Asus ZenBook UX305CA Review: Thin And Light, Great Battery Life

Ultrabooks aren’t meant for serious gaming, but it doesn’t hurt to know how it would handle a little play during your downtime, so we have a few graphics related benchmark results to share for you here...

Cinebench R11.5 3D Rendering On The CPU and GPU

Based on Maxon Cinema 4D software, this test uses a 3D scene and polygon and texture manipulation to assess GPU and CPU performance. We usually opt for the Main Processor Performance (CPU) test, which builds a still scene containing about 2,000 objects, for total polygon count above 300,000. Cinebench displays its results in points.


The ZenBook UX305CA landed in the middle of the pack in the OpenGL test. The Core m3-6Y30 understandably couldn’t keep up with Intel faster processors in the CPU test, however. Though the Core M is based on Intel's latest Skylake Microarchitecture, the chips are designed to fit in a low power envelope, so whacking all of the cores with a sustained load like Cinebench results in lower overall frequencies versus higher-powered parts, which in turn lowers performance. This isn't an issue for short, bursty workloads, like web browsing or typical Microsoft Office tasks, but rendering is a different story.

3DMark Cloud Gate Synthetic DirectX Gaming and Graphics Testing

The 3DMark suite breaks its tests down by computer type. Fire Strike, for example, is aimed at high-end gaming desktops. Cloud Gate, on the other hand, is designed for typical notebooks. As with 3DMark 11, the GPU plays a large role in results, which are measured in points. Higher is better.


The ZenBook ended up in the middle of the pack again, thanks to the Intel HD 515 graphics. Still, that’s not bad for a system in this price range with such a small form factor.

Far Cry 2 DX10 Gaming Performance

When it comes to lush vegetation in a steaming, sinister jungle, no one pulls it off quite like Ubisoft does in its Far Cry series. Far Cry 2 uses high-quality textures, complex shaders, and dynamic lighting to create a realistic environment. The game’s built-in benchmark gives us a good look at a system’s performance with DirectX 10.


Here, the ZenBook UX305CA managed to pull nearly to the head of the pack, landing short only of the Lenovo Yoga. The Yoga 900 features an Intel Core i7-6500U and Intel HD Graphics 520, so it’s not surprising that the ZenBook didn’t match it. Still, 38 fps in Far Cry 2 is nothing to sneeze at when we’re talking about ultrabooks.