Intel Core i7 Mobile CPU (Clarksfield) Review

Intel Core i7 Mobile CPU (Clarksfield) Review
Futuremark PCMark Vantage

Next up, we ran a number of different test systems through Futuremark's PCMark Vantage system performance metric. PCMark Vantage runs through a host of different usage scenarios to simulate different types of workloads including High Definition TV and movie playback and manipulation, gaming, image editing and manipulation, music compression, communications, and productivity. Most of the tests are multi-threaded (up to three simultaneous threads), so the tests can exploit the additional resources offered by a multi-core CPU.

We pitted the Core i7-920XM against a number of other different processors and platforms. It is important to note that unlike when we test desktop processors, we can't just swap out the processor from the notebook's motherboard and pop in a new one for comparison, while keeping all other components the same. Therefore, all of the test results presented here and on the following pages include systems with different configurations, including different chipsets, memory types and speeds, hard disk drives, and GPUs. These comparisons are still valid, but the numbers represent specific configurations and models, and are not necessarily representative of all systems that use these processors.

Our primary comparison system in these pages a Dell XPS M1730, which is powered by a 2.8GHz Core 2 Duo X9000, 4GB 667MHz DDR2 SDRAM, 80GB Intel SSD hard drive, and dual Nvidia GeForce 9800M GTX GPUs using SLI. But we also included scores for a number of desktop processors as well, such as a 2.66GHz Core i5-750, 2.66GHz Core i7-920, and a 3.4GHz AMD Phenom II X4 965.

On the PCMark Vantage test, the Core i7-920XM's score of 12,517 PCMarks easily bests all of the comparison systems by a significant margin. The Core i7-920XM falters a bit on the Communications and TV & Movies workloads, but more than makes up for it on the other tests.

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Intel Core i7 Mobile CPU (Clarksfield) Review

Intel Core i7 Mobile CPU (Clarksfield) Review
Futuremark 3DMark Vantage

3DMark Vantage
Futuremark's synthetic 3D gaming benchmark, 3DMark Vantage, uses some advanced visual technologies that are only available with DirectX 10. 3DMark Vantage isn't simply a port of 3DMark06 to DirectX 10 though. With this latest version of the benchmark, Futuremark has incorporated two new graphics tests, two new CPU tests, several new feature tests, in addition to support for the latest PC hardware. We tested the systems here with 3DMark Vantage's Extreme preset option, which uses a resolution of 1,920x1,200 (as this exceeded the native screen resolution of the Core i7-920XM whitebook, we conducted this test with the notebook sending its video out to an external display).

Even though the Core i7-920XM has what is arguably the fastest mobile CPU and mobile GPU (the Nvidia GeForce GTX 280M) available today, we still wouldn't expect this amped-up mobile platform to beat high-end desktop gaming rigs when it comes to 3D graphics. We ran this test primarily to see how close the platform could come to desktop-like 3D graphics performance. We'll be the first to admit that the Core i7-920XM whitebook's 3D graphics performance wouldn't make it a candidate as our first-choice system for a LAN party, but its gaming performance is about some of the most-powerful we've seen for a non-SLI notebook.

3DMark Vantage

3DMark Vantage's CPU Test 2 is a multi-threaded test designed for comparing relative game physics processing performance between systems. This test consists of a single scene that features an air race of sorts, with a complex configuration of gates. There are aircraft in the test that trail smoke and collide with various cloth and soft-body obstacles, each other, and the ground. The smoke spreads, and reacts to the planes as they pass through it as well and all of this is calculated on the host CPU. We disabled the benchmark's Nvidia PhysX in order to better isolate the performance of the CPU.

The Core i7-920XM whitebook handily beat the 2.8GHz Core 2 Duo X9800-based Dell notebook, as well as holding its own against the 2.66GHz Core i5-750 and 2.66GHz Core 2 Quad Q9400 systems. Not surprisingly, the most powerful system on this test uses the highest-end desktop processor of our comparison systems, the Core i7-920 desktop CPU.

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