Asus' G51J: Affordable Core i7 Mobile Gaming?

Benchmark Results: Synthetic

3DMark shows none of the performance gains the G51J made in actual games. It’s no wonder that a great variety of readers question the applicability of its results.

This is probably a good time to mention that all of our 1920x1200 tests required the use of an external display, since the G51J is limited to a maximum of 1920x1080. In fact, this might even be an appropriate place to lodge a complaint against an entire LCD industry that is quickly and silently replacing most of its 1920x1200 computer displays with 1080p versions in an effort to cut costs, and then promoting the cut-rate products as “full-HD” in bold text as if these were improved, rather than compromised. 3DMark requires the higher vertical resolution for its Extreme preset and this editor requires similar real estate for applications like editing photos.

Strangest of all is that 3DMark puts most of the blame for the G51J’s mediocre score on its GPU.

PCMark places the G51J right where we’d expect it to be, halfway between the desktop-CPU D900F and Core 2 Quad-powered GT725 in both system and productivity scores. The only real surprise is its proximity to the high-end system in hard drive performance, since the G51J supports neither RAID nor the related striping mode used in the high-priced Eurocom build.

Sandra Arithmetic shows the balance of moderate speed and Core i7 technology that makes the G51J’s Core i7-720QM an attractive option for mid-budget performance seekers.

Unfortunately, a lower Turbo Boost CPU multiplier is applied when four cores are active, allowing the G51J to fall behind its predecessor in Sandra integer performance.

It’s nice to see the G51J’s dual-channel memory controller scaling well in comparison to the D900F’s triple-channel version.