Original Link: https://www.anandtech.com/show/942
It has been about a month since we first took a look at what happens when a desktop and a notebook merge. We took our first "desknote" system about a month ago in our ECS i-Buddie 4 review and, as we predicted, more desknotes have hit the market. Not only has ECS expanded their lineup but rumors of some major notebook manufacturers entering the market have been floating around for some time now and for a good reason: desknotes are profitable.
Components made strictly for laptops come at a high cost premium. Since many are made specifically for the notebook market and include space and power saving technologies, notebook parts are fairly expensive. Take mobile processors for example. Intel's mobile version of the Pentium 4 1.6GHz carries a $85 price premium over the desktop one but adds very little hardware wise on top of power saving features. Add in the cost of a mobile chipset, a mobile video solution, a battery, and other laptop specific parts and the price of a laptop quickly rises above the price of a similarly configured desktop system.
Building a mobile computer out of desktop components helps the price of a system quite dramatically. No longer are power consumption and size a large concern. A manufacturer can modify a desktop motherboard, pop in a desktop processor, desktop memory, and use a desktop chipset to create a desknote system at a fraction of the price of a full-fledged notebook.
Curious as to how much these puppies cost to produce? We are too but one thing we do know is that success in the desknote industry can mean big bucks. ECS, for example, recently announced that the profit from their desknote system sales has eclipsed their profit from motherboard sales. That is no small feat, being that ECS is one of the top five motherboard producers in the world in terms of volume.
Today we take a look at ECS' newest addition to their desknote lineup, the ECS i-Buddie XP. The difference between this notebook and the i-Buddie 4? You guessed it, the i-Buddie XP is an Athlon XP based desknote solution.
Construction - Build, Appearance, Size
The external differences between the i-Buddie XP and the i-Buddie 4 are cosmetic for the most part and the outside of both systems are seemingly identical. Like we commented before, the i-Buddie looks just like a standard notebook. If you are familiar with a notebook and feel comfortable using one, you should feel right at home with the ECS i-Buddie solutions including the i-Buddie XP.
The i-Buddie XP uses a different color scheme than the i-Buddie 4 uses. The Athlon based desknote is silver and white, making it slightly less conservative than the gray and light purple colors of the i-Buddie 4. From pictures we were not sure if we would like the new color layout but when we got our hands on the system we were pleased with the result. The i-Buddie XP looks more friendly than the i-Buddie 4 and the glossy white finish on the lower half of the system made for a nice feel.
The screen on the i-Buddie XP is held in place when shut by two magnetic hooks that serve as a locking mechanism. Sliding the release lever on the front of the system to the right releases the hooks, which hide inside the system when not in use as they are on springs. Closing the screen pulls the hooks up thanks to a magnet and keeps the notebook from opening accidentally. This is the same mechanism used on the i-Buddie 4 and it still remains unique.
Like the i-Buddie 4, the i-Buddie XP can come with either a 15" XGA or a 15" SXGA+ TFT LCD panel. Our system was configured with the XGA panel but we would have rather seen the SXGA+ panel on the system, especially considering the size of the desknote. A UXGA option would have been nice as well, but would certainly drive up the cost of the i-Buddie XP.
The keyboard on the i-Buddie XP remains the same as the one on the i-Buddie 4, meaning that it is a full sized 85-key keyboard. Again we found ourselves pleased with the feel of the keyboard with its generous 19mm key pitch, but were a bit frustrated with the location of the function key. Like some of the other notebooks we have seen, the i-Buddie XP locates the function key at the space normally dedicated to the control key. We are sure that after a while of use finding the control key on the i-Buddie would become second nature, but it does introduce a slight learning curve into the use of the system.
We were pleased to find that the keyboard on our i-Buddie XP was less noisy than the one on the i-Buddie 4. Perhaps a slight modification in the keyboard design prevented the keys from rattling as they did in the i-Buddie 4 system we reviewed.
One positive improvement that the i-Buddie XP makes over the i-Buddie 4 is the use of a new touchpad. We mentioned in our i-Buddie 4 review that the touchpad on the system was a bit smaller than we would have liked it to be. The i-Buddie XP makes use of a larger touchpad, providing more surface area to move the cursor around in. This proved to be helpful.
Also helpful was the use of larger buttons. Both the left and right mouse buttons were slightly larger on the i-Buddie XP than they were on the i-Buddie 4. The scroll button was also improved, as it is now larger and hence more useable.
The keyboard sits just as far back on the i-Buddie XP as it did on the i-Buddie 4, meaning that there was plenty of wrist rest area. The i-Buddie XP gets rid of the ports located in the wrist area probably because, as we noted in our i-Buddie 4 review, these ports do nothing. The speakers face outward, so the ports were simply on top of the speakers. We were a bit unhappy again with the placement of the internal microphone. Like the i-Buddie 4, the internal microphone on the i-Buddie XP is located slightly to the left of the touchpad. At this location, the microphone is covered by the upper palm of the left hand whenever the hands are on the keyboard.
The i-Buddie XP maintains the upper grilled area above the keyboard that aids in ventilation. A fan mounted beneath the left side of the grill sucks cool air and blows it across the heatsink used to cool the CPU. Although the style of the function buttons located in the upper middle section of the i-Buddie XP have changed, their functions remain the same: the leftmost button is a "mail" button that launches the default mail application; the middle button acts as the power button, and; the rightmost button launches the default internet browser. There are also LEDs above the buttons that indicate hard drive access, num lock status, caps lock status, and scroll lock status.
Along the upper edge of the i-Buddie XP is a small rubber protrusion that is used to indicate when the screen is closed. Closing the screen pushes the rubber piece down and turns off the LCD backlight to save the life of the screen.
There are two status LEDs on the left side of the system. These LEDs, one that indicates power state and one that denotes standby mode, are visible both with the system open as well as with it shut.
Looking at the front of the i-Buddie XP system, we can see that the unit is more rounded than the i-Buddie 4. Again, the front of the unit is bare, as it is home to only the screen release lever and two speaker ports. Our system, an engineering sample, was actually missing the screen release lever. We had to use a screw driver to slide the release to the right but the final version will most certainly not be missing this piece.
The left side of the i-Buddie XP is dominated by cooling vents. There are two ports cut out on this side of the system: one to provide air flow over the voltage regulator and one to provide air flow over the CPU heatsink. On top of the cooling vents, the left side of the system is also home to a modem jack and the unit's power-in port. This setup is slightly different than that of the i-Buddie 4 as the location of the modem port on the i-Buddie XP is actually home to a firewire port on the i-Buddie 4. When we move to the right side of the system you will see that ECS flip-flopped the location of these two components on the i-Buddie XP.
The back of the i-Buddie XP is nearly identical to the back of the i-Buddie 4. The rear of both systems offer an ethernet jack, an s-video out port, a 15-pin VGA out port, a parallel port, an IR window, and two audio jacks, one for audio-in and one for audio-out. Also present on the back of the system is a cooling vent used to aid in air flow across the CPU heatsink. Again, this cooling vent is identical to the one found on the i-Buddie 4. In fact, the only difference between the i-Buddie XP and the i-Buddie 4 except for the color differences is that the i-Buddie XP is slightly more rounded than the i-Buddie 4. This provides for a smoother look to the i-Buddie XP and is a trend we noticed all around the i-Buddie XP.
The right side of the system reveals the one flip-flop that we alluded to earlier. The i-Buddie XP maintains the i-Buddie 4's Kensington lock port and four USB 2.0 ports (stacked two by two side by side) but exchanges the modem jack for a powered 6-pin IEEE-1394 port. The modem jack was moved to the left side of the system in the case of the i-Buddie XP and although we cannot be sure why, it most likely has to do with assembly convenience and little more. The right side of the i-Buddie XP is also home to the unit's optical drive. Our system came configured with an 8X DVD-ROM drive but a DVD/CD-RW drive is an option as well. The drive is slightly different than the one found on the i-Buddie 4 as the face plate is a bit more rounded and is finished in the white glossy paint that covers the bottom half of the system.
Again we find that the bottom of the i-Buddie XP is identical to the i-Buddie 4. Both feature an easily accessible CPU access panel, hard drive panel, and memory panel. The CPU access panel on the i-Buddie XP is slightly larger than that on the i-Buddie 4, making room for the larger Socket A processor at the helm.
The system featured the same large cooling vents on the bottom right side used to provide airflow across the voltage regulator mounted above it. Also present was the large cooling vent on the back right of the system used as an exhaust vent for the air blown across the CPU heatsink.
This location was the place where we were able to get our i-Buddie 4 to a fairly cool running 109.5 degrees Fahrenheit (43.1 degrees Celsius) and we were curious to see how much hotter the system would get with an Athlon XP at the helm. Our test system, running on an Athlon XP 2100+ processor, got up to a sweltering 159.5 degrees Fahrenheit (70.8 degrees Celsius); by far the hottest notebook we have seen. At 159.5 degrees the i-Buddie XP feels like a frying pan when placed on the lap so it is a good thing that the i-Buddie is not a laptop solution but a desknote one. Even so, if there is any time that you may want to have the desknote on your lap, one may find it difficult to do so. On the flip side, it is fairly impressive that ECS was able to provide sufficient cooling for the desktop Athlon XP at high speeds in such a tiny space. Regardless of the exhaust temperature, we had no problem with the i-Buddie XP when it came to CPU temperature or overheating.
Like the i-Buddie 4, the i-Buddie XP uses desktop sized 184 pin DDR SDRAM. Our RAM was rated at PC2100 was 256MB in density.
The i-Buddie XP specifications show it to be the exact same size and weight as the i-Buddie 4: 13.07" x 10.81" x 1.76" and 7.0 pounds. As we mentioned in our i-Buddie 4 review, this is among the largest notebooks we have seen but does not hinder the i-Buddie XP as much as it would if it was designed to be fully mobile.
Being a desknote, the i-Buddie XP includes no battery. As we mentioned in our i-Buddie 4 review, this has its up sides and its down sides but it boils down to the fact that the i-Buddie XP can only be used when tethered to a wall. In the i-Buddie 4 this was problematic only in the fact that we could not use the i-Buddie XP away from a power source but the i-Buddie XP introduces a new issue into the desknote design.
Naturally, when the desknote is being used it has to be plugged into the wall. Power to the system is provided via a transformer that converts the AC electricity from your wall into DC energy that the desknote can use. In the case of the i-Buddie 4, the AC adapter took the wall power and converted it into 19 volts carrying 4.74 amps. The adapter was fairly small and self contained. The i-Buddie XP's AC adapter is a bit different.
First off, the i-Buddie XP's AC adapter is physically larger than that of the i-Buddie 4, making it a bit more cumbersome to carry around. The reason for this is that the i-Buddie XP requires significantly more energy to power it's Athlon XP CPU; this being the second difference between the power adapters. Just like Athlon XP systems require a more powerful power supply in a desktop than a Pentium 4 system, the desktop Athlon XP CPU also requires more power in a desknote solution. The i-Buddie XP's AC adapter outputs 20 volts and carries 6.0 amps. It is because of this high energy output that we encounter a shortcoming of the i-Buddie XP.
The AC adapter included with the i-Buddie XP includes a small fan in the design. Normally a 30x30 millimeter fan would not bother us but the 6,800RPM that the fan in the LiShin International Enterprise Corporation AC adapter that came with our i-Buddie XP was a little much for out liking. The fan makes a slight but audible noise when running, which was the main problem because the fan runs all the time when the AC adapter is plugged into the wall. Regardless of what the AC adapter was doing, putting power to the system or just sitting idle with the system off, as long as it was plugged into the wall the fan on the adapter spins producing a noticeable amount of noise. Although it could not be heard while the i-Buddie XP was on, with the system off and the power supply on the right surface (our desk) the fan made noise and slightly vibrated the power brick creating even more noise. Not a major problem, but it did prove to be irksome and could have been easily solved by turning the fan off along with the desknote or at least providing a switch on the AC adapter to turn it off when not in use.
Construction - Under the Hood
The i-Buddie XP we got our hands on had some powerful hardware inside including an Athlon XP 2100+ processor, a 20GB hard drive, 256MB of PC2100 DDR SDRAM, and a DVD-ROM drive.
At the heart of the i-Buddie XP can be any socket-A based AMD Athlon processor. The system can accept any speed Duron processor, Athlon socket-A processor, or Athlon XP processor at speeds up to 2200+ (1.8GHz). As a desknote system, swapping out the processor in the i-Buddie XP could not be easier. The CPU can be found by removing the CPU access panel on the bottom of the system and removing four screws holding the heatsink in place.
The heatsink on the i-Buddie XP was very similar to the heatsink on the i-Buddie 4 with the only noticeable difference being that the side of the heatsink located over the processor on the i-Buddie XP was larger than the plate over the i-Buddie 4's processor in order to fully cover the larger socket-A processor. Two heat pipes connect the plate that covers the CPU to a fairly large bonded fin copper heatsink. Air flow over the heatsink surface is provided by a large 60mm x 60mm x 10mm Sunon fan. We mentioned that the Sunon fan was somewhat of an over kill in the i-Buddie 4, but in the i-Buddie XP every bit of air the fan moves over the heatsink is necessary. The large fan is necessary to provide the needed airflow over the heatsink surface to keep the hot-running Athlon XP processor from overheating.
The fan remains temperature controlled and still fairly loud. Since the Athlon XP processor in the i-Buddie XP runs much hotter than the Pentium 4 found in the i-Buddie 4, the fan in our i-Buddie XP spun at full speed more regularly than it did in the i-Buddie 4.
Once the heatsink is removed, the processor becomes visible.
Once removed, the socket-A processor is revealed. The processor is held in place in a socket that looks very similar to the desktop socket-A solutions except without the release lever. Instead of pulling up on a bar to release the processor, the socket used in the i-Buddie XP releases its grab when slid to the left. Inserting a flat blade screw driver into the slot on the right of the socket does the trick and makes for an easy upgrade path. To close the socket, just push from the slot on the left of the socket and you are set to go.
Since the i-Buddie XP is really just a desktop in a notebook form factor ECS had to turn to a desktop chipset to power the desktop processor. The i-Buddie XP uses the Athlon version of SiS' SiS 650 chipset, the SiS 740. Pair that with a SiS 961 southbridge and you have a smaller version of ECS' own L7SOM desktop motherboard.
The SiS 740 shares a very similar feature set to the Pentium 4 SiS 650 used in the i-Buddie 4. Both support DDR memory up to DDR333 and include a basic video controller. As we mentioned in our i-Buddie 4 review, the video part in the SiS 650/740 is not very powerful, consisting of only two rendering pipelines, two texture units per clock, and a shared memory solution. The chip is able to perform basic 3D tasks, but don't look to do any serious gaming on it.
One advantage that ECS had when designing the i-Buddie XP was the experience gained from designing the i-Buddie 4. Since the SiS 740 comes in the same package as the SiS 650 and since both use the SiS 961 southbridge, modifying the system design to accept an Athlon processor was a fairly painless process. As we will see in a minute, the layout of the system motherboard is eerily similar to that of the i-Buddie 4's motherboard.
The desknote i-Buddie XP, making use of a desktop processor and desktop components, must also make use of a three-phase voltage regulator for providing the CPU with a correct and clean power source. The voltage regulator used in the i-Buddie XP was eerily similar to the one found in the i-Buddie 4. In fact, the layout of the i-Buddie XP's voltage regulator setup only differs from the i-Buddie 4's layout in the location of one or two capacitors.
Cooling the voltage regulator and the northbridge is also accomplished the same way in both desknote systems. The voltage regulator setup is covered by a thin metal plate which directs the air provided by a fan towards the potentially hot components. The SiS 740 northbridge is cooled in the same fashion, except in the case of the northbridge small fins atop the metal plate help aid in heat dissipation.
As you can see, the bottom layout of both the i-Buddie XP and the i-Buddie 4 are fairly similar. Again, ethernet connectivity is provided thanks to a RealTeK RTL8101L ethernet controller.
Construction - Under the Hood Continued
The top side of the i-Buddie XP's motherboard is almost indistinguishable from the top side of the i-Buddie 4's motherboard. Both feature the same chips and the same configuration.
The i-Buddie XP makes use of the SiS 961 southbridge which is mounted on the top side of the motherboard. The chip provides an AC '97 audio controller, a USB 1.1 controller, an ethernet controller, and two IDE channels compliant with the ATA100 specification.
USB 2.0 support and IEEE-1394 support are brought to the i-Buddie XP thanks to VIA. The USB 2.0 controller is a VIA VT6202 chip mounted on the left side of the motherboard. On the opposite corner a VIA VT6306 controller is found. This chip serves as the firewire controller for the i-Buddie 4.
Providing s-video out functionality to the i-Buddie XP is a SiS 301LVMV chip. The chip works in conjunction with the integrated video in the SiS 740 northbridge to perform video encoding functions and apparently gets warm enough during operation to justify the small black heatsink mounted on top of it.
Also found on the bottom side of the i-Buddie 4's motherboard are three Winbond chips, the W83L784AR, the W83972D, and the W83L517D. The Winbond W83L784AR is the system's hardware monitoring chip which measures the temperature of the area around the CPU as well as the temperature of the voltage regulators. If either of these temperatures get too high, the system kicks in additional cooling created by increasing the RPM speed of the two internal fans. The Winbond W83972D serves as the i-Buddie 4's AC 97 audio controller. Finally, the W83L517D appears to be a Super I/O chip.
Again, the i-Buddie XP comes with no PCMCIA slot meaning that there is no PCMCIA controller on the motherboard. We mentioned in our i-Buddie 4 review that this is something we would be interested in seeing added to the i-Buddie configuration but for now it looks like USB and IEEE-1394 peripherals will have to suffice.
Looking at the top of both the i-Buddie XP and the i-Buddie 4 motherboards, we find the two to be almost clones of each other
Our i-Buddie XP came with a 20.0 GB IBM Travelstar 40GN mobile hard drive. Like many of the drives we see mobile system come with, the 40GN series drives spin at 4200RPM and feature a 12ms access time and a 2MB buffer. We were disappointed that the i-Buddie XP did not use a desktop hard drive, especially in a system as large as it is without any power constraints. Even if ECS is forced to use a mobile hard drive due to space or heat issues, we would have rather seen a 5400RPM drive in the system. Either of these solutions, a desktop hard drive or a 5400RPM mobile hard drive, would have increased performance.
The speakers in the i-Buddie XP are similar to those found in many other desktop replacement class notebooks. Again, sound out of these are good but not desktop-like.
As we mentioned before, the i-Buddie XP contains no battery. There is an optional 12 cell external battery pack for the i-Buddie XP that is speced at 2000mAh and 88 Wh. Since our test unit did not come with the optional battery pack, we can't even begin to estimate how long the battery would last in a system as unique as the i-Buddie. One thing is for sure though: battery life via the external battery will certainly be greater when used on the i-Buddie 4 than on the i-Buddie XP. Thanks to the i-Buddie XP's AC adapter, there is no question that the i-Buddie XP has the potential to consume more power than the i-Buddie 4.
Features - Software
From our i-Buddie 4 review:
Unlike any other prepackaged notebook we have seen, the i-Buddie XP comes from the factory with no operating system or applications installed. In fact, the only software the i-Buddie 4 comes with is a driver and utility CD. The CD contains drivers for Windows 9x/ME, Windows 2000, and Windows XP, making all those operating systems a viable option for the system. Also included are a few applications, most notably PC-cillin 2000 and WinDVD. The lack of operating system is a big drawback for the i-Buddie XP, as it quickly adds to the cost of the system and adds to the time required to get the desknote up and running.
Sadly, one of the more powerful features in the i-Buddie 4 did not find its way into the i-Buddie XP. When we entered the BIOS in our i-Buddie 4, we were pleased to find a slew of desktop like options. Perhaps the most impressive of these options was the ability to overclock the i-Buddie 4 by changing the FSB speed (100MHz to 200MHz) and memory clock speed of the system (133MHz to 255MHz). Unfortunately, this overclocking functionality was left out of the i-Buddie XP. No longer can the front side bus speed be set in one megahertz increments. The i-Buddie XP is limited to either a 100MHz front side bus or a 133MHz front side bus speed and can be modified depending on what CPU is in the system. There is no adjustment for the memory clock speed, although the CAS latency settings are still user selectable (automatic, 2.5T or 3T).
The Test
| Windows XP Professional Test System |
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| Hardware |
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ECS
i-Buddie XP |
ASUS S1 | PaceBlade PaceBook | Toshiba Satellite 1905-S277 | Desktop
Testbed |
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| CPU(s) | Athlon
XP 2100+ (1.73GHz) |
1.6GHz
Intel Pentium 4 Northwood |
1.2GHz
Intel Mobile Pentium III-M |
Transmeta
Crusoe TM5600 600MHz |
1.7GHz
Intel Mobile Pentium 4-M |
1.8GHz
Intel Mobile Pentium 4-M |
1.6GHz
Intel Pentium 4 Willamette |
Athlon XP 2100+ (1.73GHz) |
|||||
| Motherboard(s) | ECS
SiS 740 DDR |
ECS
SiS 650 DDR |
ASUS
830M |
PaceBlade
SDR |
Compaq
845MP DDR |
WinBook
845MP DDR |
Toshiba
845 SDR |
SiS
740 DDR |
|||||
| Memory | 256MB
PC2100 |
256MB
PC2100 |
384MB
PC133 |
256MB
PC133 |
256MB
DDR2100 266MHz |
512MB
DDR2100 200MHz |
256MB
PC133 |
256MB
PC2100 |
|||||
| Hard Drive | 20.0GB
IBM Deskstar 40GN |
15.0GB
Hitachi DK23CA-15 |
30.0GB
Fujitsu MHN2300AT |
20.0GB
Fujitsu MHN2200AT |
30.0GB
Hitachi DK23DA-30F |
40.0GB Toshiba MK4018GAP |
30.0GB
Toshiba 3017GAP |
IBM
Deskstar DPTA-372050 20.5GB 7200 RPM Ultra ATA 66 |
|||||
| CDROM | Matsushita
DVD-ROM |
Toshiba
DVD-ROM |
Toshiba
DVD/CDRW |
Toshiba
DVD |
Toshiba
DVD/CDRW |
Toshiba DVD/CDRW |
Toshiba
DVD/CDRW |
Phillips
48X |
|||||
| Video Card(s) | Integrated
SiS 740 |
Integrated
SiS 650 |
Integrated
Intel 815 |
Silicon
Motion Lynx3DM8 |
ATI
Mobility Radeon 7500 64MB DDR |
NVIDIA
GeForce2 Go 100 16MB 32-bit DDR |
ATI
Mobility Radeon 16MB DDR |
Integrated
SiS 740 |
|||||
| Ethernet | RealTeK
Onboard Ethernet Adapter |
RealTeK
Onboard Ethernet Adapter |
RealTeK
Onboard Ethernet Adapter |
Realtek
10/100 Ethernet Adapter |
Intel
PRO/100 Onboard Ethernet Adapter |
3com Onboard Ethernet Adapter |
Intel
PRO/100 Onboard Ethernet Adapter |
Linksys
LNE100TX 100Mbit PCI Ethernet Adapter |
|||||
| Software |
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| Operating System |
Windows XP Professional |
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| Video Drivers | SiS
2.05a |
SiS
2.05a |
Intel
6.13.1.3013 |
XP
Drivers 5.1.2001.0 |
ATI
6.13.10.6045 |
|
ATI 7.65.04 | SiS
2.05a |
|||||
| Benchmarking Applications |
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| Bapco
SysMark 2001 |
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Performance - Overall Performance
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132
119We expected quite a bit of performance out of the ECS i-Buddie XP. Being the first Athlon based mobile system we laid our hands on, we suspected that the 2100+ processor in our i-Buddie XP would blow everything else out of the water. This was not the case.
We can see that the desktop 2100+ system managed to top the performance graphs, outdoing the Compaq Presario 2800T 1.7GHz by 7%. The same configuration in the mobile system did not fare so well, falling 3% behind the Persario 2800T and 11% behind the desktop 2100+. The speed differences between the desktop Athlon system and the i-Buddie XP are likely due to the hard drive difference in the two systems. As we have seen before, notebook hard drives introduce a large bottleneck into mobile systems and this is likely the case here.
We also suspect the reason that the Athlon XP 2100+ desktop system was not able to significantly outperform the Persario 2800T was because of the shared memory architecture used by the SiS 740 chipset. Remember that in a shared memory solution system RAM is used as video memory, not only decreasing the amount of system memory available but more importantly increasing the traffic over the already crowded system memory bus.
The i-Buddie XP with the 2100+ processor was able to outperform its Pentium 4 brother, the i-Buddie 4, by a fairly significant 17%. Keep in mind that this performance delta would decrease and perhaps sway in favor of the i-Buddie 4 with a faster Pentium 4 processor (our test unit only made use of a 1.6GHz Pentium 4).
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Stemming from a lower score on the Internet content creation section of SYSMark 2002, the i-Buddie XP falls some in the overall SYSMark 2002 score. The system is now beat not only by the desktop 2100+ and the Persario 2800T but also by the WinBook N4 1.8GHz. The Persario 2800T outperformed the ECS i-Buddie XP by 11% and the desktop 2100+ by 0.5%. The performance advantage held by the Pentium 4 notebooks suggest again that the SiS 740 chipset is holding the Athlon XP 2100+ back some thanks to its integrated video solution.
Performance - Content Creation
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It is the Internet content creation section of the SYSMark 2002 benchmark that holds back the i-Buddie XP to the greatest extent. In this benchmark, the i-Buddie XP was outperformed 18% by the Persario 2800T. In this test even the 1.6GHz i-Buddie 4 was able to outperform the 2100+ i-Buddie XP although by an unnoticeable 0.2%.
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In Content Creation Winstone 2002, the i-Buddie XP 2100+ finally finds its way to the top of the performance charts. The i-Buddie XP 2100+ was able to slightly outperform the Compaq Persario 2800T (by 3%) to lead the pack. The desknote solution still remains 18% slower than the desktop one, but we can attribute this to the slower mobile hard drive as we have already proven that Content Creation Winstone 2002 is extremely I/O intensive.
Performance - Startup Times
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Sure, the i-Buddie XP may not find much use away from a desk, but it is still interesting to see how fast the system booted. Keep in mind that with the purchase of the external battery pack the boot up time, standby time, and hibernate time become increasingly important.
The i-Buddie XP started up fairly quickly, making it the second fastest system we have seen go from a black screen to Windows. This represented a fairly nice improvement over the i-Buddie 4, which was 6 seconds slower from start to finish.
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Mimicking the boot-up time rating of the i-Buddie XP, the time required for the system to come out of standby mode was fast; tying with three other systems at six seconds.
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Again, the time required for the i-Buddie XP to come out of hibernation mode was short. At only 16 seconds, the system recovered 6 seconds faster than the i-Buddie 4.
Conclusion
We mentioned in our i-Buddie 4 review that we thought that the desknote concept had quite a bit of potential and seeing another desknote system reinforced this notion. A desktop system in the size of a notebook has quite a number of potential applications and could prove to be especially useful for students and business people on the go. Desknote systems take up much less room than desktop ones, are less expensive than a dedicated PC with an LCD display, and can be carried from point A to point B with little effort. But how does the i-Buddie XP fare in the fairly small world of desknotes?
We asked ourselves which desknote we would prefer, the i-Buddie 4 or the i-Buddie XP, and the answer seemed fairly clear: the i-Buddie 4. The i-Buddie XP does offer some advantages over the i-Buddie 4 including a slightly revamped design, a more pleasing paint scheme, and a socket-A design that allows for fairly inexpensive CPU solutions. But for all of these advantages, the performance of the i-Buddie XP just isn't there.
As we mentioned in the test section, we expected the i-Buddie XP 2100+ to completely dominate all the benchmarks. Based simply on the specifications, we expected the system to out perform every mobile system we have seen to date, but this did not turn out to be the case. In fact, we found that in the majority of benchmarks the i-Buddie XP with its Athlon XP 2100+ processor was not all that far off from the i-Buddie 4 with a 1.6GHz Pentium 4 in it. There is little doubt in our mind that an upgrade to a 1.8GHz Pentium 4 or higher would place the i-Buddie 4 on top performance wise in all the benchmarks.
Why is the performance of the i-Buddie XP not there? There seem to be a few reasons. First off, the performance of the SiS 740 does not seem to be all that impressive. We have not done any individual reviews of the SiS 740 chipset but from what we can tell performance of the chipset is not up to par with the performance of, say, the VIA KT333. Also holding the i-Buddie XP back is the integrated video solution and shared memory solution. Not only does the use of integrated video significantly limit the amount of 3D gaming that the system can do (you are limited to 640x480x16/32 in the vast majority of games, if they will play at all) but it also slows down the system on the whole by decreasing the available memory bandwidth.
On top of the performance issues, we were also disappointed with a few kinks that are present in the i-Buddie XP. Although the fan in the AC adapter may not seem like a big deal, it did get quite bothersome quite quickly. Also problematic was the heat that the i-Buddie XP with its 2100+ processor produced. The CPU was never bothered by the temperature of the system (meaning that the cooling solution works well) but our laps were (meaning that perhaps the cooling solution works too well). Obviously going with a slower Athlon XP processor or a Duron would decrease the heat produced by the system.
In addition, our comments made in the conclusion of our i-Buddie 4 review still hold true. We think a PCMCIA slot would make a great addition to the desknote design; we think that a desktop hard drive or at least a 5400RPM mobile hard drive would certainly help performance; we think the use of a nonintegrated video solution or the use of NVIDIA's nForce integrated solution would make the systems much more appealing, and; finally, we think that desknote solutions have quite a bit of potential. Like other new concepts, they just have a bit of maturing to do. However, if you are interested in going with a desknote system now stick with the i-Buddie 4.
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