12. MobileMark 2005 and Intel DHCAT 3.0 Results

MobileMark 2005 benchmarks test the behavior of notebook PCs running on battery power only. There are four separate battery life tests, but we weren’t able to get the wireless networking test working with Vista, so we include results only for the other three tests: office productivity, read and search and DVD playback. As with SysMark, each of these tests uses real-world applications and runs from a full battery charge until the battery is emptied and the PC shuts itself off.

Test results go to a log file, which is how the test tracks shut-down time to an accuracy of 10 seconds. Values reported here are for minutes of operation (to get a real sense of how multimedia notebooks compare to others, see the sample results in our story "On the Tech Edge: Understanding Mobile Graphics Workstations.”)

Here are the results we obtained, which argue eloquently that battery life is nearly inverse to computing power on notebook PCs:

By contrast, rounded average values for a field of six notebooks running MobileMark in the mobile workstation story cited previously were: productivity 197 minutes, reader 215 minutes and DVD 153 minutes. This provides all the proof that multimedia notebooks aren’t designed for long battery life that anyone should ever need.

The Intel Digital Home Capabilities Assessment Tool is designed to check how well computer systems fare at the task of media playback, rendering, encode/decode and so forth. You can find an extremely detailed description of the previous DHCAT tests (2.0) in our October 2007 story: “Seeking the Ultimate DHCAT PC.” For the purposes of this discussion, let’s simply observe that DHCAT 3.0 simplifies things a bit and has been made easier to use and run than ever before (thank goodness, and based in some part on our feedback to Intel engineers in working on that very story). The output it produces is much easier to ingest and interpret as well.

To put the scores we’re about to report into context, any PC that scores under 100 is a sub-par media performer, in Intel’s eyes. Machines that score between 100 and 200 are acceptable, and those that score over 200 are exceptional. Keep this in mind as you peruse these results:

Thus the Eurocom rates as an exceptional media PC, while all of the others are at least adequate. Surprisingly, both the Acer and the Sony manage to beat the HP, with the Asus not too far behind. Of all the benchmarks we’ve presented here, we think this one comes closest to representing the kinds of capabilities one might wish from a media PC.

That said, we’re not sure that Intel’s assumptions that people will rip music or compress photos while watching recorded or live TV or during DVD playback are entirely well-founded. But at least we can stress their abilities to handle media-related computing and display tasks with these tests, and see how they score in response. Also noteworthy is that this benchmark indicates that the premium price you’d pay for the Eurocom may be worth it in terms of the media handling power that you purchase for all those bucks.