Hewlett Packard EliteBook 8560p Notebook Review
Game Tests & Battery Life
|
|
|
|
|
Like the original, FarCry 2 is one of the more visually impressive games to be released on the PC to date. Courtesy of the Dunia game engine developed by Ubisoft, FarCry 2's game-play is enhanced by advanced environment physics, destructible terrain, high resolution textures, complex shaders, realistic dynamic lighting, and motion-captured animations. We benchmarked the test systems in this article with the FarCry 2 benchmark tool using one of the built-in demo runs recorded in the "Ranch" map. |
There's just no way around it -- if gaming is your number one priority, the 8560p is the wrong notebook for you. AMD's Radeon 6470M graphics chip just doesn't have the muscle to flex its way through games on higher quality settings, even at 1280x720 with AA turned off. You'll be able to play casual games and even some modern titles if you're willing to dial down the eye candy, otherwise ,the 6470M will leave you wanting.
|
|
|
|
|
Lost Planet 2 is a third person shooter developed by Capcom. It is the sequel to Lost Planet: Extreme Condition, and takes place ten years after the events of the first game. The plot begins with Mercenaries fighting against Jungle Pirates, while featuring major boss battles, extreme terrain, and the ability to pilot mechanized armor suits. We tested the game engine using the stand alone benchmark tool. |
In case further proof was needed that the 6470M with its 64-bit memory bus isn't up to the task of high end gaming, our Lost Planet 2 benchmark destroyed the 8560p, then took its lunch money and laughed all the way back to the yard where gaming notebooks hang out.
Want to know what happens when you flip a less demanding title onto the 8560p and crank the available eye candy down to low? So did we, and to find out, we loaded up Left 4 Dead 2 and dialed the settings down as low as they would go, minus some modest AA and AF settings to smooth things out.
In this case, Left 4 Dead 2 is not only a great time-waster but the game also has reasonably impressive visuals as well. The results, as you can see, proves that the Radeon 6470M does have a little bit of spunk to it, provided you don't ask too much from it.
 |
|
Our unforgiving BatteryEaterPro benchmark thrashed about the 8560p for a good 79 minutes before the system called it quits. That's pretty good considering the nature of this benchmark, which measures a worst case scenario. In real-world usage, you can expect longer battery life, particularly if you spend some time tweaking HP's Power Assist options.
