3DMark 2001SE, 3DMark03, Q3
The Envy m:855 is being pushed as a gaming goliath of a laptop. We can see why. One of the very best gaming processors is coupled to the excellent ATI Mobility Radeon 9600 graphics card. The m:855 used a 64MB version with a GPU clock of 350MHz and memory speed of 400MHz. We can quite see potential buyers playing UT2003 whilst posing on the train. Gaming benchmarks were run with the Envy m:855 in both mains and battery mode. Battery mode forces the Athlon 64 3200+'s clock speed down to 800MHz. It will be interesting to see what kind of effect that has on gaming results. Benchmarks were carried out at 1024x768x32 unless otherwise stated. The 15" panel has a native resolution of 1400x1050 but is quite at home displaying a non-standard res'.
Some interesting results here. In full-blown mains mode and the cooler's fan whining like a banshee, the m:855 managed just shy of 10,000 marks. Pretty impressive for a laptop. In battery mode, as we've mentioned, the cooler's fan is almost silent, yet the graphics adapter still continues on at maximum clock speed. The 8,136-mark score is doubly impressive for a quiet, mobile solution, and it manages to eclipse the mains-powered Dell 5150's FX Go5200 handily.
3DMark03 has a big enough polygon and shading requirement to swamp a midrange graphics card. That's why clock speed, or the lack of it, makes very little difference to the overall score. The sheer mobile power of the MR 9600 is the main driving force behind the score.
Quake III, on the other hand, is an older title that still scales well with increases in clock speed. That's precisely why the battery-powered Voodoo laptop falls behind the mains-powered Dell 5150, even though it has a superior graphics card. It's clear that games that are polygon- and shader-heavy won't miss the 1.2GHz clock difference between mobile and desktop modes. Games that are easy on the card probably will.