ASUS notebooks with ATI Mobility Radeon X600 and X700 graphics
ASUS M6Q00VA
Package bundle:
- PSU (19V, 4.74À);
- PSU cord;
- RJ11 cord (for modem);
- TV-Out->RCA adapter;
- Logitech optical mouse;
- User's Manual (in Russian);
- Drivers CD;
- CDs: Nero Burning ROM, Power Director , ASUS DVD,
Media@Show;
- ASUS Recovery (2 pcs);
- 4800 mA*hr battery;
- Nylon bag to carry the notebook around.
Exterior and usability
The appearance of M6Q00VA is strict and efficient, without
much bizarre, even a bit simplish if you know how much potential is
hidden under the hood. The housing is made of grey plastic, very nice
to touch, not showing the dirt and well hides the fine scratches and
fingerprints. The inking of the housing is made by silvery edges, which
adds solidity to the notebook.
On the front panel, there is a number of colored LEDs: green -
Audio DJ and power, orange - for battery charge, and blue - for
Bluetooth and Wi-Fi wireless interfaces. Below, the grids of the
speakers are visible.
To the right, there is a compartment with DVD-Multi optical
drive and an outlet of the cooling system.
The left-hand panel is more abundant with interface connectors
and controls. Here are two USB 2.0 ports, an infrared port with a card
reader, a PCMCIA expansion slot, a connector to plug in an external
microphone, and a S/PDIF output. Also here is the Audio DJ control
panel required for Audio-CD playback without booted up operating system.
On the rear panel, there is a Kensington security lock socket,
a power connector, a LPT printer port, an expansion port to plug in a
replicator, an output to an external monitor and TV-Out, two USB 2.0
and one IEEE 1394 ports, RJ-11 and RJ-45 sockets of the modem and
network adapter, as well as a grid for the second output of the cooling
system.
Among the interesting features of the bottom panel of the
housing, we note the three channels of air-intake for the cooling
system which are located in a way to block them simultaneously so that
it is very difficult to put the notebook on the lap or by some other
means.
When opened, the notebook looks impressive and effective due
to the wide-screen matrix (default resolution 1280x800) with the
speaker grids underneath. The keyboard has full-sized keys, easy and
quiet to press. The TouchPad is sensitive enough, offers a scroll bar
and is framed by an aluminum plate which is used as buttons.
Technical features
The notebooks is based on the same Intel Centrino Sonoma
platform, Intel Pentium M 760 processor (Dothan core, 2 MB L2 cache
size, 2000 MHz clock speed, FSB 533 MHz), Intel Alviso 915PM chipset,
and the wireless Intel Pro/Wireless 2200BG network adapter.
The DDR-2 memory offers the same characteristics as in the previous
notebook since the same Infineon (64T64020HDL3.7A) 512 MB module is
used.
The distinctive feature of this model is the video system. The
M6Q00VA has a rather powerful video adapter - ATI Mobility Radeon X700
(M26) with 128 MB of DDR video memory (350/600 MHz when operated from
the mains, and 200/360 MHz when battery-operated), offers full support
for DirectX 9.0, uses 8 pixel pipelines and 6 vertex pipelines.
Besides, the chip offers support for SMARTSHADER HD, SMOOTHVISION HD,
3Dc texture compression, HYPER Z HD, VIDEOSHADER HD, as well as mobile
technologies PowerPlay 5.0 (dynamic variation in the number of
activated PCI-Express lines from 1õ to 16õ, depending on the load), and
Vari-Bright (optimization of matrix brightness for current tasks),
which allow saving the battery charge.
The TFT-matrix of the notebook offers a number of traits. The
specification declares the Crystal Shine and Color Shine technologies
(method for producing "glassy" LCD displays) which, as ASUS explains,
are aimed at increasing the brightness to 250 cd/m2 and providing an
exclusive image quality and color depth. Indeed, the image on the
screen looks very lively and colorful, although there is some
reflectivity effect. At the same time, the matrix offers excellent
viewing angles, both horizontal and vertical, as well as sufficient
response time (to my personal perception, it is 12 ms since there is no
way measuring it). There is some shortcoming about the slight glare of
the bottom part of the matrix, but that is only on the absolutely black
image.
The notebook uses the Hitachi Travelstar 5K100 hard disk of 80
GB capacity and 8 MB cache, with the spindle rotational speed 5400 RPM.
The HDD model is the same as in the already examined V6X00V, thus it
offers the same speed.
But the optical drive is of a different model - MATSHITA
DVD-RAM UJ-840S with slightly improved characteristics. This is what
Nero InfoTools tells.
The drive is compatible to all popular media (including DVD-R
DL, which is not recognized by the utility), offers 2 Mb buffer. While
playing DVD, the RPC 2 zoning control is used, and the drive can be
made multi-zoned only with a specialized software.
We were indeed glad about the error correction work the
company did - information was read from a scratched CD as if from a new
one (remember that the same disk failed to read with V6X00V).
The quality of data extraction of Audio-CD is beyond all
praises. At the same time, all necessary features are supported.
A film from a dual-layer DVD was read fast and consistently.
The CPU usage is a bit too high but that is caused by the wear of the
media.
We found that while writing Acme CD-R matrix the speed
characteristics match those in the specifications.
At the same time, the recording quality is also good. Despite
the use of a cheap matrix, the result is outstanding.
The recording of a DVD+R disk by the same manufacturer took
unexpectedly much more time, and the anticipated speed was 8Õ. It took
over 25 minutes for burning. Perhaps the firmware of the drive is not
familiar with Acme matrices, so the minimum speed strategy was followed.
The guesses proved right through the results of recording.
Despite the incompatibility of "Surface test" in Nero CD-DVD Speed to
the drive, judging by the test for reading speed, there are no issues
about the recording quality since the drive was able reaching the
maximum speed.
MATSHITA DVD-RAM UJ-840S is a superb multifunctional device of
great capabilities and speedy enough performance. The only shortcoming
is that it is the noisiest component of the notebook under study.
The audio system of M6Q00VA is a real trump when compared to
many other models. The matter is in the Intel High Definition Audio
codec based on Intel 82801FB and four integrated speakers (two under
the matrix and two on the front panel). The high-quality sound of such
a 4-channel system will provide a comfortable viewing of films and
immense pleasure from computer games. What lacks to set up a
full-featured mini media center is a subwoofer.
Heating and cooling
Inside the machine, there is quite a powerful processor and
as powerful video card, and despite that the cooling system does its
job well and without noise, so no overheating of components occurs. On
the other hand, the bottom part of the housing is a bit hot because of
the highly powerful interior.
Sensor readings after 30 min. of run in Futuremark 3DMark'03.
The mains power supply is provided by Delta ADP-90FB PSU that
offers maximum power up to 90W at 19V and 4.74A. During operation it
heats up immensely, so we recommend to place it in a way facilitating
ventilation. The standalone operation of the notebook is provided by a
4800 mA*hr battery whose charge is enough for two and a half hours in
the power-saving mode, which is not so much - that's a tradeoff for
increased performance. This is what Battery Eater '05 v.2.51 reports on
the power consumption of ASUS M6Q00VA:
If tuned to the maximum performance, the battery lives for merely 1
hour 40 minutes.
In the power-saving mode, the notebook is able running for 2 hours and
30 minutes.
It takes the battery approximately the same to recharge and discharge -
2 hours 17 minutes.
Performance comparisons
Since both of the notebooks under study pretend to be a
replacement for a full-fledged desktop PC, then we took the results of
recent tests of processors (test-benches used) and compared them versus
those produced today wherever possible. Here is the specification of
the test systems.
System1:
- Motherboard - ASUS P5AD2-E Premium (Intel 925XE, LGA 775);
- Processor - Intel Pentium 4 530 (3.0 GHz, 1 MB L2, FSM 800
MHz);
- RAM - 2x Hynix DDR2-533 PC4200 (HYMP564U64P8-C4);
- Video card: Point of View GeForce 6600 128Mb PCI-Express
(VGA150705P).
System2:
- Motherboard - ASUSTek A8N-SLI Deluxe (NVIDIA nForce4-SLI,
Socket 939);
- Processor - AMD Athlon 64 3000+ (1.8 GHz, 512 K L2);
- RAM - 2x Samsung DDR-400 PC3200 (M368L6523CUS-CCC);
- Video card: Point of View GeForce 6600 128Mb PCI-Express
(VGA150705P).
In the fully synthetic benchmarking package SiSoftware Sandra
2005, discrete systems take a lead due to the higher clock speed of the
processor or integrated dual-channel memory controller, but in the
total the notebooks tested proved on par.
Again, the results of Futuremark PCMark'04 are affected by the
high clock speed of Intel Pentium 4 530 and integrated controller of
AMD Athlon 64 3000+. If compared one versus another, the difference is
only in the graphics part, which is understandable.
We made a direct comparison of V6X00V versus M6Q00VA using
Futuremark PCMark'05. The thing which we can't explain was the repeated
performance difference for the disk subsystem.
At archiving jobs, V6X00V took a small lead, although
theoretically the performance of the systems should be absolutely the
same.
The same situation is seen in WAV to MP3 encoding, and the
results are 100% consistent (we decided to do a test for all the driver
versions and identity of settings, but nothing changed).
At video encoding, notebooks no longer lag behind the mid-end desktop
system, and at DivX 5.2.1 they even take a lead.
At 3D modeling packages, the notebooks being tested will show
their worth, but to release the imagination you first got to bring the
memory capacity up to 1 GB at least.
We gathered the results for all 3DMark generations in one
place, because there is a common trend - ASUS M6Q00VA offers the
highest gaming performance of all the systems. Let's try to disprove
that through running a couple more synthetic tests and a few games.
It is really hard to disprove - AquaMark3 and Codecreatures
Benchmark Pro persist in adding points to M6Q00VA with its onboard ATI
Mobility Radeon X700.
As you can see, even with ATI Mobility Radeon X600 you can
play all modern games, although to the detriment of the image quality.
If we take ATI Mobility Radeon X700, even more demanding modes can be
managed.
Really thrilling results for notebooks. Anyway, we turned a
bit skeptical, so one more day was spent running tests in Half-Life 2
and Doom 3 - tests are just tests, but reality may be different. At the
end of the day, we got the impression that the bottleneck of these two
games is the RAM capacity (1 GB is needed for a comfortable gameplay),
so a slowly running HDD (having to wait too long for loading the next
level and addressing the swap file all the time) is deathlike, in the
direct meaning of the expression. Despite the fast running of tests at
the maximum graphic settings we managed to play comfortably only at the
medium settings. In the end, our gaming sympathies have been
indisputably given to M6Q00VA, because it's very difficult for ATI
Mobility Radeon X600 to compete ATI Mobility Radeon X700.
Final Words
Today we have shown that a modern notebook can be a
full-featured replacement for a gaming desktop PC and a multimedia
center. In so doing, it can take much less space and will let the user
always have the data ready at home, at the workplace, and on the go. A
tradeoff for such compactness and universality is the price and
upgradeability restrictions.
As regards the models which came to our test lab, there is no
one-one recommendation. In terms of the gaming attraction, ASUS M6Q00VA
does better, but the tradeoff for these capabilities and is the fast
exhaustion of the battery charge. In its turn, ASUS V6X00V is able
providing a two-fold time of standalone operation under the same medium
level of working performance. So, it's up to you to decide.
We appreciate "Servis"
company (city of Dnepropetrovsk) for ASUS notebooks presented
for tests.
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