Dell Latitude E7440 Touch Business Ultrabook Review

Ultrabooks such as the Dell Latitude E7440 aren’t designed to be serious gaming machines. However, even though these machines don’t have discrete graphics cards, they can still handle casual gaming. To see how the E7440 fares, we fired up 3DMark11, Cloud Gate, and Far Cry 2.

Futuremark 3DMark 11 Simulated Gaming Benchmark

As a synthetic gaming benchmark, 3DMark 11 puts extra emphasis on your system’s handling of DirectX 11. However, 3DMark 11 measures more than just the graphics card’s performance; the processor has a definite influence on the score. As a result, this benchmark is a good way to get a feel for how well the system can handle gaming and general computing tasks.


The Latitude E7440’s 3DMark 11 score wasn’t earth-shattering, but it was predictable, which is to say that (again) it stood tall amongst other systems with similar CPUs and GPUs. Note that it posted a nearly identical score to the Lenovo ThinkPad T440s.

Futuremark 3DMark Cloud Gate Simulated Gaming Performance

3DMark is the flagship benchmark in Futuremark’s catalog. As a result, it is a popular choice for testing all types of computers. Recognizing the technology differences between different types of PCs are significant, 3DMark has a separate test suite for each device category. The Cloud Gate test is aimed at entry-level PCs and laptops. It has two subtests: a processor-intensive physics test and two graphics tests. Cloud Gate uses a DirectX 11 engine but the graphics are designed to be compatible with DirectX 10 systems. We ran the test suite at its default 1280 x 720 resolution and at default rendering quality settings. It’s important to remember that 3DMark Cloud Gate scores aren’t comparable to scores from other categories such as 3DMark Fire Strike (gaming PCs) or Ice Storm (smartphones and tablets).


The story here is much the same as its been in all of our benchmark tests up to this point, although the Latitude E7440 posted a 4122 score that was a step or two better than similar systems.

Far Cry 2 DX10 Gaming Performance

Far Cry 2 uses high-quality texture, complex shaders, and dynamic lighting to create a realistic environment. Using the game’s built-in benchmark, we can get a better look at a system’s performance with DirectX 10 level gaming graphics.


We don't expect much in the way of gaming prowess from ultrabooks with integrated graphics, and so we're not surprised to see that the Latitude E7440 couldn't manage playable framerates even at a lower resolution. Still, we were disappointed to see that this rig posted a score lower than most of the field, even though it's just a few FPS lower than the majority of the group.