Sager NP8886 2.8GHz Pentium 4

Performance - Unreal Tournament 2003

Unreal Tournament 2003 Flyby 800x600x32 Desktop 3.06GHz Hypersonic Sonic Aviator 3.06GHz Dell Inspiron 8200 2.0GHz (Mobility Radeon 9000) Sager NP8886 2.8GHz 126.7 110.5 106.4 105.5 | 0 | 25 | 51 | 76 | 101 | 127 | 152

Since all the notebook systems here are based on the Mobility Radeon 9000 graphics card with 64MB of DDR memory, the differences in speed can mostly be attributed to driver build and processor speed. At 800x600x32 it makes sense that the Hypersonic system ranks atop the performance charts because of its 3.06GHz processor. What may be a bit confusing is how the performance of the 2.0GHz Dell Inspiron 8200 is above that of the 2.8GHz Sager NP8886 notebook. This is can almost certainly be attributed to driver optimizations. As we discussed in the Hypersonic review, notebook vendors must work with graphic chip vendors to produce driver builds specific to their individual notebook. The Dell system we tested used a more recent driver build than that used in the NP8886. Because Unreal Tournament 2003 is extremely demanding on the video system, CPU differences are not as prominent as video differences. We fully expect that a more recent driver build would put the performance of the NP8886 above that of the Dell system.

Unreal Tournament 2003 Flyby 1024x768x32 Desktop 3.06GHz Hypersonic Sonic Aviator 3.06GHz Dell Inspiron 8200 2.0GHz (Mobility Radeon 9000) Sager NP8886 2.8GHz 85 74 71.9 70 | 0 | 17 | 34 | 51 | 68 | 85 | 102

The same logic can be used to explain the performance of the systems at 1024x768x32. Here all three notebooks tested perform almost identically due to the stress on the video system, with the difference between the fastest and the slowest measuring only 6%.

Unreal Tournament 2003 Flyby 1280x1024x32 Desktop 3.06GHz Hypersonic Sonic Aviator 3.06GHz Dell Inspiron 8200 2.0GHz (Mobility Radeon 9000) Sager NP8886 2.8GHz 69.9 48.4 46.4 46.2 | 0 | 14 | 28 | 42 | 56 | 70 | 8

As the resolution is increased the performance differences between the notebooks remain the same. About 6% separates the fastest notebook from the slowest under the stress of Unreal Tournament 2003.