Meanwhile, PCMark 8 has a storage subtest that we use to assess the speed of
the PC’s boot drive. This result is also a proprietary numeric score; again, higher
numbers are better.
Only three of the laptops cleared the 4,000-point hurdle that we consider
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even the last-place X1 Carbon scored well enough to handle such tasks with no
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storage exercise.
Next is Maxon’s CPU-crunching Cinebench R15 test, which is fully threaded to
make use of all available processor cores and threads. Cinebench stresses the
CPU rather than the GPU to render a complex image. The result is a proprietary
score indicating a PC’s suitability for processor-intensive workloads.
Although none of these systems proved suitable for workstation-style CAD or
3D rendering apps, all are solid choices for working with business tools such as
spreadsheets. Here again, the 7400 was a close second, but the Core i5 Carbon
upset the Core i7 laptops for the win.
Our Handbrake video-editing trial is another tough threaded workout that’s
highly CPU-dependent and scales well with cores and threads. In it, we put a
stopwatch on test systems as they transcode a standard 12-minute clip of 4K
video (the open-source Blender demo Tears of Steel WRDS03¿OH,W¶VD
timed test, so lower results are better.
Cinebench is often a good predictor of Handbrake performance, but not this
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with the ThinkPad X1 Carbon coming in next to last.
We also run a custom Adobe Photoshop image-editing benchmark. Using an
early 2018 release of the Creative Cloud version of Photoshop, we apply a series
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operation and, at the end, add up the total execution time (lower times are
better). This test stresses the CPU, storage subsystem, and RAM, but it can also
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