Comments Locked

51 Comments

Back to Article

  • Hrel - Wednesday, October 7, 2009 - link

    Always wanted a notebook that's actually portable; yet able to play games on it. I don't want max settings, I just want them to run. Now if only I could get a 1600x900 resolution from someone other than Sony... Preferably Asus.

    Really liking the inclusion of a discrete graphics card, I don't care if all the eye candy is on, I just wanna be able to play all the games that'll be coming out for the next year or so after I buy my laptop, and battery life of at least 6 hours is a must. So, I'm just waiting for someone to make that laptop; this looks like a step in the right direction.
  • fabarati - Wednesday, September 16, 2009 - link

    Well, vista runs quite fine on a 1.2 GHz C2D (the setting I've limited my T7700 to). The only time I bring it up is when I want to watch 1080p, or do something else cpu intensive. 720p runs quite fine.
  • chemist1 - Tuesday, September 15, 2009 - link

    Why not ship these products with software that allows even low-tech users to easily modify the clock speed (within pre-set acceptable parameters)? That way they could underclock when they wanted more battery life, but overclock when they wanted more performance (or had access to a wall outlet).
  • Mugur - Tuesday, September 15, 2009 - link

    I've seen many CULV notebooks reviewed and the fact most of them are very slow is due to the SINGLE CORE cpu that most of them have. Only the "high-end" CULV notebooks have C2D cpus, the other have Solos...

    And since the price for 13.3" starts from 150% of an ordinary 10" netbook (comparing Acer Aspire One D250 for example with the cheapest Acer Timeline) and goes up to 3x when you want a CULV C2D...

    I'm sure that on paper even a Core 2 Solo CULV at 1.4 Ghz is twice the speed of an Atom (or more?), but when you have Vista and a bunch of preinstalled stuff on it, trust me, it doesn't feel faster at all :-).

    So, in my opinion, the CULV platform is designed as an alternative to (relatively) cheap notebooks. Cheap notebook = around 2 Ghz C2D with small cache, 2-4 GB RAM, 320 GB HDD, 15" screen, 2.5h of battery and up to 3 KG in weight. Decent priced CULV = half the speed, half the weight, 2x the battery life, same memory, same HDD, 13-15" LED backlight screen.

    So it's really up to the consumer, if they are aware of the above...
  • fitten - Tuesday, September 15, 2009 - link

    Put Win7 on your netbook... it's a very different experience than Vista on it (Win7 actually runs smooth).
  • Mugur - Wednesday, September 16, 2009 - link

    I did... :-). But until October 22nd they are still sold with Vista.
  • wolfstone - Friday, November 6, 2009 - link

    i brought one of these yesterday with windows 7 installed
    ,it shows mine as being overclocked to 2.100mhz according to my CPU-Z.
    at the moment i have had it 1 day so too early to see proformace on it, i did have a 15" mac book pro but could not get on with there software (way too many years useing windows has left its mark)
  • vol7ron - Tuesday, September 15, 2009 - link

    2 Things I'm curious about:

    1) Comparison to Apple - I'm not a big fan of Apple, but their OS seems to hold the crown in battery life. A competitive PC alternative may seem nice to fence runners.

    2) What the impact of wireless has on the life. How big of an impact will there be, if using it for mainly Office Applications, or any application w/ WiFi off - noting that NetBooks are typically used for the "net".
  • Voldenuit - Monday, September 14, 2009 - link

    CULV hate? I haven't seen any CULV hate - quite the opposite, in fact, but then again here in Asia people seem to care more about portability (and price) than how big the V8 under the hood is.

    I have a 1.2 GHz C2D in my thinkpad X300, and it is certainly adequate for my computing needs (internet, excel, matlab, mathcad, some 720p watching). Certainly the SSD helps it feel faster - I'd wager that this is the real bottleneck in most laptops. The ex's Gateway w/ 1.8 GHz C2D and 5,400 rppm hdd feels like molasses in comparison when I switch over. And the Samsung SSD on the X300 isn't even particularly fast by modern standards.

    Nice to see that ASUS has managed to undercut the 13in MBP on weight - it'll be interesting to see how much lighter the 14- and 13-in models in the range are.
  • beginner99 - Tuesday, September 15, 2009 - link

    [quote]he ex's Gateway w/ 1.8 GHz C2D and 5,400 rppm hdd feels like molasses in comparison when I switch over. And the Samsung SSD on the X300 isn't even particularly fast by modern standards. [/quote]

    Agree.Any CULV with SSD probably feels faster in everyday use than a standard C2D with a slow notebook HDD.
    Too bad there are no real offers of this kind or if they are overpriced, cheaper to buy the standard model and the ssd separatley. Btu then you can actually choose you SSD and easly get rid of pre-installed useless stuff.
  • mattthemuppet - Wednesday, September 16, 2009 - link

    The Acer Timeline 3810T-6775 is a great deal - SU9400, Intel 80GB SSD and all the bells and whistles. I've got 7-71/2h runtime out of it (normal use, some sleep, wireless on) and I could probably get more if I dim the display. All for $800 from Newegg if they still have them.
  • clarkn0va - Thursday, September 24, 2009 - link

    Agreed. I just picked up one of these and it's anything but slow. I don't use it for compiling, mind you, but it boots crazy fast, launches programs almost instantly and is totally silent when the fan is not on.

    I haven't bothered with flash yet, but 720p is not a problem, even without GPU decoding.
  • Penti - Sunday, September 27, 2009 - link

    Please report back on flash, high quality VP6 or H264, I'm interested on how they fair.
  • zorxd - Monday, September 14, 2009 - link

    My sister ordered a UL30A with the same CPU. Does the turbo33 feature also work with this laptop?
  • Dainas - Monday, September 14, 2009 - link

    "The keyboard looks like Apple’s chiclet keyboard, but the feel is unfortunately not as nice. The tactile response just isn’t as solid as on the Apple."

    Not to be rude, but Apple has not produced a keyboard of any sorts that has a good feel to it in 15 years. Since they got it in their head that people like tapping on shallow space saving laptop type keyboards I've branded them all but useless. Honestly, how could the Asus keyboard be any worse? Atleast this one has the excuse of being a laptop.
  • jasperjones - Monday, September 14, 2009 - link

    Looking forward to read more about on CULV on Anandtech.

    RE: negative reviews.
    The German-language magazine c't (19/09 issue) was actually very positive about the second wave of notebooks with Intel CULV (as well as new notebooks with AMD LUxxxx), mentioning their relatively modest pricing, low heat dissipation, and roughly twice the processing power of your standard, off-the-shelf Atom netbook.

    As for myself, I am seriously considering getting Intel CULV or AMD LUxxxx for my next notebook. I have desktops for the stuff I do "for fun" that requires high CPU/GPU performance. But for work, I don't really need that much performance on my local system. Being fortunate enough to work in an academic environment with good IT resources, I can easily run number-crunching stuff like MATLAB on our cluster--X11 forwarding works just fine, so I don't even need to forego a nice GUI.
  • JackPack - Monday, September 14, 2009 - link

    Is it possible to underclock the Asus? i.e., drop the FSB to 166 MHz?
  • pattycake0147 - Monday, September 14, 2009 - link

    Can the voltage to the CPU be lowered to reach better battery life? Does the voltage adjust with the Turbo33 feature?

    Maybe I just missed it, but which integrated GPU is used? I'm most interested in if it can decode HD video, and if it has HDMI out.

    This is notebook the type of product that is most interesting to me in the mobile sector.
  • MODEL3 - Monday, September 14, 2009 - link

    quote:

    And that’s ultimately why OEMs view CULV as a failure in North America: performance. Or at least that’s what they’ve been going around telling everyone


    Did you meant from a performance / price ratio standpoint?

    You said that, while CULV CPUs are much faster than Atom CPUs, they have poor performance in relation with standard Core 2 Duo mobile CPUs and you didn't say about the pricing model, so it seemd to me that your focus was mainly on the performance side.

    I am asking because, it seems to me strange if OEMs view CULV as a failure from a performance standpoint only.

    I guess, they must view CULV as a failure from a performance / price ratio standpoint.

    When ASUS got the Intel Core 2 Duo SU7300, probably the 1K price was $262? (or anyway around $200...)
    And for example, a N270 was around $44? (or something in that range...)

    Certainly 1K prices, has absolutely nothing to do with what ASUS can negotiate with Intel.
    But the price difference is so large that even with the final negotiated prices the difference is huge.

    I don't know about Z5XX pricing, but i supsect if you compare platform pricing the difference will also be huge...

    Also, with CULV pricing model, a OEM can buy with the same money a much faster (+2X perf in some cases) standard Core 2 mobile CPU.
    And the OEM can promote/market easier i guess, the standard Core 2 mobile CPU based one.

    So essentially it is the pricing model that Intel followed regarding the market that the CULV CPUs are targeting.

    Don't you agree?
  • jonup - Monday, September 14, 2009 - link

    Anand, suggestion for the full review.
    1.Do all the power setting continue to work when Turbo is on.
    2.Can you set up the Turbo to kick in only when the CPU usage goew above certain percent?
    3.Can you manually adjust the Turbo? (Obviously the motherboard is capable of overclocking, maybe it can go high with third party tools.)
    4.How hot does it get when Turbo is on?

    I am interested in a 15" notebook with ULV CPU, but $850 might be above what I am willing to pay. However, I still might pull the triger on it.
    Thanks in advance.
  • MrSpadge - Monday, September 14, 2009 - link

    I've got one of the first Penryns in my notebook and it gets by happily with the minimum voltage the board can supply (0.925 V) up to 2.0 GHz. I'd be surprised if this chip needed any more than this even at 1.73 GHz.

    MrS
  • araczynski - Monday, September 14, 2009 - link

    this is intel's way of trying to con people into buying overpriced hardware again.

    at this price point, unit size, you'd have to be close to retarded to buy a neutered laptop.

    you'll want either a cheap/small netbook, or something with some balls.

    this thing is stuck in the WTF middle, not cheap, not small, and still weak.
  • MrSpadge - Monday, September 14, 2009 - link

    It's not Intel who choose to put this CPU into a 15" chassis.

    MrS
  • JohnMD1022 - Monday, September 14, 2009 - link

    $850? lololol... I'll pass
  • irev210 - Monday, September 14, 2009 - link

    When you go to the 11.6" form factor, the higher resolution screen and the similar weight, battery life, and cost of a typical netbook makes the CULV a no-brainer.

    I am surprised more notebook manufactures haven't attacked the 11.6" market. The Acer AS1410 is really the only compelling 11.6" product on the market at the moment.

    $437 shipped from amazon... where is ASUS, Lenovo, Samsung, etc?

    I think a 11.6" formfactor + CULV is what the people want, they just don't know it yet.
  • Fanfoot - Monday, September 14, 2009 - link

    I assume most of the readers who come here are performance geeks and don't care about anything that isn't the fastest and best...

    I'd encourage you to ignore them and cover stuff that is important regardless. Personally I'm interested in the CULV laptop space (and maybe even the CULV internet streamer little box beside the TV space). And this article is therefore quite interesting to me.

    Atom netbooks are GREAT and ground breaking, but yes they're slower than we'd like. It seems likely that CULV mini laptops will be more expensive, but if its only a little it MIGHT be worth it given that the battery life won't be that different. So to me something like an 11" thin-n-light makes the most sense.

    The main thing I'd like to see you cover is whether you can handle HD Flash full screen on a 720p laptop screen using a CULV processor (and whatever GPU) at the moment, or not? Given that even a dual core Atom 330 with Ion can't do this, even when you overclocked it to 2.0GHz, this would be a significant improvement.
  • MadMan007 - Thursday, September 17, 2009 - link

    There are proper reviews out you just need to search around a bit. Here's one: http://www.techreport.com/articles.x/17435/6">http://www.techreport.com/articles.x/17435/6 from the 'YouTube HD windiwed' results I think we can extrapolate that a full screen video would run ok but you'll need a dual core CULV to do so.
  • fitten - Tuesday, September 15, 2009 - link

    Indeed... these CULV processors might be pretty nice for HTPC boxes as well...
  • strikeback03 - Monday, September 14, 2009 - link

    AMD must really be hoping for good profits on these GPUs to go to the expense of renting an aircraft carrier.
  • Guspaz - Monday, September 14, 2009 - link

    Nice to have the G210M in there. It actually only uses slightly more power (14W) than the 9400M used in the Ion (12W), although I'm not sure if that 12W includes the rest of the ION chipset.

    Performance-wise, it looks like it should be a third to half again faster than the 9400M. Having this is nice, because you can disable it when you're on battery, and enable it when you're on AC power.

    It's unfortunate that the notebook doesn't use an nVidia chipset with a 9400M; the G210M supports Hybrid-SLI (SLI between the integrated (9400M) and discrete (G210M) GPUs) which would really let you push some decent performance when on AC power.
  • gstrickler - Monday, September 14, 2009 - link

    Why not just use the SU9600 CPU rather than overclock the U7300? Cost is the only reason I can think of. SU9600 has a 10W TDP, runs at the same voltage, and is sped'd @ 1.86GHz. The SU9600 might actually use less power than overclocking since the memory bus would not be overclocked (800MHz vs 1066MHz), and the faster CPU/cache would negate most differences in memory bandwidth.
  • snakeoil - Monday, September 14, 2009 - link

    We are still waiting for the lynnfield results without the overclock (turbo overclock).
    the lynfield review is not valid because it corresponds to an overclocked processor.If we don't get those results we don't know what to do with lynfield.
  • fitten - Tuesday, September 15, 2009 - link

    It corresponds to a processor as it operates in normal mode as it is intended to operate and, indeed, will operate on every machine shipped. By shutting off features of the CPU, you're not benchmarking how the actual processor would be working, you're only chasing some academic discussion about the processor. NO ONE will run the processor in that mode (it'd be stupid to shut off features because they "aren't fair") so any results obtained are useless except for tangential academic discussion.

    Why not shut off the L2/L3 caches as well or at least make them run at only the size of the competition? That's "fair", right? You might as well make sure that all tests are done with the processors running at the same clock speed... all in the name of "fairness", you know...
  • Lonyo - Monday, September 14, 2009 - link

    Go troll elsewhere please.
    After reading your comments for other articles, it's clear that the only thing you care about is asking Anand to benchmark a processor with a built in feature disabled.

    Maybe next time you should ask to get this system benchmarked with the overclocking disabled? And the underclocking too.
    Or maybe you could ask for a review of an HD4870X2 with Crossfire turned off, because Crossfire gives it an advantage over, say, a single GTX280 which doesn't have to run SLI.

    Keep your irrelevant and stupid posts elsewhere, if possible on another website.


    One request for the review of this is to maybe look at doing a browser test, especially with the built in overclocking feature enabled.
    Following on from the other browser test, it would be interesting to see how a higher variability in CPU clockspeeds would change battery life when a variety of browsers are used.

    Def. looks like the 13" model could be a nice step up from high-end netbooks if the price is right.
    Who would pay $600 for an 11" netbook with 8 hour battery life and poor (relative) performance if you can get a slightly larger 13" laptop with "real" processor, similar battery life, and a minimal increase in size and weight?
  • MamiyaOtaru - Monday, September 14, 2009 - link

    Turbo comes with the processor and requires no user intervention. It's a feature. You are asking for a review of an intentionally gimped processor where a standard feature is turned off. There is no reason for such a review.
  • jonup - Monday, September 14, 2009 - link

    Very relavant place for your post.
  • DigitalFreak - Monday, September 14, 2009 - link

    "If we don't get those results we don't know what to do with lynfield. "

    Die?
  • yacoub - Monday, September 14, 2009 - link

    No, but we are waiting for the P55 motherboard round-ups that were supposed to start late last week. :(
  • PotatoMAN - Monday, September 14, 2009 - link

    This reminds me of the days of turbo buttons and such when I first started playing with computers (around 80486 days and such). This seems neat, although I would be curious to see if doing simple web browsing makes the system scale back CPU cycles at all? I don't doubt the 7 hours of battery life, but I am a little confused by the intent to go to "turbo" mode then just surf the internet (why would you need to go to turbo mode for this, unless flash playback is bad in regular mode?). Why not go to "turbo" mode and max out the CPU with some Prime95 tests or something? Just a thought... thanks for all the good work and techy journalism AT!
  • XBoxLPU - Monday, September 14, 2009 - link

    Why not even look at the SU4100 and the tasks usually done by these typically Netbook segment products. The SU4100 is a dual core CPU that generally improves multi tasking greatly, even for single threaded applications. I would wager that a SU4100 would eat any Atom CPU alive
  • Penti - Saturday, September 26, 2009 - link

    I think the Acer Aspire Timeline 1810TZ with SU4100 is perfect, but I still wonder how it fares with Adobe Flash. Doesn't feel right if it can't do Youtube HD/Hulu HD (not that the latter is available here). It's about 690 bucks here in Sweden which here is a great price. A Macbook costs 1 200 bucks (before taxes) here as a comparison. It costs just as much as a PD or low end C2D 15.4 inch laptop in other words.
  • jonup - Monday, September 14, 2009 - link

    I would think those are a lot more expensive than the Atom. As netbooks have a low price they need to keep the cost low. I have worked with several netbooks and they are all awful. The Atom is the worse performing CPU ever (in relative terms). ULV have similar TDP and way higher performance it seems like a no brainer, right. But the ULV are chery picked with limited supply and Intel keeps their price high.
  • Aeternum - Monday, September 14, 2009 - link

    I would get something like the EEE pc if it had a similar setup but anything is better than a netbook that has trouble with full screen youtube video :P How is this at multitasking? What will be pricing?
  • jonup - Monday, September 14, 2009 - link

    "The 15.6” UL50Vt and the 13.3” UL30Vt will retail for $849 once they start shipping at the end of this month."

    ps. Quote function was not working.
  • Aeternum - Tuesday, September 15, 2009 - link

    Ooooh thx for the heads up jonus :)
  • XBoxLPU - Monday, September 14, 2009 - link

    All of this talk about poor performance but no direct comparison to the Atom CPU? I know the core clock is low but these CULV chips have better performance than the Atom. Why compare a desktop CPU to a notebook CPU?
  • Lexington02 - Monday, September 14, 2009 - link

    really? I mean look at the benchmark compared to the 2.26ghz proc.... The 2.26 ghz had a 3600 point bench mark while the slower proc at 1.73 ghz was at 3348 points which is much, much, much higher than the atom proc, which struggles to get past eight-hundred mark, so it is definately not that slow... Maybe to a person who is used to high power desktop user...
  • Samus - Tuesday, September 15, 2009 - link

    some people forget the atom is basically PIII-1000MHz performance. so basically there is no need to compare anything else too it; atom is down-right slow as hell. sure, it'll run windows xp, surf the web and play music, but that's about it. forget HD video, forget multitasking, forget gaming.

    any core 2 can do all of that, at virtually any clock speed. and as stated, if you really want to see the atom sysmark, go look at previous reviews on AT of the atom platform. it scores about 850 sysmarks with the 945GM chipset.

    my 7 year old IBM Thinkpad x40 with a PIII-M 1.4GHz scores 1260 sysmarks, about 30% faster. and thats SEVEN YEARS OLD. it only gets about 2 hours battery life and still doesn't do HD video, but it's held me off upgrading (technically downgrading) to a new atom netbook.

    hopefully these CULV chips start coming in sub-$800 notebooks, and maybe just one of them will have a thinkpad-class keyboard. it bugs the hell out of me that Asus keeps releasing really nice notebooks with these keyboards that look nice but function poorly.
  • Penti - Saturday, September 26, 2009 - link

    Look at the Acer Timeline TZ series. (like 1810TZ available in Europe)
  • Eletriarnation - Wednesday, September 16, 2009 - link

    "Forget gaming" assumes that you're playing recent games. I run World of Warcraft on a netbook with a 1.67GHz Atom - it's not pretty, but it is playable in low-traffic areas. The "multi-tasking" limitation is also a matter of definition. I'd say that an Atom running WinXP or Win7 is probably sufficient for a the majority of what most users would want to do assuming they don't have a lot of background applications going.
  • fitten - Tuesday, September 15, 2009 - link

    Two guys in my office use Atom powered netbooks to run VMs and they both say the Atoms run (a single) VM well enough to do work on it where you'd be using a netbook rather than a desktop. More than one VM and it really hits the skids, though.

Log in

Don't have an account? Sign up now