12. Application Benchmarks

Raytracing: POV-Ray For Windows

Although it wasn't designed for this purpose, we used the raytracing program POV-Ray to demonstrate the impact of CPU throttling on rendering time. At the start of the test, the die temperature was around 32°C under the "Presentation" power scheme. We averaged three rendering processes ("Presentation" power scheme) and came up with a score that was fifty percent higher than that of the non-throttling processor in the Lifebook S6120.

Repeating the rendering process with an extremely hot CPU several times in a row only increases rendering times ("Portable Laptop" power scheme). This is a clear indication that, on average, the CPU runs at pretty much its slowest clock speed under these conditions - 600 MHz. We got the best results with a battery-powered Asus M2N under the "Always On" power scheme. With the added support of the Power4Gear tool, the CPU ran at an even 1200 MHz in battery mode: a good balance between performance, low power consumption and low noise level (passive CPU cooling).