ASUS UL80Vt First Look: Mobility Redefined
by Jarred Walton on October 24, 2009 8:00 PM EST- Posted in
- Laptops
ASUS UL80Vt Benchmarked - General Performance
This is a first look and we have not yet had a chance to run all of our performance tests. Battery life testing in particular is going to take a long time -- which is a good thing, outside of the testing aspect. We have only had the UL80Vt for two days now, but we have been duly impressed with its features, design, and performance. It may not be the best-looking laptop on the planet, it may not have every feature under the sun, and it certainly isn't the fastest laptop. However, it does everything a typical laptop user could need, it does it at an affordable price point, and it truly manages to redefine what we can expect in terms of mobility from Windows laptops. Here are a few preliminary benchmarks we've run.
We conducted tests using the "moderate battery saving" and "maximum performance" profiles in ASUS' Power4Gear software. Turbo mode (overclocking) was enabled in all testing so far; honestly, we don't see much point in disabling it (which requires a reboot), but we'll test battery life without Turbo mode for the full review; that may add another 5-10% battery life, although the laptop already lasts a full day so it's not a critical concern. The SU7300 CPU has two P-states, 800MHz and 1300MHz; the overclocked FSB results in the SU7300 running at 1066MHz or 1733MHz (using a 4X or 6.5X multiplier). CPU-Z does not report clock speeds correctly (it always showed an 8X multiplier for some reason), but ASUS provided an updated version of Intel's Thermal Analysis Tool that reports the correct speed.
After a few initial tests, we discovered that the only way to get the CPU to run at the 6.5X multiplier is to select "Maximum Performance" in the Power4Gear software, with the maximum CPU speed set to at least 62%; otherwise the CPU will always run at the 4X multiplier. Since we already had a bunch of results for 1066MHz, we decided to report those -- it will make for an interesting comparison with the Intel Atom at least. The 1733MHz results will be in bright green and the 1066MHz results are in dark green in the following charts. We'll start with general performance results using PCMark as well as a few CPU intensive tasks like video encoding and 3D rendering.
The general performance delivered by the UL80Vt is certainly impressive. It's not the fastest laptop on the market by any means, but application performance is better than the majority of AMD-based laptops currently available. The overclocked SU7300 outperforms the Athlon QL-64 (2.1GHz) by 7% in PCMark05, 47% in PCMark Vantage, 12% in the second x264 encoding pass (the first pass is relatively simple by comparison, depending more on the hard drive and platform than on the CPU), 32% in DivX encoding, and 12% in CINEBENCH R10. The latest 45nm AMD parts like the Turion II Ultra M640 will regain the lead, certainly, but we still have to account for power draw. We'll get to that in a moment, but suffice it to say that it's going to be difficult to beat the overclocked SU7300.
Comparing the UL80Vt to netbooks shows just how slow the Intel Atom is. Even at 1066MHz, the UL80Vt is typically at least twice as fast as the ASUS 1005HA, and at 1733MHz it's 150-250% faster. Sure, it also costs twice as much, but we would make a strong argument that netbooks are only "fast enough" if your demands are low. The bigger selling point for netbooks is their small size and weight, and 14" laptops costing close to $800 certainly encroach on that territory. Netbooks work far better as a second (or third…) PC than as your primary system, while something like the UL80Vt can fill all roles reasonably well. If the general application performance makes netbooks look bad, wait until we look at graphics performance.
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The0ne - Monday, October 26, 2009 - link
This would be nice as my 2nd business laptop. My Vostro 17 is very nice, especially with the UW screen but it's heavy on busy days :) The weight, performance and battery life are amazing. Going to have to convince the Boss to get one hahahvectorm12 - Monday, October 26, 2009 - link
Unlike most people who commented thus far I'm willing to live with the sub-par display at this point. I'm in dire need to replacing my old Vaio VGN-FZ19VN and this looks to be even better value than the Acer 3810T series.Something I am desperate to find out though is if VT-x is enabled in this machine(it's for unknown reasons disabled in my Vaio) or not since I need to run a virtual linux machine for work.
Not mentioning finding someone who retails it in Stockholm,Sweden ofc.
aapocketz - Monday, October 26, 2009 - link
[quote]ASUS has informed us that the Best Buy model of the UL80Vt will have a rubberized palm rest. [/quote]That helps, I hate the glossy plastic feel. I will have to check it out at best buy, I am skeptical about the bumpy touchpad too (I am not crazy about the new apple touchpads either, I prefer tap to click).
If this thing had the same panel as the 1005HA, I would snap this up in a second. Seriously the LCD panel is the most important component on your laptop, and they want to skimp on it. Seriously if this is to compete with the macbook, they will need a better screen, my brother's new macbook pro has an incredible looking screen for a laptop.
I am looking to upgrade my old 701 eeepc to something that can run windows 7, handle 1080 video streaming on my wireless network, and have much improved battery life.
JarredWalton - Monday, October 26, 2009 - link
Keep in mind that the standard MacBook (historically) doesn't have a good screen; that's only on MacBook Pro, which costs significantly more. I wouldn't be surprised if the MacBook LCD is very similar in terms of contrast ratio -- mostly because that's the type of panel I see on 95% of notebooks/laptops costing under $1500.6cef - Monday, October 26, 2009 - link
I had heard about the ul80vt months ago, and I was excited with everything about it: disk drive, dedicated graphics, ulv cpu, great battery life, chiclet keyboard... but I held off because of the screen.
Instead, I went with an HP HDX16T, which I got on sale for $800 with a 1920x1080 screen, 1GB GT 130M, and a Bluray drive... it's nice enough, but it's a whole lot bulkier than a UL80, and battry life sucks.
If ASUS continues improving the UL line though, I absolutely would pay a premium for one. Once they're on 32nm cpus... if they can kick up the resolution and lcd quality... these would be such a value.
DukeN - Monday, October 26, 2009 - link
Just really wish there would be a nice light, well built, relatively small and light notebook without a glossy screen and a decent panel.I'll keep waiting I guess.
strikeback03 - Monday, October 26, 2009 - link
I know ASUS and others are limited by what the companies that make the panels offer, but please push to make better quality screens at least an option. An extra $100-200 (even on an $800 laptop) would be worth it to me for a display I would be looking at for the next 3-4 years.BikeDude - Monday, October 26, 2009 - link
The quality of the LCD matters to me.I hate many of these big LCDs with ridiculous low (TV) resolution. Last time I bought a laptop, I went with a MacBook Pro since I assumed it had a decent panel.
I see little point in having the exact same sloppy product line as all the other notebook manufacturers out there.
Another annoyance is the utilities that comes bundled with many of these machines. I had to return a Asus because of the ridiculous setup it was boggled with. Removing the anti-virus package gave me a serious bump in performance. Clean install please!
Visual - Monday, October 26, 2009 - link
Now all that I want from ASUS is to replace the screen with hybrid multi-touch/stylus sensitive one, and preferably higher-resolution, maybe 1680x1050 so that it can work well in portrait mode and fit the many 1024 pixel wide websites.I'd probably pay almost double the current price for such a thing, but if they can surprise me and get the price lower, that's even better.
Pirks - Monday, October 26, 2009 - link
Given that this is unusually ultra long battery life Windows notebook based on C2D, not on Atom, could you make one exception and include comparison with MacBook's legendary battery efficiency metric? I mean that cool graph that you used to put in your recent laptop reviews that said "Internet usage minutes per WHr" (you don't do this anymore, too bad :( I posted about it already)It's one uber crucial metric for truly portable laptops, could you PLEASE make this comparison graph for Asus vs latest MacBook just one more time, just for this great Asus one, please?