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| Lost Planet 2 |
| DX9 Gaming Performance |
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A follow-up to Capcom’s Lost Planet : Extreme Condition, Lost Planet 2 is a third person shooter that takes place again on E.D.N. III ten years after the story line of the first title. We used the Test B option built into the benchmark tool and with all graphics options set to their High Quality values. In 'TEST 1', we set everything to High, turned Motion Blur on, and ran 4xAA. In 'TEST 2', we dropped the settings to Low, turned Motion Blur off, and disabled AA.
We've already established that the XPS 18 isn't a high-end gaming machine, though it's not as if the Intel HD 4000 Graphics are incapable of pushing pixels around, provided you drop the settings a bit. We saw this in our Lost Planet 2 benchmark run. Sticking with a Full HD 1080p (1920x1080) resolution so that we have a larger sample size to compare with, the XPS 18 showed signs of life once we dropped down from High to Low quality settings. It was actually smoother than the framerates would indicate, though in more demanding games, you may need to reduce the resolution a bit as well.
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| HD Video Test |
| Streaming Video Performance |
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To test a system's ability to handle HD video, we stream a Full HD 1080p trailer from YouTube with Task Manager running in the background. We pay attention to CPU utilization, video quality, and whether or not frames are dropped during playback.
The XPS 18 is great system for watching videos, as we found out during our HD Video test. Not only is the display bright, vibrant, and able to be viewed from sharp angles, the hardware inside is able to process video without any noticeable hiccups. Streaming HD video was buttery smooth with low CPU utilization. The only thing you have to worry about is your Internet connection, assuming you're streaming from the web or home network.
