Legit Processor Reviews

ASUS K42F Notebook w/ Intel Core i5 540M Arrandale CPU Review

Manufacturer: Intel
Product: ASUS K42F-B1 14
Date: Sun, Jan 03, 2010 - 11:00 PM
Written By: Nathan Kirsch -
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Spore - Game Testing


Spore

Spore is a multi-genre massive single-player online metaverse video game developed by Maxis and designed by Will Wright. It allows a player to control the development of a species from its beginnings as a unicellular organism, through development as an intelligent and social creature, to interstellar exploration as a spacefaring culture. It has drawn wide attention for its massive scope, and its use of open-ended gameplay and procedural generation. The game was released for PC and Macintosh (using emulation) computers in September 2008.

Spore Game Settings

We ran the game Spore at 1280x720 on both notebooks with the image quality settings in the game set to medium and high.  The high image quality game settings that were used and can be seen in the screen shot above.

Spore Benchmark Results

Results: Using FRAPS to see how the game played on the two notebooks we get  better picture of the Intel HD graphics and what it brings to the table on the new Arrandale notebooks. Graphics performance has improved, but as you can see from the benchmark results above entry and mainstream game titles are the limits of the integrated graphics. Spore is a game title that was launched in 2008 and the Intel graphics here in 2010 still are not able to play the game smoothly at 1280x720. If you reduce the image quality down to medium the game is playable though as you can see in the results thanks to the 40% performance boost that is brought to the table!

Next Page - Blu-ray Video Playback


Review Index
Page 1 - Core i5 540M and ASUS K42F
Page 2 - 2010 Intel HD Graphics
Page 3 - The ASUS K42F 14-inch Notebook
Page 4 - Test Setup
Page 5 - Core i5 540M CPU-Z
Page 6 - SiSoftware Sandra 2010c
Page 7 - x264 HD Encoding
Page 8 - Sony Vegas 9.0C Pro
Page 9 - POV-Ray 3.7 Beta 34
Page 10 - Cinebench R10
Page 11 - PCMark Vantage
Page 12 - 3DMark Vantage
Page 13 - Spore - Game Testing
Page 14 - Blu-ray Video Playback
Page 15 - Power Consumption
Page 16 - Battery Life Benchmark
Page 17 - Final Thoughts and Conclusions