Next, just as a quick sanity check, we fired up a couple of quick gaming metrics to see how things fared for the ThinkPad X1 Carbon. Recall that this is a business targeted machine, so we're not expecting anything exceptional in this area, to be perfectly candid.
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FarCry 2 |
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DX10 Gaming Benchmark |
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FarCry 2
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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. |
The ThinkPad X1 Carbon, drops into the middle of the pack of Ultrabooks and notebooks we tested here. This is likely because the X1 Carbon we tested was configured with 1333MHz memory versus the Intel whitebook, for example, which sports the same CPU and integrated graphics combination.
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Furturemark 3DMark 11
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Synthetic DX11 Gaming Benchmark |
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Futuremark 3DMark11
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The latest version of Futuremark's synthetic 3D gaming benchmark, 3DMark11, is specifically bound to Windows Vista and WIndows 7-based systems due to its DirectX 11 requirement, which isn't available on previous versions of Windows. 3DMark11 isn't simply a port of 3DMark Vantage to DirectX 11, though. With this latest version of the benchmark, Futuremark has incorporated four new graphics tests, a physics tests, and a new combined test. We the two machines here in the Performance preset of the benchmark.
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Intel Core i5-3427U Whitebook Performance
Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon Performance
The disparity in gaming performance is a bit more obvious here in 3DMark 11 but again, the ThinkPad X1 Carbon's build configuration certainly isn't a gaming-centric, so we'll move on. Frankly, there's not a lot to see here. This is a business class machine and if you want a bit more gaming horsepower in an Ultrabook, you're going to be disappointed. There are a few larger models on the market, like
Dell's XPS 14z for example, that have discrete graphics and they'd serve your needs better. That said, for general multimedia and a bit of light duty gaming purposes, you should be plenty pleased with the ThinkPad X1 Carbon. Twitch trigger, first person shooter fans need not apply here.
