ASUS A6JA - Page 6

- SVGA Tests

The ASUS A6JA uses the ATI Mobility Radeon x1600 chipset, which provides good game performance:

I used several benchmarks (3D Mark05, 3D Mark 06) and games (F.E.A.R, Heroes Of M&M V) to test the Radeon x1600's performance. Note that the laptop comes with ATI Catalyst 6.14 drivers, which are rather "old". Since ATI doesn't officially supports the x1600 chipset in their latest Catalyst Mobility drivers, I used the "Omega Catalyst 6.50", which are patched to work with all ATI Radeon chipsets.

For your reference, I tested the A6JA with both Catalyst revisions and as was expected, the Omega Catalyst 6.50 drivers offered better performance in both benchmarks and games. If you decide to go back to your default pre-installed Catalyst 6.14 drivers, ASUS offers them as a separate download in the related support section of their website.

- 3D Mark 05 v1.2.0

The 3D Mark 05 score with the default drivers (6.14) was 3395, while after installing the Omega Catalyst 6.50 drivers, it went up to 3646. At the highest resolution of 1280x800, the 3D Mark 05 scores are even lower.

- 3D Mark 06 v1.2.0

The latest 3D Mark 06 pushes graphics cards to their limits and therefore the overall score is lower than in 3D Mark05. With the default 6.14 Catalyst drivers, I got a score of 1800, while with the Omega 6.50 drivers it reached 1898.

- F.E.A.R (v1.05)

F.E.A.R is a well known 3D shooter with a demanding graphics engine. The game doesn't offer 1280x800 resolution, so all tests were carried out at 1024x768 with the Omega Catalyst 6.5 drivers. The game includes a built-in benchmark, which was used in all cases. The "Auto Detect" settings are what the game chooses for best performance, while at "Best Quality", all details are maxed for best visual quality. I tried three more settings, with 2x FSAA/4x Aniso, 4x FSAA/4x Aniso and 4x FSAA/16x Aniso. All test results are illustrated in the following table:

ASUS has chosen the ATI x1600 to power the A6JA and the test results show that the graphics chipset has enough power to generate high framerates in demanding games like F.E.A.R. In the "Auto Detect" settings mode, no FSAA/Anisotropic filtering is enabled, while many other visual enrichments are disabled. 2x and 4x FSAA impacts on the overall performance, while Anisotropic filtering doesn't seem to add any load to the x1600. Finally, with the "Best Quality" settings mode, all details are maxed out, even "Soft Shadows". With 8fps minimum, 22fps average and 55fps maximum, I would recommend that you should probably avoided it.

- Heroes Of Might And Magic V (v1.00)

Heroes Of Might And Magic V is the latest chapter of the well known series for all strategy players. All battles are now performed in 3D mode, and many effects are available. F.R.A.P.S is used to benchmark all the different quality modes. I chose 3rd Mission - Chapter 1 (Necropolis Campaign) to perform all tests. Its results are illustrated in the following table:

Heroes Of Might And Magic V is demanding and especially with FSAA enabled. After enabling both FSAA and Anisotropic Filtering, I can say that the x1600 performs very well, since rotating the 3D map and getting 24fps (average) is not an easy task. Overall, you will enjoy strategy games with your ASUS A6JA.