HP Touchsmart 520 All-in-One PC Review

Name: HP Touchsmart 520 All-in-One PC
Brand: HP

by Paul Lilly — Monday, January 23, 2012, 11:12 AM EDT

Gaming Performance

Lost Planet 2

DX9 Gaming Performance

Lost Planet 2

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 ran the game’s DX9 mode simply because the Core i3 2100 processor doesn't support DX11 visuals. We used the Test B option built into the benchmark tool and with all graphics options set to their High Quality values.

We did something a little different with our Lost Planet 2 benchmark this time, and that was to test and compare DirectX 9 and DirectX 11 performance, simply because the Radeon HD 6450A graphics card can handle both. In case it's not immediately clear, Lost Planet 2 is a punishing benchmark, and it wasn't until we dialed down the settings considerably that the framerates approached anything playable, and only in DX9 mode. That's not indicative of all DX11 gaming, but for more demanding titles, the TouchSmart 520-1070's limitations will be exposed.

Left 4 Dead 2

Gaming Performance

Left 4 Dead 2

In our Left 4 Dead 2 test, we use a custom Time Demo that involves plenty of fast action, some explosions, and plenty of people and objects on the screen at the same time.

Left 4 Dead 2 results were much more encouraging, as they usually are. The takeaway from this is that the TouchSmart system is able to game at its native 1920x1080 resolution in some situations. L4D2 isn't particularly taxing, and after we dialed down some of the settings, it was more than playable at Full HD. Note that we kept the settings on Medium, meaning there's even more wiggle room to play with by dialing things down to Low. Well played, HP.