ASUS U6S Ultraportable Notebook

Name: ASUS U6S Ultraportable Notebook - Page 6
Brand: ASUS

by Michael Lin — Wednesday, February 13, 2008, 12:00 PM EDT

Futuremark PCMark Vantage

For our next round of benchmarks, we ran the complete Futuremark PCMark Vantage test suite. This is a relatively new addition to our testing toolbox that is proving to be an excellent overall assessment tool.

"The PCMark Suite is a collection of various single- and multi-threaded CPU, Graphics and HDD test sets with the focus on Windows Vista application tests. Tests have been selected to represent a subset of the individual Windows Vista Consumer scenarios. The PCMark Suite includes CPU, Graphics, Hard Disk Drive (HDD) and a subset of Consumer Suite tests."

Futuremark PCMark Vantage

'Memories', HDD and Communications

The PCMark Vantage "Memories" suite includes the following tests:

Memories 1 - Two simultaneous threads, CPU image manipulation and HDD picture import
Memories 2 - Two simultaneous threads, GPU image manipulation and HDD video editing
Memories 3 - Video Transcoding: DV to portable device
Memories 4 - Video Transcoding: media server archive to portable device

The U6S ends up last in our benchmark, however this was to be expected. The primary goal of the U6S is to portability so it is understandable that performance isn't on par with desktop replacement laptops.

The Vantage HDD suite includes the following tests:

HDD 1 - HDD: Windows Defender
HDD 2 - HDD: game HDD
HDD 3 - HDD: importing pictures
HDD 4 - HDD: Windows Vista start-up
HDD 5 - HDD: video editing
HDD 6 - HDD: Media Center
HDD 7 - HDD: Adding music to Windows Media Player

Unsurprisingly, the U6S was the poorest performer out of the systems in the test. While the 5,400 RPM drive was not able to perform on par with the 7,200 RPM drives used in the C90 and M1730, it still provides adequate performance. The advantage of using a lower RPM hard drive is reduced noise, heat output and power consumption.

Vantage Communications suite includes the following tests:

Communications 1 - Three simultaneous threads, Data encryption: CNG AES CBC, Data compression, Web page rendering: graphics content, 1024x768, windowed
Communications 2 - Three simultaneous threads. Web page rendering: open various news pages from IE 7 Favorites in separate tabs, close them one by one, Data decryption: CNG AES CBC, HDD: Windows Defender
Communications 3 - Windows Mail: Search
Communications 4 - Two simultaneous threads, Data encryption: CNG AES CBC, Audio transcoding: WMA -> WMA - to simulate VOIP

Once again, the U6S comes in last. The U6S features a Core 2 Duo T7500 processor, which is no match for the XPS' Core 2 Extreme X7900 and the C90S' desktop class Core 2 Duo E6700. However, the T7500 is still a very respectable mobile processor, the second fastest in Intel's current Core 2 Duo mobile line-up, not counting Extreme Edition models.