Sager NP5791 Benchmarks and Gaming

Processor and Performance

Our Sager NP5791 came with a mid-range Core 2 Duo T7500 CPU and 2GB of fast DDR2-667 RAM. It proved to be an able performer for all tasks.

System Performance Benchmarks

Windows Experience Index

The bottlenecks in Vista’s Windows Experience Index benchmark are the hard drive and the memory.

Processor Performance Benchmarks

wPrime

wPrime is a multi-threaded CPU test – it is similar to SuperPi but has a few more features. It is a much more accurate benchmark for dual-core CPUs. Please see our big comparison thread here.

SiSandra Arithmetic

 

SiSandra Multimedia

The Core 2 Duo T7500 is one of the fastest notebook processors.

 

Rendering Performance using Cinebench 9.5

Cinebench is a rendering benchmark tool based on the powerful 3D software, CINEMA 4D. Its rendering tasks can stress up to sixteen multiprocessors on the same computer. It is a free benchmarking tool, and can be found here: www.cinebench.com/

I ran Cinebench 9.5 with 32-bit color depth at a 1920 x1200 resolution

CPU Benchmark

• Rendering (Single   CPU): 392 CB-CPU
• Rendering (Multiple CPU): 687 CB-CPU
• Multiprocessor Speedup: 1.75

 

Graphics Benchmark

• Shading (CINEMA 4D): 451 CB-GFX
• Shading (OpenGL Software Lighting) : 1459 CB-GFX
• Shading (OpenGL Hardware Lighting) : 3787 CB-GFX
• OpenGL Speedup: 8.39 

Hard Drive Performance

HDTune 2.53

What the Hitachi 80GB 7200RPM SATA drive lacks in quietness it makes up for in performance. I found the drive made audible clicking noises while seeking or writing.

Gaming Benchmarks

Synthetic Performance

3DMark06

3DMark06 Results and Comparison:

Notebook3D Mark 06 ResultsSager NP5791 (Intel Core 2 Duo T7500 2.20GHz, Nvidia GeForce 8700M-GT 512MB)4,941Alienware M9750 (Intel Core 2 Duo T7600 2.33GHz, Nvidia go 7950 GTX video cards with 512MB)7,308Sager NP9260 (2.66GHz Core 2 Duo E6700, 2x Nvidia GeForce Go 7950GTX video cards with 512MB DDR3)9,097Alienware m5790 (1.83 GHz Core 2 Duo, ATI X1800 256MB)2,625WidowPC Sting D517D (Core 2 Duo 2.33GHz, Nvidia 7900GTX 512MB)4,833Apple MacBook Pro (2.00GHz Core Duo, ATI Mobility Radeon X1600 128MB)1,528Alienware Area 51 m5550 (2.33GHz Core 2 Duo, nVidia GeForce Go 7600 256MB)2,183ASUS A8Ja (1.66GHz Core Duo, ATI Mobility Radeon X1600 512MB)1,973Dell XPS M1710 (2.16GHz Core Duo, nVidia GeForce Go 7900 GTX 512MB)4,744

Scoring almost 5,000 points, the 8700M-GT is on par with mid-range desktop video cards. It is impressive that such power is packed into a portable machine.

Real-life games

I ran numerous games on the NP5791 to see what it was made of. Prior to testing, I defragmented the hard drive and did a Windows Update. I installed the latest Nvidia drivers (169.01 beta). All frames per second (FPS) benchmarks were done with FRAPS.

Crysis Demo

This is the first person shooter the gaming community has been waiting for. The NP5791 can run it at near full settings at a 1280×800 resolution in DirectX 9 mode; DirectX 10 mode was unplayable at the same settings and did not appear any different to my eyes. While the FPS seem low they are actually quite playable. Here are the standard settings I used for all benchmarking:

Main Settings

I tested with various advanced settings levels to determine how powerful the machine was.

Medium Settings

 

Frames: 1354

Time: 60000ms

Avg: 22.567

Min: 20

Max: 27

The FPS range I received was tight which is a good thing – gameplay is too varied with a large range. As I stated, even 20 FPS is quite playable in this game. Now let us turn up the settings some more.

High Settings

The highest settings I found playable were as follows:

Frames: 1293

Time: 60000ms

Avg: 21.550

Min: 14

Max: 32

Oddly enough turning most of the settings up to high did not affect performance much at all (-4.5 percent), yet it looked far more detailed than on medium. I found that the SHADER QUALITY and the SHADOW QUALITY affected performance the most, and merely reducing them to medium almost doubled my frame rates. With all settings on high (OBJECTS QUALITY is unchangeable) the game is unplayable, with FPS ranging from the single digits to the low teens. However, as can be seen from the screenshots, Crysis is absolutely stunning on the Nvidia 8700M-GT and is more than playable. I imagine the 512MB of GDDR3 dedicated memory helped the performance numbers.

Unreal Tournament 3 Demo

Unreal Tournament 3 is also a game that has been on the minds of many for a long time. I found the game to be supremely playable on the NP5791 and its Nvidia graphics card.

The most playable settings I found were as follows:

Level: Heat Ray (Deathmatch vs. AI)

Frames: 3313

Time: 60000ms

Avg: 55.217

Min: 35

Max: 64

Level: Shangri La (Deathmatch vs. AI)

Frames: 3104

Time: 60000ms

Avg: 51.733

Min: 36

Max: 64

The average framerate is a more-than-satisfying 51+ FPS and more importantly the FPS never dipped below 35, even in intense firefights.

Bioshock

Bioshock is one of the most demanding games currently available on the market and is extremely shader-heavy. I ran the game in DirectX 9 mode with the following settings:

Level: Medical Pavilion

Frames: 2289

Time: 60000ms

Avg: 38.150

Min: 25

Max: 59

These were the highest playable settings for the NP5791. This particular level, Medical Pavilion, had lots of water, vapor, and smoke and was hard on the graphics card. The game looked absolutely beautiful and the framerates were generally steady; only in the most intensive scenes did the frames drop below 30.

Overall Gaming Impressions

The NP5791 has earned its title of gaming notebook’. Even with the highest settings (or close to them) in today’s most demanding games, it provided a stable and visually stunning 3D experience that was thoroughly enjoyable.