MaximumPC 2006 04

I

was tickled pink to have built a feature-rich notebook for

a mere $1,500 (see page 40). But how does this baby per-

form? To find out, I put our new wunderkind through our set

of standard notebook benchmarks and compared the results to

this month’s Dell E1705 with its 2GHz dual-core Core Duo proc,

as well as to a second-gen XPS notebook that has the same

2.13GHz Pentium M CPU as the DIY.

While the DIY didn’t do poorly in SYSmark2004 , the Dell

E1705 simply screams (for a notebook, that is). Between its dual-

core design and its large 4MB cache, the E1705 holds its own in

most benchmarks. But the dual-core pays huge dividends in the

multithreaded Recode and DVD Shrink. The Core Duo was almost

50 percent faster than the Pentium M, and in DVD Shrink we saw

nearly a 100 percent performance increase!

OK, our rig got its ass handed to it by Dell’s dual core, but it

didn’t do so badly against the second-gen XPS. Our $1,500 DIY

was actually slightly faster than the $3,400 XPS in Premiere Pro

and Photoshop CS. Why? The hard drive, bubba. Our 7,200rpm

Seagate stomped all over the 5,400rpm drive in the XPS, with

read speeds of 42MB/s versus 27.6MB/s. That’s just enough to

matter. However, the XPS and its GeForce Go 6800 Ultra demol-

ished both the DIY and E1705 in all of the gaming benchmarks.

There’s no point in even running the numbers—putting a GeForce

Go 6600 against a GeForce Go 6800 Ultra is like bringing a knife

to a gunfight. Drat.

I

hate imitations. When I watch DVDs, I put real butter on my pop-

corn, I sit in a leather recliner, and I listen to a high-powered A/V

receiver pumping sound through a genuine 5.1-channel speaker

system. Sure, drilling holes in my walls and crawling around my

attic to wire the surround speakers with plenum-rated cable was a

literal pain in the neck. But there’s no such thing as a good virtual

surround-sound system. Or so I thought.

I hate to admit it, but I was very pleasantly surprised by the

virtual surround-sound systems I auditioned for this month’s

Head2Head on page 16. Yamaha’s YSP-800 and Cambridge

SoundWorks’ SurroundWorks 200 both did an amazing job of plac-

ing audio events in a 3D space all around the room.

Both systems

have their short-

comings: Neither is

equipped with six

discrete inputs (for

front, surround, and

subwoofer), so I had

to use Creative’s

DTS-610 encoder

to hook them up

to a PC. Playing

DVD-Audio discs wasn’t a problem with the SurroundWorks 200,

because its built-in disc drive is compatible with that format, but

it leaves SACD fans in the lurch. The Yamaha system doesn’t

support either format—it falls back to DTS 5.1, so you at least get

surround sound. (DRM restrictions require DVD-A and SACD play-

ers to use analog connections to an external amplifier.)

Neither of these virtual surround-sound systems is a match

for a true home-theater rig, but they’re an amazingly good alter-

native if it’s impossible to wire up surround speakers in your lis-

tening environment.

Michael Brown

Auditions Virtual

Surround Sound

Can our home-built notebook take out

Dell’s new Core Duo Inspiron?

Can technology sway an audio curmudgeon’s opinion?

66 MA XIMUMPC APRIL 2006

in the lab REAL-WORLD TESTING: RESULTS. ANALYSIS. RECOMMENDATIONS

What do you do with a notebook after you’ve built it? Benchmark it!

GORDON MAH UNG

Puts the DIY

Laptop Through

Its Paces

DELL E1705 DIY

Best scores are bolded.

BENCHMARKS

SYSMARK2004 OVERALL 209 155

SYSMARK2004 INTERNET CONTENT CREATION 282 193

SYSMARK2004 OFFICE PRODUCTIVITY 155 125

NERO RECODE 7 (MIN:SEC) 38:25 56:24

DVD SHRINK (MIN:SEC) 29:39 57:3