Performance Tests

I really had no idea how to compare the performance. Would I compare apples to oranges, meaning a desktop with a laptop ? Would I revert back to Geoffrey's MSI laptop review. Sadly far too different technologies, different OSses used and co. Nah that would never work. A comparison with the latest desktop technology it had to be then.

Since the Asus laptop has 4 different Presets, I opted to test only at the High performance setting and being powered by the 220V (battery being removed) Maybe this is a start to get more high performance notbooks inbound the Shrimps Lab, so we can build a decent database on them too.

So let's start off with SuperPi and Wprime. Since the i7 720QM is the only Mobile CPU in the lineup, we have to give it some credit :)



Turboboost is helping this laptop to keep up with the big boys. The I7 720QM settles itself nicely between the new hexacore Thuban CPU and the high end Intel i7 CPU's. Wprime set to stress all the cores (8) clearly shows the lack of raw Mhz. This laptop needs a CPU maybe with a bit less cores, but preferably with a few 100mhz more on all cores.



Sort like performance numbers to be observed in SuperPi 32M. The turboboosted 720QM does a good showing. In Wprime1024 it get's spanked again by all quad cores CPU's.



Since this laptop is orientated at Multimedia and gamers we did a few benchmark runs with Far Cry 2 and Resident Evil 5. The G51J's monitor is limited to 1280 x 738 resolution. Far Cry 2 was run at high detail setting, Resident Evil was run at stock settings. DirectX9 is more than fluid enough for some hardcore gaming action, DirectX10 gets a small, but expected drop in performance. Lowering detail levels didn't bring more performance, clearly indicating that this GTX260M might still benefit from a faster clocked CPU. There are no NVIDIA 3D NVISION gaming tests included as FPS dropped far below 24 FPS, making the game unplayable and certainly not enjoyable!



X264HD renders a video in HD format. It clearly demonstrates the processing power of your CPU. The Intel i7 lineup and AMD's new Thuban rule this benchmark. The 720QM really lacks some punch to get it all done. Ofcourse keep in mind this is a mobile CPU running at a mere 1600-1733mhz when being heavily multithreaded.



The HD suite of PCMark05 shows one of the strengths of this laptop. Two fast 7200rpm Hard drives give this laptop some considerably good data transfer rates. But once the CPU gets involved the performance is decreasing, overall though not a bad showing.



Cinebench R10, renders a picture of a futuristic motorcycle with either one core or with multi cores. It has to be said this benchmark prefers real cores instead of virtual hyperthreading ones. When in single core modus, the turboboost technology boosts the CPU again into the desktop performance segment. Once we go multithreading 1600-1733Mhz isn’t going to cut it compared to CPU's running almost twice as fast.

Battery Life



Sadly the battery endurance on my sample was not up to scratch. Barely getting over an hour when doing normal entertainment stuff, like watching a DVD movie. For gaming I recommend to remove the battery and to use the AC unit as power supply.

Temperature Tests



CPU Temps differed from the mode selected. Hottest was of course the performance mode with the CPU topping during a 2 hour prime 95 run ( 8 instances ) at 77°C. The GPU never got hotter here then 74°C. The heatpipes do their job though it must be said that the GPU heatpipe was scorching hot. Maybe as stated before, adding a 2nd heatpipe could transfer the heat more efficiently.

Here's a quick overview on the idle CPU speeds from the 4 modes. In the 2nd column you can spot the average core temperatures when the CPU was stressed with 8 instances of Prime95.