16. PCMark05

As with SYSmark 2004 SE, PCMark05 puts all its emphasis on brute performance. PCMark05 includes an overall system test suite, along with test suites for individual system components including: CPU, RAM, graphics and hard disk(s). If one part of the test suite won't run or fails during execution, that portion of the test contributes zero points to the overall PCMark05 score and a PCMark05 overall score is not computed.

Scores for PCMark range from 1,200 to 5,500 points. Both the lower (1,200) and upper (5,500) ends of this scale are based on results obtained from reference systems. Nevertheless, it's possible for a test system to score less than 1,200 or more than 5,500 points by under- or over-performing with respect to the reference systems.

Here are the charts for the PCMark05 values for the two Asus notebooks, including all three Pentium M processors used in the W5A model:

PCMark05 Conclusions

Our results from PCMark05 are pretty interesting. The new platform based on 945GM-chipset - due to its faster graphics core and its faster memory clock - comes out ahead, even at the same CPU clock speed.

Our tests with the three differently-clocked Pentium M processors in the W5A Centrino-915GM notebook clearly show that even with the older single-core platform, graphics performance scales directly with the CPU clock speed. This phenomenon can be explained by how the vertex shader in the graphics core isn't managed by the graphics processor with either the old or new platform, but instead is handled by the CPU and, therefore, is dependant on its inherent computing power (and speed).

Notwithstanding all these observations, these results also confirm a substantial 30% performance advantage for the newer notebook platform, which is directly attributable to the 945GM chipset. On otherwise identical systems and at the same CPU clock rate, it is the only factor that explains the newer platform's higher performance in comparison to the 915GM.