6. Benchmark Charts

The VTBook has a total of 32 MB DDR memory that will run at 266 MHz. The drivers offer several options for 2D and 3D acceleration, though the card isn't really suited to 3D graphics. It displays output from office-type applications on attached displays beautifully. That's because there is very little graphic work required to support 2D applications like Microsoft Office. However, most of today's 3D applications that do a lot of visual rendering, especially games, are more than the VTBook can handle. This product is for the office user and not the notebook gamer.

I focused in my testing on the issue of performance impact; namely, how does the system respond when it is supporting up to four displays in different combinations? To do that, I kept my tests very simple and at a single resolution so you could see the effects as additional displays were added to the system. Since the VTBook does not support Pixel Shader 2.0 and has very limited hardware resources, the tests could not be done switched to the monitors that were connected through the VTBook itself.

So what you're looking at in the two charts below is simply the impact on the notebook of adding additional displays that show static 2D applications while the notebook and its native display are running either PCMark05 or 3DMark05.

As you can see, the dedicated hardware within the VTBook card does a good job of keeping the load off the notebook's CPU and graphics processor while supporting one or two displays. The impact is so minimal, in fact, that it's doubtful one would notice the difference in an office environment.

Conclusions

At $249, the VTBook is a far cheaper solution than some similar products on the market. It's great for spreading office applications across multiple monitors. You won't be multi-monitor gaming with this device, but you won't need to disconnect additional monitors should you fire up a game that runs using the your notebook's internal graphics card and native monitor, either.

The VTBook from Village Tronic works as advertised for 2D applications once you're through the setup. It also keeps the added workload all to itself. However, Village Tronic needs to improve its instructions for the setup process so their customers can skip the phone call and be ready to go in under 20 minutes.

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