 puts up some impressive results. The Seagate Momentus 7200.3 320GB Hard Drive easily dominates the others, even the X205 with a 7200 RPM drive.

Futuremark PCMark Vantage 'Gaming' Test Description:
Gaming 1 - GPU gaming - Performing basic GPU (graphics processing unit) tasks utilizing PS (pixel shader) 2.0 and VS (vertex shader) 2.0 operations found in most 3D games using DX (DirectX) 9. This test utilizes SM(shader model) 3.0 (if available) performance optimizations which do affect visual quality.
Gaming 2 - HDD gaming
Gaming 3 - Two simultaneous tasks. Data decompression - Loading compressed level from hard drive and decompressing it into system memory. CPU gaming -Executing heavy AI path finding algorithms. Uses all available cores up to 16 cores.
Gaming 4 - Three simultaneous tasks. GPU gaming- Performing basic GPU (graphics processing unit) tasks utilizing PS(pixel shader) 2.0 and VS (vertex shader) 2.0 operations found in most3D games using DX (DirectX) 9. This test utilizes SM (shader model) 3.0(if available) performance optimizations which do affect visual quality. CPU gaming - Executing heavy AI path finding algorithms. Uses all available cores up to 16 cores and HDD – gaming

The Studio XPS 13's Hybrid SLI system wasn't quite powerful enough to pass by these discrete solutions, but remember, the XPS 13 has almost the same results in a 13.3" form factor.

Futuremark PCMark Vantage 'Communications' Test Description:
Communications 1 - Three simultaneous tasks. Data encryption – CNG AES CBC. Data compression. Web page rendering – pictures - Opens a web page with many large pictures.
Communications 2 - Three simultaneous tasks. Web page rendering – favorites group parallel - Opens various news pages from IE Favorites in separate tabs and closes them one by one. Data decryption – CNG AES CBC. HDD – Windows Defender
Communications 3 - Windows Mail – searching - Searches mails for words in the message body, subject and sender.

Communications 4 - Two simultaneous tasks. Data encryption – CNG AES CBC. Audio transcoding – WMA to WMA - Measures audio transcoding performance in VOIP usage.