Gaming and battery considerations
Gaming
Default 3DMark05 performance is just where you'd expect, considering the previous results laid down by the ASUS notebook with an identical graphics card. The score drops to 1,474 marks at the screen's native 1680x1050 resolution.
Far Cry performance is reasonable but drops to an average of 26.5FPS when tested at the WSXGA+ native resolution. We'd expect more graphics performance for £1,000, and, really, an ATI's X1000-series mobile card.
We also tested the laptop with the game that it ships with, Dungeons and Dragons: Online, and found it to be playable at the screen's native resolution with the in-game graphics set to medium.
Battery life
The Pegasus 650 DDO laptop is equipped with a 6-cell 4400mAh battery (10.8V). One of rockdirect's unique features is the ability to toggle between onboard and discrete graphics, with onboard offering better battery life and, therefore, perfect for low-power 2D work. With that in mind, we tested the battery life with both onboard and discrete graphics, with the discrete graphics set to maximum battery life.The test was simple enough. The Pegasus DDO 650 was charged to maximum and then a 1-hour 47-minute DVD was run, in full-screen mode and from the laptop's DVD drive, with screen brightness turned down to medium, battery mode set to maximum efficiency, and wireless connectivity switched off. We wanted to see just how much battery life, when run via both integrated and discrete graphics, was left at the end of the DVD.
i915G graphics wins on the battery-life front, keeping a third of the battery charge after the DVD has run its course.
