Performance
We're comparing the performance of the Gigabyte U2442 to a cheaper Ultrabook in the shape of the £650 Lenovo IdeaPad U310 and to Scan's first foray into notebooks with the Graphite LG5, priced at £660. Lenovo's machine uses a 17W Core i5-3317U dual-core, quad-threaded chip that can ramp up to 2.6GHz, while Scan, not going down the slim-and-sexy Ultrabook route, makes do with a 35W Core i5-3210M, which uses the same basic architecture but can operate at up to 3.1GHz.
Pushing all cores to the limit, all three machines produce near-identical scores. The Core i7-3517U chip in the Gigabyte machine runs at around 2.4GHz in this test. A score of >2 suggests that it's more than adequate for everyday work.
Using the latest NVIDIA and Intel drivers, a fast SSD, and Windows 8 - the other two machines use Windows 7 - results in a class-leading score in PCMark 7. The Ultrabook does indeed feel nippy when navigating programs and multitasking is handled well.
Can you guess which two laptops use a discrete graphics card? Machinations in the mobile space enable manufacturers to clock discrete graphics cards in at a number of speeds. Our investigation found that, on average, the Gigabyte GPU, which is ostensibly the same as the one used by Scan, is clocked in a little lower when playing games.
Testing at a standard 1,366x768 resolution, performance is more than acceptable in Just Cause 2. Drilling down further and offering context across more games and at the panel's 1,600x900 resolution, here's how it performs in three relatively modern titles:
Additional Gaming Performance |
||
|---|---|---|
| Game | Quality Settings | Average FPS |
| Aliens vs. Predator | 1,366x768, 2xAA, 8xAF, Medium Detail | 30.9 |
| 1,600x900, 2xAA, 8xAF, Medium Detail | 23.6 |
|
| Just Cause 2 | 1,366x768, 2xAA, 8xAF, Medium Detail | 63.6 |
| 1,600x900, 2xAA, 8xAF, Medium Detail | 47.2 |
|
| Call of Duty: BO2 | 1,366x768, 2xAA, 0xAF, High Detail | 48.8 |
| 1,600x900, 2xAA, 0xAF, High Detail | 42.4 |
|
The GeForce GT 650M is a capable mid-range graphics card, especially when placed inside the slim chassis present on all Ultrabooks. We believe that it offers a decent games-playing experience at the 1,600x900-pixel resolution.
The laptop switches to the integrated graphics when playing a 720p, H.264-encoded movie. With all wireless communications switched off, screen set to 50 per cent brightness and the power plan to Balanced, Gigabyte's U2442 manages a shade over four hours until a lack of juice enforces hibernation. We'd really like to see Ultrabooks manage at least five hours in this low-load test, given that tablets oftentimes exceed 10 hours in the same battery-rundown evaluation.
