Ultrabooks such as the Lenovo ThinkPad T440s 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 T440s fares, we fired up 3DMark11, Cloud Gate, and Far Cry 2.
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Futuremark 3DMark 11 |
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Simulated Gaming Performance |
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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.
In 3DMark 11, the ThinkPad T440s bested the vast majority of the systems in our test bank, and two of those are notebooks with discrete NVIDIA graphics. That Yoga 2 Pro beat it again, though, and this time by a good step or two; again lower overall system memory bandwidth we feel is what's at play here, since integrated graphics rely on this heavily.
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Futuremark 3DMark Cloud Gate |
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Simulated Gaming Performance |
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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 T440s outpaced the two non-Haswell systems, and it scored within striking distance of the leader of the pack, the Yoga 2 Pro.
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Far Cry 2 |
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DX10 Gaming Performance |
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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.
You’ll not be enjoying any particularly intensive games on this system, as even at a lower resolution and with no AA enabled, the T440s couldn’t quite produce playable framerates on this older title. Still, it did well compared to the other test systems. But hey, this is a business laptop; you wouldn't be playing games on your work machine, would you? Of course not, you wouldn't dream of such a thing. In reality, however, the integrated graphics engine in Intel's latest Haswell 4th generation Core processors has come a long way.
