Benchmark Results: Synthetic
3DMark might not represent the performance of any particular game, but its tests do separate GPU from CPU performance. The highly-criticized GPU Physics score, which artificially benefits GeForce test scores by adding to the CPU performance number, was disabled to make this GeForce to Radeon comparison more accurate.
The full test more heavily favors GPU performance than typical of actual games, so the closer test scores likely show a closeness between Radeon HD 4850 and GTX 280M performance.
Narrowing the tests further to GPU-only results proves that the GTX 280M is in the same performance class as the HD 4850. It’s a shame that we couldn’t secure a Radeon Mobility HD 4870 notebook for this comparison, but several manufacturers have discontinued Mobility HD 4870 models.
Eurocom’s Core i7 desktop processor performance slaughters that of MSI’s mobile Core 2 Quad.
PCMark’s hard drive test shows the D900F’s Level 0 array only 34% faster than the GT725’s single drive.
Sandra’s CPU tests show huge performance gains for Core i7 speed and architecture, while the mobile Core 2 Quad still performs relatively well in multimedia extensions tests.
Core i7’s on-die triple-channel memory controller has a significant bandwidth advantage over Core 2 Quad’s front-side-bus technology. Nothing new there, though.
