Gateway NV58 (Intel) - Futuremark
Performing a few quick system/graphics benchmarks, let's see if there are any major differences between the Windows operating systems. As always, Vantage requires Vista/Win7 so XP gets a "0" on those tests (which is not to say XP fails - it's just the way we have to do things with our graphing engine).
The 3DMark results aren't quite as close this time, other than 3DMark05. XP trails in 3DMark06 by around 19%, and Vista leads in 3DMark03 by about 13%. Unlike the NV52, 3DMark Vantage scores almost twice as high as Vista with Windows 7 on the NV58, so perhaps Intel has invested some extra effort into improving their Windows 7 drivers. Of course, 3DMark Vantage barely worked on the NV58 and Vista, where it failed repeatedly to run anything other than the Entry test suite, so improving on that result shouldn't be too hard. Hopefully it's not simply a case of app detection and driver hacks to improve the score, though it looks rather suspicious. Anyway, we all know 3DMark isn't a game and as such you should take the above results with a grain of salt. PCMark05 also has XP in last place, but the 2D Transparency test again skews the results, so look at the table below. Meanwhile, PCMark Vantage again shows Windows 7 being Windows Vista, this time by 15%.
| Gateway NV58 PCMark05 Breakdown | |||
| XP SP3 | Vista SP2 | Win7 RTM | |
| PCMark05 Score | 4175 | 4671 | 4527 |
| HDD XP Startup (MB/s) | 9.661 | 8.158 | 8.14 |
| Physics and 3D (FPS) | 81.71 | 89.38 | 59.26 |
| 2D Transparency (Windows/s) | 119 | 3864 | 2050 |
| 3D Pixel Shaders (FPS) | 39.58 | 43.34 | 45.29 |
| Web Page Rendering (Pages/s) | 3.028 | 2.272 | 2.366 |
| File Decryption (MB/s) | 57.70 | 56.46 | 55.97 |
| 2D 64 Line Redraw (FPS) | 704.7 | 485.7 | 564.2 |
| HDD General Usage (MB/s) | 5.674 | 4.716 | 4.731 |
| Multitasking 1 | 1000 | 905 | 1015 |
| Audio Compression (KB/s) | 2209 | 1349 | 1248 |
| Video Encoding (KB/s) | 402.4 | 482.6 | 589.3 |
| Multitasking 2 | 1000 | 931 | 941 |
| Text Editing (Pages/s) | 140.9 | 123.1 | 127.5 |
| Image Decompression (MPixels/s) | 29.39 | 29.02 | 28.73 |
| Multitasking 3 | 1000 | 917 | 961 |
| File Compression (MB/s) | 4.951 | 5.005 | 4.36 |
| File Encryption (MB/s) | 27.99 | 25.79 | 33.13 |
| HDD Virus Scan (MB/s) | 72.95 | 54.57 | 58.54 |
| Memory Latency (MAccesses/s) | 8.207 | 8.108 | 8.012 |
As with the NV52, the PCMark05 composite score muddies the waters and makes it look like Vista is superior to XP and Windows 7. This time, 2D Transparency is 32 times faster on Vista than XP and 17 times faster on Windows 7. That score alone is able to drop Windows XP to the back of the pack in overall score, but it leads in virtually every other category. The 3D Pixel Shaders result favors Windows 7 and Vista over XP and Win7 is the fastest, potentially giving support to the idea that Intel has improved their graphics drivers under Win7. On the other hand, Win7 trails in the Physics and 3D test by 38% relative to XP and 51% compared to Vista. Maybe the 3DMark Vantage result is just a case of driver optimizations.
As before, we calculated our own composite score among the operating systems, with and without the 2D Transparency result. We didn't weight any of the tests, and our average of the 11 tests puts Vista at 278% faster than XP and Win7 139% faster. Remove the 2D Transparency score from the average and XP suddenly jumps up to 11% faster than both Vista and 7, which end up in a tie. We're not trying to say that 2D Transparency is worthless, but it does account for deflated PCMark05 scores on Windows XP.
| Gateway NV58 PCMark Vantage Breakdown | ||
| Vista SP2 | Win7 RTM | |
| PCMark Vantage | 3397 | 3911 |
| Memory | 1896 | 2237 |
| TV and Movies | 2482 | 2613 |
| Gaming | 1999 | 1998 |
| Music | 2851 | 4206 |
| Communications | 3774 | 4033 |
| Productivity | 3039 | 3156 |
| HDD Test | 2643 | 2867 |
PCMark Vantage gives the lead to Win7 by 15%, with individual results ranging from a tie in Gaming to a 48% lead in Music. Unlike the NV52, the TV and Movies suite doesn't show a major difference, nor do the Communications and Productivity suites, but HDD and Memory show a larger benefit to Win7 on the NV58. Ultimately, PCMark Vantage still confirms that Windows 7 is faster overall than Vista, even if the only area that appears to benefit by a large amount (i.e. regardless of platform or hardware) is the Music suite.
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Kibbles - Tuesday, September 22, 2009 - link
If all you have is a killawhat meter then that'll be pretty inaccurate. Not just because of the 1W accuracy but also measuing at the outlet you are also including the inefficiency of the powersupply.However I do agree that using the battery is throwing an extra variable into your equation. How big is it? I don't know. But I do know they don't always charge to the same capacity, and their capacity changes overtime.
I don't know if it's possible, but I would think the best option would be to have a DC source modded into the battery connection. Then measure the #W-h used. You would probably need a good variable DC supply and voltmeter to do this (maybe borrow it from the powersupply setting team?). Even then I don't know if you can do that, I think my laptop has like 6 pins on the battery. There's probably some connection for charging, some for battery status, and then the discharge connections.
The second option I see is putting a voltmeter on the DC-out side of the powersupply going into the laptop. You could run the benchmark without the battery for an equivalent duration and see if the W-h is close.
n0nsense - Tuesday, September 22, 2009 - link
Power savings in Ubuntu are far from optimal.I was more than surprised to see that even very basic features may or may not work.
For example on my Gentoo box each core frequency scaled separately.
On Ubuntu some processors are not supported. After all I thought that engineers at Canonical have better kernel understanding than me.
As for the tests, dim option is helping with battery life.
I don't remember such difference in battery life from my experience. Both Linux and windows where capable of ~3Hr on my laptop.
From my very personal point of view, Ubuntu is sluggish. I compared Ubuntu, XP, 7, Debian and Gentoo performance on IBM X31 with 1GB ram.
It started without Gentoo (It takes a while to setup fully optimized Gentoo box). Ubuntu and 7 where (IMHO only)the slowest. Debian and XP where just fine. But since I wanted more, i did the Gentoo thing. It was more than worth it.
With Ubuntu it was overall sluggish feeling (some tests will show much better performance under it than in windows). But feeling is important when you use something. Even more important than some numbers.
7 ... Same sluggish Vista with facelift and few tweaks that can be manually done.
Watching icons drawn few seconds after menu displayed was more than enough. It is more stable, can work longer without reboots, but nowhere faster than XP.
Debian with Gnome was nice so was XP. Anyway I'd stay with Linux since it's more customizable and have few useful things that make me feel handicapped in Windows.
Gentoo once again convinced me that it worth each second (it took more than 2 days on X31. should be much faster on any dual/quad core CPU and/or using distcc). But, not everyone can do it. Even "experienced" Ubuntu/Fedora/Suse (or whatever mainstream distro) may find that his understanding of "how staff works" is not on the required level.
Anyway it's quiet a change to see Linux participating in review.
Good job guys :)
lordmetroid - Tuesday, September 22, 2009 - link
I'll be running Arch Linux on my nettop, I tried gentoo 4 years ago from stage 1 and that was a nightmare to get installed. Maybe I should try it again but Arch Linux seems to be more interesting at this point as it had many of the packages I want in its repositories that I couldn't find in gentoo.stmok - Tuesday, September 22, 2009 - link
Running Arch Linux here on my ThinkPad T43...Much better than Ubuntu.Ubuntu feels bloated. Heck, even Xubuntu feels bloated.
void2 - Tuesday, September 22, 2009 - link
30..40 seconds to boot WinXP on modern CPU? That's sad. I get 7..8 seconds (boot menu to desktop, add your machine POST time yourself) on a comparable CPU (Athlon 64 X2 3800+). Clean OS, no SSD, no messing around with disabling services etc. How? Use Boot Cooler (www.bootcooler.com). It is free.lyeoh - Tuesday, September 22, 2009 - link
Why should anyone use bootcooler? The website doesn't even say what the program is _supposed_ to do, and how it achieves it. I don't see much on the web that describes or tests what it _actually_ does (as opposed to just claims), the limitations etc.It could be a trojan for all we know.
void2 - Tuesday, September 22, 2009 - link
If you haven't noticed, the website is under construction. Detailed explanation of how Boot Cooler works is included in readme.txt (in short - disk reads prefetching). And of course there are no reviews yet - the project is still in beta.orionmgomg - Tuesday, September 22, 2009 - link
I love antech - waiting for the radeon hd 5870 info to hit - looking at this artical - something about your battery lasting longer on your lap top...WHO CARES!!!
Give me a brake - you spend so much time on analizing minutes of extra juice it a fly is in the room or not! WHO CARES?
Plug your lap top in the wall - dont expect it to last any longer than it does when you have a full charge and it runs out of juice.
Once you know how long it lasts - realize your screwed - or should I say attached to the power cord!
Oh - did I mention - who cares?
Thanks for all your other articals!
orionmgomg - Tuesday, September 22, 2009 - link
I love Anandtech*^JarredWalton - Tuesday, September 22, 2009 - link
If you haven't figured it out, I'm the mobile reviewer at AnandTech, and my articles are about mobility. Writing articles about laptops doesn't mean I'm delaying any CPU or GPU reviews -- unless they happen to be mobile CPUs/GPUs. If you don't care about laptops, you don't need to read most of my articles, but please don't make the mistake of assuming no one cares. When people use a laptop on the road and don't have a chance to plug in, articles like this are very useful. If you never use a laptop, great; some people do and that's my target audience.