Original Link: https://www.anandtech.com/show/961
Looking back at our past mobile product reviews we noticed a trend. About 80% of the reviews include a line in the introduction about how laptop machines are becoming more and more like desktop ones. Perhaps we are being redundant, or beating a dead horse but the truth of the matter is that laptops and notebooks are evolving at an almost exponential rate. Even in the four months that we have been doing notebook reviews the gap between desktop machines and notebooks has closed even further.
The most recent trend started when a few manufacturers began producing notebooks based off of the desktop Pentium 4 chipset. Instead of finding ourselves limited to mobile processors at low clock speeds, these desktop Pentium 4 based notebooks kept in pace with the fastest desktop machines we had seen. Add to these systems a powerful video solution, such as an ATI Mobility Radeon 7500 or an NVIDIA GeForce 4 Go 440, and the line between desktop and notebook faded even further.
Taking into account the profit that these desktop processor based notebooks are making as well as the success they are experiencing in the market it is no surprise that more and more notebook manufacturers are adding desktop processors to the helms of their desktop replacement notebooks. In fact, the only current advantage that Mobile Pentium 4-M chips have over their desktop brothers (on top of a slightly smaller package) is SpeedStep technology. Since many of the notebooks receiving desktop CPUs are large and include powerful batteries, much of Mobile Pentium 4-M's appeal is lost. This is especially true when considering that the desktop Pentium 4 is able to bring higher speeds to notebooks at lower prices.
Right now the line between Intel's mobile processors and their desktop processors is not solid enough to force the mobile world to use a strictly mobile CPU. This will change as Intel migrates to their next generation of CPUs, including the Banias mobile processor, but for now the low cost and high performance that the desktop Pentium 4 offers in a notebook machine is enough to keep many notebook manufacturers interested in the chip.
Once such notebook manufacturer is WinBook. One of the larger notebook manufacturers, WinBook continually finds themselves in or just outside the top 10 notebook producers in the country. Their top of the line J4 is a desktop replacement notebook outfitted with an ATI Mobility Radeon 7500 graphics chips, a 15" TFT screen, and, you guessed it, a desktop Pentium 4 processor.
Construction - Build, Appearance, Size
You may notice a striking resemblance between the ECS i-Buddie systems we have taken a look at in the past and the WinBook J4. Your eyes are not playing tricks on you. The reason that the two notebooks look so similar is because they both are built around the same case. In fact, nearly everything on the outside of the WinBook J4 can be found on an ECS i-Buddie system with a few exceptions.
The colors of the J4 are gray and silver; fairly conservative but also pleasing. When shut, the top fourth of the system is silver while the remainder is light gray. This made the color of the J4 different than the i-Buddie systems we have seen, but all that took was a little bit of paint.
Like the i-Buddies, the screen of the J4 is held in place by small magnetic hooks which disappear inside the system case when not in use. We have noted before and will note again that the system seems to work fairly well and prevents unsightly hooks from being present on the screen top or system bottom. This system does involve more moving parts than conventional screen locks which could be a problem down the road. In our short time with the J4, however, the locking mechanism worked as advertised.
The J4 is available with either a 14.1" XGA, a 15" XGA, or a 15" SXGA+ TFT LCD panel. Of the J4 models, the Intel 845 chipset based model like the one we tested is only available with a 15" SXGA+ screen. This put the maximum resolution of the panel at 1400x1050. The other J4 model is based off of the SIS 650 chipset and is available with the other lower resolution screens.
We did notice a flaw in the J4's design. It seems that the rubber plunger that sits to the left of the right screen hinge does not work properly. The plunger is supposed to turn off the J4's backlight when the screen is closed, saving battery life. In our J4 depressing this plunger did nothing to the screen brightness: the screen remained on regardless of its state. As we took the system apart we noted that the plunger was making contact with the small switch mounted on the motherboard that is supposed to detect if the screen is closed so the problem is likely not isolated to our system. This has the potential to drastically decrease battery life of the J4 as there is really no way to turn off the screen's backlight without turning the system off or putting it into standby. This problem also plagued the ECS i-Buddie systems but was not a big deal since the I-Buddies never ran on battery anyway.
One thing that has changed in the J4's exterior when compared to the ECS i-Buddie is the keyboard used. Both keyboards are very similar but the keyboard in the J4 includes an integrated pointing stick as a second input method. The pointing stick is located right between the bottom of the G and H keys and right above the B key. This was a nice option to have especially for those that dislike the touchpad found on the vast majority of notebook computers (we know there are a lot of you out there).
The keyboard is a full sized 85-key keyboard that features spacious 19.6 mm keys. Again, the only qualm we have about this keyboard is the location of the function key. The function key is placed on the far left of the keyboard, making it the last key at the keyboard's bottom left side. Since this is where we typically find the control key on desktop keyboards, the shifted location of the control key took a bit of getting used to.
The touchpad on the J4 is the same one found on the ECS i-Buddie 4. We initially noted that the touchpad on the i-Buddie 4 was a bit small when compared to some of the others we have seen (an issue resolved with the newer i-Buddie XP) but when push came to shove the J4's touchpad got the job done without any problems. The left and right buttons fall below the touchpad are are centered around a small circular button that serves as the scroll up and scroll down buttons. Unfortunately the system's internal microphone remains located slightly above and to the left of the J4's touch pad. This meant that the microphone hole was easily covered and subjected to quite a bit of noise when our hands were on the keyboard.
To the left and right of the touchpad, in the area reserved for a wrist rest area, lie a set of holes through which sound from the speaker passes out. We were a bit unhappy with the location of the holes since they were easily covered during normal system operation. Taking the system apart revealed that only the outer fourth of the holes actually have a speaker mounted behind them since both speakers are mounted vertically rather than horizontally. This left a good two thirds of the speaker blasting audio output directly onto the top of the case sans holes. The mounting of the speakers is described in more detail in the Under the Hood section of this review. For now all you need to know is that although our hands covered up a good portion of the speaker ports it did not adversely effect audio playback quality.
Above the keyboard lies a large grill area that aids in system ventilation. Underneath the left size of the grill is a fan that sucks cool air from the top of the system and blows it down across the heatsink used to cool the Pentium 4 CPU. Mounted in the center of the grilled area are a set of function buttons. The button layout and style remain the same as the type found on the ECS i-Buddie 4. This places the internet button on the far left, the power button in the middle, and the mail button on the right.
On top of the function keys are a set of six LEDs; two more than present on the i-Buddie 4. The J4 adds LEDs for both PCMCIA status and CD-ROM status in addition to the hard drive access, num lock status, caps lock status, and scroll lock status LEDs that were on the i-Buddie.
To the left of the keyboard lie two status LEDs. One of the LEDs indicates power state while the other shows battery status.
The front of the WinBook J4 gets a welcome addition when compared to the ECS i-Buddie solutions. We noted before that the front of this style of laptop case is fairly bare with only two speaker ports and a release lever. These items remain on the WinBook J4 but this system also benefits from the addition of CD control buttons mounted on the front of the case.
These buttons allow for the laptop to be used as a CD player while system power is off. The set of seven buttons give full control over the J4's CD-ROM drive while the unit is off. This allows for the J4 to play back audio CDs while using only a fraction of the power required to do this with the computer running. CD access is enabled by sliding the power switch to the right which in turn lights up a small power LED to the left of the power button. Once on, the six buttons can be used to play/pause the CD, eject the CD, go back one track or rewind in the current track, skip to the next track or fast forward in the current track, decrease audio volume, and increase audio volume. The play/pause button also has a small LED behind it which lights up when the J4 is playing a CD.
We think that the ability to playback audio CDs without booting the entire laptop is a nice feature. This could come in quite useful in those long flights where the laptop's battery in an operating system may be short.
As we noted before when briefly mentioning the speakers, there are speaker holes on the front of the J4 but there are no speakers behind these holes. They are there simply to allow for the speakers to be placed in a variety of locations depending on the specific configuration of the system inside.
Another difference between the WinBook J4 and the ECS i-Buddie struck us when we turned the system to show its left side. Whereas on the i-Buddie models the left side of the system is fairly bare, the left side of the J4 is home to a welcome addition: a PCMCIA slot. We are beginning to see how the J4 is different from a desknote. Since the J4 is a true laptop it could not get away with removing a much needed PCMCIA slot. Despite the abundance of room on the side of the J4, only one PCMCIA slot is present. It would have been nice to see two PCMCIA slots, allowing for two type II or one type III PCMCIA card, especially on a system thus big. Then again, with built in modem, LAN, and 802.11b connectivity, one PCMCIA slot should prove to be enough for some time.
Also found on the left hand side of the system is a single 4-pin unpowered IEEE-1394 port. Again this is a bit different than the configuration found on the ECS desknote system we have looked at because the J4 is, in fact, a mobile machine. Because of this, WinBook could not afford going with a power hungry 6-pin powered IEEE-1394 port. Right next to the firewire port is the ethernet jack followed by a large vented area that helps keep the CPU cool.
Like much of the J4's exterior, the back of the system is very similar to the back side of the desknote systems. Located on the back right side is a large cooling vent behind which lies the J4's heatsink. To the left of the large vent is the J4's power-in port followed by the modem jack and an s-video out connection. Next to the s-video port is another, smaller, cooling vent used to help cool the J4's northbridge and video chip. In a recessed area to the left of this vent lie two ports: a VGA-out port and a printer port. Since the ports are mounted in a recessed area, they do not stick out the back of the system. Finally the back side of the J4 is rounded off with an IR window and two audio jacks, one for microphone input and one for stereo output.
The right side of the J4 includes an impressive stack of four USB 1.1 ports, a Kensington lock port, and the unit's optical drive. Our J4 came with a 8x/8x/4x/24x DVD/CD-RW combo drive but a 24x CD-ROM drive and an 8x DVD drive are also available. Needless to say we were a bit disappointed with the four USB ports found on the J4. We would have much rather seen WinBook include an extra chip that would have allowed for USB 2.0 support. Sure, the firewire port will probably hold you over for now but we feel that the future will be in USB 2.0 devices, not IEEE-1394 (with the exception of DV devices). Remember, in the world of notebook upgrades it is often not what you can put inside the notebook but what you can connect to the notebook.
If you compare the bottom of the WinBook J4 to the bottom of the ECS i-Buddie system we previously reviewed, you will notice that the bottom front of the two systems is quite different. The reason for this is because the WinBook J4 has to make room for its internal lithium ion battery. The battery stretches almost the whole length of the notebook and takes up almost one third of the notebook's total length. It is released by lifting up the battery release lever located on top of the battery.
In the middle of the system is an access panel that covers the SODIMM memory which we will discuss more in the Under the Hood section of this review. The other two access panels are located on the back left and right side of the J4. The large panel on the left can be removed to provide access to the unit's hard drive while the long access panel on the right covers the desktop Pentium 4 CPU. Between these two panels is a cooling fan that sucks air from beneath the system and uses it to cool the northbridge and the video chips. The bottom of the system also includes an optical drive release lever that can be lifted to slide out the J4's optical drive.
The J4 did not get very hot, reaching a maximum temperature of 115 degrees Fahrenheit (46.1 degrees Celsius) on the bottom of the system right below the CPU access panel. The side of the J4 reached 104 degrees Fahrenheit (40.0 degrees Celsius). This temperature was measured on the systems left side right by the exhaust port.
With its size and weight, the WinBook J4 is certainly a desktop replacement system. The unit measures 13.07" x 10.81" x 1.81" making it only slightly taller than the i-Buddie desknotes. Thanks to the J4's battery, the unit actually weights quite a bit more than the battery-less i-Buddie systems. The WinBook J4 weighs in at an almost backbreaking 8.36 pounds. That makes the WinBook J4 the heaviest system AnandTech has seen to date, followed closely by the 8.3 pound Toshiba Satellite 1905-S277. At this weight, the J4 is heavier than most newborns.
Construction - Under the Hood
We pointed out some striking similarities with the outside of the WinBook J4 and the ECS i-Buddie 4 but taking the system apart quickly reveals that all these similarities are mostly cosmetic. The reason: the WinBook J4 is a notebook machine designed to run on battery power as well, unlike the ECS i-Buddie desknote systems.
The J4 system that we received was a fully loaded model. It came outfitted with a desktop Pentium 4 processor running at 2.4GHz, 512MB of SDR SODIMM memory, an ATI Mobility Radeon 7500 graphics chip with 64MB of memory, a 15" SXGA+ TFT LCD, and integrated 802.11b wireless. Naturally the J4 is available in a variety of configurations but there are really two J4 models out there. The J4 that we received includes the features listed above and is based off the Intel 845 platform. WinBook also offers another J4 that is based off the SiS 650 chipset, uses the SiS 650 integrated graphics solution, and is outfitted with DDR SDRAM. Obviously the 845 based J4 is the higher performing part with its discrete video chip and also caries with it a higher price.
The 2.4GHz Pentium 4 that powered our J4 ranks as the fastest processor we have seen in a mobile system to date. The chip operated on a 400MHz front side bus, unlike the newer 2.4B GHz Pentium 4 chips that run on a 533MHz front side bus. In a mobile system the speed sacrifice taken by going with the lower front side bus speed may be somewhat worth it being that the 133MHz x 4 FSB would draw more battery power than the 100MHz x 4 one.
The WinBook J4's CPU is easily accessed by removing the CPU access panel on the bottom of the system and removing the four screws holding the heatsink in place. This means that the J4's CPU can be replaced with the turn of a few screws and the lifting of a lever. The J4 should be able to accept any 400MHz FSB Pentium 4 CPU but you will be somewhat limited as the 400MHz FSB Pentium 4 processors probably not going to go much faster than 2.4GHz. For this reason it may be worth wild for some users to go with a slower J4 system and upgrade the processor to a 2.4GHz Pentium 4 down the road when more speed is desired.
The Pentium 4 processor is cooled via a heat spreader connected via copper heat pipes to a large copper heatsink. Air flows across the heatsink from top to bottom thanks to a large Sunon 60mm x 60mm x 10mm fan. Keeping the Pentium 4 processor cool in such a small space is not an easy task. It is for this reason that the Sunon fan used by the J4 is the same size as the CPU fans found in many desktop machines. The Sunon fan is temperature controlled and only spins at a rate necessary to properly cool the CPU. This is helpful being that the fan is rather noisy when spinning at its full speed. We found that the majority of the time the fan did not spin at full speed and was not overly loud.
Once the heatsink is removed, the Northwood Pentium 4 CPU is revealed. The chip is mounted in a standard mPGA 478 socket and can be removed just as a desktop CPU can be removed.
So far the J4 seems very similar to the i-Buddie systems, but like we said the two are quiet different. The differences were revealed as soon as we took out the J4's motherboard. Unlike the i-Buddie systems, which used the majority of its motherboard real-estate attempting to fit desktop components in a small package, the J4's motherboard is truly a mobile one, with a discrete video chip, video memory, SODIMM slots, and more.
To power its desktop Pentium 4 processor, the J4 calls upon the desktop Intel 845 chipset. We were disappointed when we learned that the 845 chipset on the J4 was mated with an SDR memory bus. We have already shown that the Pentium 4 will take advantage of every bit of memory bandwidth it can get so we knew that the SDR memory bus on the J4 would be holding it back. We would have much rather the J4 used a DDR memory bus with the 845 for even the mobile Pentium 4 chipset, the 845MP, makes use of a DDR memory bus. Only benchmarks would tell how much the SDR bus held back the J4 in application and 3D performance.
The 845 northbridge is located below the CPU socket and is actually covered and cooled by a large metal heatsink and fan. The 845 northbridge gets fairly warm, even warm enough to justify use of a heatsink on desktop systems. It was therefore no surprise that the northbridge in the cramped J4 needed the extra cooling supplied by a fan. It is the intake for this fan that we see on the bottom of the J4. This cooling device was used to cool the three phase voltage regulator on the ECS i-Buddie products but goes to much better use keeping both the northbridge and the video chip cool.
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As we mentioned, the ATI Mobility Radeon 7500 is also found beneath the metal cooling plate. We first got a chance to take a detailed look at the Mobility Radeon 7500 in the Compaq Persario 2800T and were thoroughly impressed with the product. Not only does the Mobility Radeon 7500 boast blazing fast graphics performance it also includes many power saving features that help conserve battery life. For these reasons we were excited to hear that the WinBook J4 featured the ATI Mobility Radeon 7500 with 64MB of video memory at the heart of its design.
When we started testing the J4 in 3D games we felt that something was amiss. We didn't know why but our J4 running at 2.4GHz was performing slower than the 1.7GHz Persario 2800T. We knew that the SDR memory bus could not have been slowing the computer down to the extent that we saw, so the next step was to look at the video chip. It was here that we found the root of our problem.
Although the ATI Mobility Radeon 7500 is able to run at a 270MHz core speed and a 183MHz DDR memory bus clock it is up to the hardware manufacturer what speed the graphics part actually runs at. This means that not every Mobility Radeon 7500 has to run at the 270/183MHz speeds; a fact which can be useful when migrating the chip into low power solutions where 3D video performance is not of utmost concern. It also means that some notebooks even in the desktop replacement category may use lower clocked Mobility Radeon 7500 chips in an attempt to lower cost. For whatever reasons, cost issues, cooling problems, we can not be sure, the WinBook J4's Mobility Radeon 7500 ships underclocked.
The unexpected performance drop stemmed from the fact that the Mobility Radeon 7500 in the J4 runs only at a 260MHz core speed and a 143MHz DDR memory bus speed. Again, we are not sure why the J4's Mobility Radeon 7500 runs lower than the maximum clock speeds of the chip but it does. As you will see in the performance section this does hold the J4 back.
In addition to the northbridge and video chip mounted on the bottom of the J4's motherboard there were other chips located here.
On the left side of the system one can see 32MB of the 64MB video memory that the J4 uses. The memory chips are ESMT 5ns chips, 8MB in density each.
Towards the front of the motherboard lies the two SODIMM slots. These slots can accept up to 512MB of SDR memory each making total system memory reach 1024MB. Our system came with 256MB sticks in each slot, totaling 512MB of system memory. These slots are easily user accessible thanks to the access panel on the bottom side of the notebook. To the right of the memory is the single PCMCIA slot. Underneath the PCMCIA's metal housing is a Ricoh R5C551 chip that controls the PCMCIA functions of the slot. This chip also gives the J4 its firewire capability.
Two other chips are mounted on the back side of the J4's motherboard. The first of these is a National Semiconductor PC87391 super I/O controller that powers the floppy, parallel, and serial port controllers among other things. The second is an O2Micro OZ165T chip that controls the audio CD playback of the notebook while the system is powered off.
For a southbridge solution the J4 uses the 82801BA ICH2 chip from Intel. This chip is the same as the one found on the 845 desktop motherboards. It includes two ATA100 IDE channels and integrated LAN, audio, and four USB 1.1 ports. The southbridge is mounted on the front portion of the J4's motherboard.
To the left of the ICH2 chip lies the J4's mini-PCI slot. When shipped this slot is home to either an internal 56kbs modem or an internal 56kbs modem and 802.11b wireless card. Our system came with the combo card and we were excited to check it out.
As you can see, the modem/802.11b mini-PCI card looks very similar to the mini-PCI modems found in the majority of laptops out there. The only difference between the two seems to be the density of components on the combo card, as the wireless functionality obviously adds complexity to the board. Wireless connectivity is provided by the Intersil Prisim v2.5 chip. The chip offers 11Mbps, 5.5Mbps, 2Mbps, and 1Mbps modes of operation and broadcasts on the 802.11b standard 2.4GHz frequency. The maximum range offered by the Prisim 2.5 is reportedly 120 feet indoors but naturally advertised and actually range differ quite frequently depending on conditions and antenna location.
Speaking of antennas, the J4 offers one internal antenna that connects to the mini-PCI card using a connection located on the top of the front side of the card. A thin wire connects the antenna jack of the combo card to a small black antenna that is stuck via double sided tape to a small space under the J4's right screen hinge. We found that the J4's antenna performed on par with our D-Link DWL-650 PCMCIA wireless network card so it does not appear that the J4's smallish antenna is hurting the computer's ability to link wirelessly.
The modem/802.11b card is capable of accepting two separate antennas but the J4 only makes use of one of the two connectors.
The great thing about the mini-PCI slot's location in the middle of the motherboard is that it is user accessible. All one needs to do in order to get to the slot is remove the J4's keyboard and lift up.
During our testing we got a chance to figure out how much power the wireless connectivity really took but before we even got to that we were pleased to know that the 802.11b was in there and able to connect to our wireless setup without a hitch.
On the right side of the top of the J4's motherboard lies the additional 32MB of video memory for the Mobility Radeon 7500. This brought the J4's video buffer up to 64MB, the most that the Mobility Radeon 7500 can accept. To the right of the four memory chips is the J4's CMOS battery which is of the same size and style as those used on desktop motherboards.
In the middle of the motherboard, right below the BIOS chip, are a set of four small dip switches. We are not sure what the switches do but our J4 came with the first two switches set to off and the last two set to on.
For a storage solution WinBook turned to IBM's mobile hard drives. The J4 that we received was outfitted with a 40GB IBM Travelstar 40GN 9.5mm mobile hard drive. This drive, like the drives in all the other mobile machines AnandTech has reviewed, spins at 4200RPM and has a 12ms access time. Performance of this drive should be on par with other mobile drives out there
As we mentioned before, the speakers on the J4 are mounted in a rather interesting position. Rather than lie directly under the holes located on the front of the J4, the speakers are mounted vertically along the sides of the J4. This means that only about one third of the speaker was lying under the speakers holes. The remaining two thirds of the speaker was creating noise that blasted up into the J4's case.
In the picture below you can see the J4's speaker, which is identical to the speakers found in the vast majority of notebooks out there, as well as a black outline showing where the speaker is actually mounted in the system. Obviously sound on the J4 was a bit muffled by the lack of speaker holes over the majority of the speaker.
The battery on the J4 had to be made large to sufficiently power the Pentium 4 2.4GHz processor at the helm. The battery pack stretches almost the entire length of the system and takes up about one fourth of the system's bottom. The capacity of the battery is massive, operating at 14.8 volts and 5880mAh of power. The battery contains 12 Lithium Ion cells and has about the same power as the large battery used to power the Toshiba Satellite 1905-S277.
Features - Software
The WinBook J4 comes with your choice of Windows XP Home or Windows XP Professional. If you chose to go with the Home version, the price of the notebook is reduced $99. We were glad to see WinBook opt to include the Windows XP operating system standard as opposed to trying to squirm by with an older operating system or none at all.
The WinBook J4 also comes with WinDVD v3.1, arguably the best software DVD player on the market today. That was a nice plus, but other than that the J4's software package is fairly weak. CD-R and CD-RW functionality is left to Windows XP's built in burning software. We often become frustrated with the native burning support of Windows XP due to the fact that it redundantly copies all items to be burned from one location to a temporary one. Since this process can add precious minutes to a burn, we would have much rather seen the J4 ship with a dedicated burning program such as Easy CD Creator.
We would have liked to see WinBook throw in an office suite of some sorts as part of the standard package. As it stands now, J4 owners will have to get a copy of their favorite office applications off retail shelves. In the case of Office XP, this can tag an additional $300 or more onto the price of the notebook.
The Test
As time goes on the benchmark programs that we use to test systems on change.
In our WinBook J4 review we have decided to switch over to a new set of benchmarks,
meaning that the scores from other notebooks we have looked at will not be included
in many of the performance graphs. The only benchmarks that remain the same
this time around are Content Creation Winstone 2002 and SYSMark 2002. We have
switched to the new Unreal Tournament 2003 demo, the new Jedi Knight 2 demo,
the extreme settings in Serious Sam: The Second Encounter, and BAPCo's Mobile
Mark 2002 for this review. We feel that these new demos stress the increasingly
fast mobile systems even more. Please bear with us during this ramp-up time
as we migrate to the new benchmarks.
| Windows XP Professional Test System |
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| Hardware |
|||||||||||||
WinBook
J4 |
ASUS S1 | Toshiba Satellite 1905-S277 | Desktop
Testbed |
||||||||||
| CPU(s) | 2.4GHz
Intel Pentium 4 Northwood |
Athlon
XP 2100+ (1.73GHz) |
1.6GHz
Intel Pentium 4 Northwood |
1.2GHz
Intel Mobile Pentium III-M |
1.7GHz
Intel Mobile Pentium 4-M |
1.8GHz
Intel Mobile Pentium 4-M |
1.6GHz
Intel Pentium 4 Willamette |
2.4GHz Intel Pentium 4 Northwood |
|||||
| Motherboard(s) | WinBook
845 SDR |
ECS
SiS 740 DDR |
ECS
SiS 650 DDR |
ASUS
830M |
Compaq
845MP DDR |
WinBook
845MP DDR |
Toshiba
845 SDR |
Intel
D845WN 845 SDR |
|||||
| Memory | 512MB
PC133 |
256MB
PC2100 |
256MB
PC2100 |
384MB
PC133 |
256MB
DDR2100 266MHz |
512MB
DDR2100 200MHz |
256MB
PC133 |
512MB
PC133 Corsair SDRAM |
|||||
| Hard Drive | 40.0GB
IBM Deskstar 40GN |
20.0GB
IBM Deskstar 40GN |
15.0GB
Hitachi DK23CA-15 |
30.0GB
Fujitsu MHN2300AT |
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 | Toshiba
DVD/CDRW |
Matsushita
DVD-ROM |
Toshiba
DVD-ROM |
Toshiba
DVD/CDRW |
Toshiba
DVD/CDRW |
Toshiba DVD/CDRW |
Toshiba
DVD/CDRW |
Phillips
48X |
|||||
| Video Card(s) | ATI
Mobility Radeon 7500 64MB DDR |
Integrated
SiS 740 |
Integrated
SiS 650 |
Integrated
Intel 815 |
ATI
Mobility Radeon 7500 64MB DDR |
NVIDIA
GeForce2 Go 100 16MB 32-bit DDR |
ATI
Mobility Radeon 16MB DDR |
ATI
Radeon 7500 64MB |
|||||
| Ethernet | RealTeK
Onboard Ethernet Adapter |
RealTeK
Onboard Ethernet Adapter |
RealTeK
Onboard Ethernet Adapter |
RealTeK
Onboard 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 |
|||||||||||||
| Operating System |
Windows XP Professional |
||||||||||||
| Video Drivers | ATI
7.66.03 |
SiS
2.05a |
SiS
2.05a |
Intel
6.13.1.3013 |
ATI
6.13.10.6045 |
Detonator version 17.20 |
ATI
7.65.04 |
ATI
7.72-02 |
|||||
| Benchmarking Applications |
|||||||||||||
| Bapco
SysMark 2001 |
|||||||||||||
Performance - Overall Performance
|
174
138Before we say anything else, let's just point out the fact that the WinBook J4 running at 2.4GHz is the fastest mobile system in 2D we have seen to date. The J4 outperformed our previous 2D king, the Compaq Presario 2800T 1.7GHz by a little over 12% making for quite a nice speed improvement. You can thank the 2.4GHz processor for the speed that the WinBook J4 has.
Now, let's take a look at how the J4 compares to our desktop solutions. First off, let's look at the desktop 2.4GHz SDR platform. This system should be relatively similar to the WinBook J4's configuration and it is. The desktop 2.4GHz SDR system performs only 9% faster than the J4. The performance advantage offered by the desktop can be attributed to the faster hard drive used in the desktop test system. We have proven time and time again that notebook hard drives are just not up to speed when it comes to application performance.
Things become interesting when an 845 DDR board is thrown into the equation. We decided to see exactly how much the J4 was being penalized by using an SDR only solution. To test this we configured a desktop system based off the Intel 845 DDR chipset and put in the same 2.4GHz processor. We found that the DDR solution on the desktop platform performed 16% faster than the SDR solution. Using this information we can estimate the performance boost that the J4 would have had using a DDR memory bus to be a little below 16%. This gives you an idea of exactly how much the J4 is being held back in its current SDR memory bus configuration. It is likely that switching to DDR memory would put the J4 ahead of the competition by almost 30% as opposed to the 9% speed advantage it currently has.
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We see the trend described above carry over to the overall SYSMark 2002 score. The WinBook J4 outperformed its closest competitor by 17% but it had the potential to do much more if only WinBook opted to use a DDR memory bus.
Performance - Content Creation
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In the Internet Content Creation section of SYSMark 2002 the WinBook J4 is able to realize a substantial performance advantage over the Compaq Presario 2800T 1.7GHz thanks to its 2.4GHz processor. The J4 2.4GHz performed 22% faster than the Presario 2800T 1.7GHz making it faster than many desktops out there. We can again see that a DDR bus would have increased the speed of the J4 even further. In this instance moving from an SDR to a DDR platform increased desktop performance by 8%. We can therefore estimate that the J4 would gain about 8% in Internet Content Creation SYSMark 2002 performance. This gain is anything but negligible for such a small design change.
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We have shown in the past that Content Creation Winstone 2002 is very I/O stressful. It is for this reason desktop systems with faster desktop hard drives typically perform much faster in this test than notebook systems with their laptop drives. In the case of the WinBook J4 2.4GHz the system drops behind 17% thanks to its slower I/O performance.
The WinBook J4 2.4GHz was still able to beat the competition by a fairly large margin. The J4 2.4GHz outperformed the ECS i-Buddie XP with its Athlon XP 2100+ processor by 7%. Again, the desktop 2.4GHz system shows there to be a fairly large performance difference between the J4's SDR bus and a DDR one.
Performance - MobileMark 2002
This review marks the first use of a new standard in battery life benchmarks. Today we turn to BAPCo's MobileMark 2002 to provide us with the battery life and performance information that is so crucial for notebook users. In the past we had been using Ziff Davis Media's BatteryMark 2001 to report our system battery life. We were often times frustrated by BatteryMark 2001 due to its incompatibility with Windows XP and its somewhat aged benchmark engine. The Windows XP incompatibility turned out to be a big problem for BatteryMark, as Mobile Pentium 4-M processors would not properly SpeedStep in Windows 2000. Nonetheless, our hands were tied. We had to use BatteryMark 2001 because despite all the flaws it was still the best measure of battery life out there. Until now.
MobileMark 2002 features an enhanced workload that consists of today's most popular application. The benchmark uses a total of 9 programs (Microsoft Word 2002, Microsoft Excel 2002, Microsoft PowerPoint 2002, Microsoft Outlook 2002, Netscape Communicator 6.0, WinZip Computing WinZip 8.0, McAfee VirusScan 5.13, Adobe Photoshop 6.0.1, and Macromedia Flash 5) to create a realistic user scenario with pauses and all. Not only does MobileMark 2002 measure battery life of a system in minutes until the battery is completely drained, it also outputs a performance number for the system while running on battery. Depending on the processor and power saving technology used by a system, performance of a laptop can go down when running on battery life. MobileMark 2002 takes this into account and gives a performance score for each system.
Since we just switched to MobileMark 2002 we are unable to include any other notebooks in the graphs for comparison. From here on out we will be switching to MobileMark 2002 so look for future reviews to include more notebooks in the graphs.
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First we take a look at the MobileMark 2002 performance rating of our WinBook J4 2.4GHz. The score is based off of the average response time for the system being tested and is compared to that of a fixed platform used by BAPCo when creating the benchmark. This platform received a score of 100. Since we have not used MobileMark 2002 on any other notebooks we can not be sure how the WinBook J4 2.4GHz performs in comparison to the other systems but since the notebook's processor speed does change when on battery power, the system should be equally as fast regardless of power state.
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Again, we are unable to compare the WinBook J4 2.4GHz to any other notebook systems since we just switched to MobileMark 2002. We are hesitant to compare our MobileMark 2002 battery life scores to the battery life scores recorded by BatteryMark 2001 since not only are the two run under different operating systems but they use different workloads. What we were able to do is compare the WinBook J4 to itself.
We were curious to see what kind of battery life hit occurred with the 802.11b wireless card enabled. We suspected that enabling wireless connectivity would decrease our battery life but we were not sure how much. In order to make sure that the wireless was fully disabled during our tests we actually pulled the mini-PCI card out of the system.
The WinBook J4 2.4GHz had a fairly impressive battery life of 2 hours 50 minutes with the wireless card out of the system. When the 802.11b card was reinserted into the J4 and enabled battery life decreased by 14 minutes to 2 hours and 36 minutes. With the J4's large battery and power hungry components enabling 802.11b did not affect battery life too adversely. In fact the use of wireless only decreased battery life by about 8%.
This shows that that the 802.11b solution on the WinBook J4 2.4GHz is not power hungry enough to make a very large difference in battery life thanks to the unit's large battery.
Performance - Startup Times
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The J4 2.4GHz was surprisingly slow to boot. Going from a black screen into windows took 40 seconds, 9 seconds longer than the fastest systems we have seen. We suspect that the source of the slow down is the 802.11b wireless card which windows must initialize each boot.
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Interestingly enough, the WinBook J3 2.4GHz was the fastest system we have seen to date come fully out of standby. This process only took 5 seconds, 1 second faster than many of the other notebooks we have seen.
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The time it took the WinBook J4 2.4GHz to come out of hibernation mode mirrored the tend that we observed when booting the WinBook. The J4 was the slowest of all systems to come out of hibernation, running 3 seconds behind its closest competitor.
Performance - Unreal Tournament 2003 (DM-Antalus)
We ran the WinBook J4 2.4GHz against a similarly configured 2.4GHz desktop system. The desktop system was outfitted with the ATI Radeon 7500 which is the chip the Mobility Radeon 7500 is based on.
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Off the bat we can see that the WinBook J4 2.4GHz is missing something when it comes to 3D game performance. We mentioned earlier in this review that the Mobility Radeon 7500 running in the J4 was slower than other Mobility Radeon 7500 chips we have seen (260/143MHz vs 270/183MHz). This also put the Mobility Radeon 7500 in the J4 at a much lower clock speed than the desktop Radeon 7500 (260/143MHz Vs 290/230MHz). It is because of this low clock speed that the J4 gets handily beat by the desktop system; beat by 67%.
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Cranking the resolution up doesn't help the J4 at all. As the game becomes more memory bandwidth intensive, the J4's performance falls 80% behind the desktop machine's. Let there be no question about it, the Mobility Radeon 7500 running at the full 270/183MHz would stand a much better chance against the desktop machine.
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At 1024x768x32 the performance delta between the J4 and the desktop system increases to 82%. This should not reflect poorly upon the Mobility Radeon 7500 in general, as we proved it to be a worthy competitor here, but upon WinBook's implementation of the chip.
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Topping the resolution which our SXGA+ LCD can display in the majority of games was 1280x1024x32. Look for the J4 to be 88% slower here.
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Brining the detail level down increases speed and decreases the memory bandwidth requirements the game has. Running with medium details at 640x480x32 puts the J4 "only" 37% slower than the desktop board. Again, a full speed Mobility Radeon 7500 implementation would certainly help boost performance to almost desktop speeds.
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800x600x32 with medium detail shows the J4 to be 40% slower than the desktop 2.4GHz system.
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And 41% slower at 1024x768x32.
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Finally, at 1280x1024x32, we see that the performance difference has grown to 42%. The performance delta between the J4 and the desktop system grows at increasing resolutions due to the decreased memory bandwidth and raw processing power that the J4's Mobility Radeon 7500 possesses.
Performance - Unreal Tournament 2003 (DM-Asbestos)
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The trends we saw in the Antalus demo continue in the Asbestos demo. At 640x480x32 the WinBook J4 2.4GHz was 68% slower than the 2.4GHz desktop system. Again the underclocked Mobility Radeon 7500 used in the J4 plays the largest role in this performance gap.
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The performance gap between the two setups becomes immense when the resolution is increased to 800x600x32. Here the J4 performs at half the speed of the desktop machine.
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And 118% slower at 1024x768x32.
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Finally, at 1280x1024x32 in the Asbestos demo, the WinBook J4 2.4GHz runs 128% slower than the desktop machine with a Radeon 7500 in it. Although we can only guess how much this performance delta would shrink if the J4 used a fully clocked Mobility Radeon 7500, it would certainly be no small amount.
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When decreasing the detail settings to medium the WinBook J4 2.4GHz is almost able to keep up at 640x480x32. Performance is only 6% off the desktop machine thanks to the fact that the game is fairly CPU limited in this situation.
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The CPU limit begins to fade away when the resolution is increased to 800x600x32. Here the WinBook J4 2.4GHz is 20% slower than the desktop machine.
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31% slower at 1024x768x32.
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And 32% slower at 1280x1024x32.
Performance - Serious Sam: The Second Encounter
Although we planned on using only Serious Sam: The Second Encounter scores for the systems running under extreme quality, we felt it was necessary to run the game under default quality to show how much the J4 is hurting by using an SDR memory bus and a crippled Mobility Radeon 7500 solution.
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Right off the bat we see the unexpected. The WinBook J4 2.4GHz and the desktop 2.4GHz machines are both beaten out by the Compaq Presario 2800T at 1.7GHz. Why is this, you ask. Well, it is because Serious Sam is a very memory bandwidth intensive test and the use of an SDR memory bus on the J4 and on the desktop system we tested really slows the performance down. Even on a processor that is 700MHz faster and a video card that is slightly faster, the SDR bus cripples the desktop 2.4GHz machine enough to cause it to be outperformed by the DDR Compaq notebook.
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Again, the SDR bus and slower Mobility Radeon 7500 holds the J4 system back. The J4 is the slowest of the bunch, being outperformed by the Compaq Presario 2800T at 1.7GHz by 18%.
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The DDR memory bus used by the Compaq Presario 2800T really shines in Serious Sam. Even the faster processor of the WinBook J4 does not give it the oomph it needs to outperform the 2800T.
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Things stay the same at 1280x1024x32 thus proving our point: the WinBook J4 2.4GHz is severely penalized by using an SDR memory bus and a slower clocked Mobility Radeon 7500.
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As we crank up the amount of work the video chip must do the performance difference between the desktop machine and the WinBook J4 grows. Even at 640x480x32 the WinBook J4 2.4GHz is running 88% slower than the desktop machine thanks in part to the slow ruining Mobility Radeon 7500 employed by WinBook.
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The performance difference grows to 91% at 800x600x32.
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And a large 113% at 1024x768x32.
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Finally at 1280x1024x32 the WinBook J4 2.4GHz is a full 168% slower than its desktop counterpart.
Performance - Jedi Knight 2
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Although typically we find that Jedi Knight 2 is CPU limited at most resolutions, the slow speed of the Mobility Radeon 7500 in the WinBook J4 is enough to keep the system from performing at its maximum amount, as you will see throughout the test. At 640x480x32 the J4 was 17% slower than the desktop machine.
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The J4 is now 22% slower than the desktop 2.4GHz machine at 800x600x32.
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The difference grows again. This time the J4 was 35% slower.
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And 36% at 1280x1024x32. It should become clear now why the underclocked Mobility Radeon 7500 in the WinBook J4 is holding back performance.
Conclusion
WinBook targets the desktop replacement category of machines with the J4 and, given the J4's size, this is only appropriate. In fact, when the J4 was announced, it was the first mobile system to be based on the fastest Pentium 4 processor at the time, something that no other manufacturer can claim. With its raw power the WinBook J4 is was designed to make you get rid of you desktop. Unfortunately, at this time, the J4 is in no place to do so.
We would have been able to make do with the J4's large size and heavy weight if the unit did not suffer from what, in our eyes, are two major design flaws: the SDR system memory bus and the underclocked ATI Mobility Radeon 7500 solution.
Let us first discuss the memory bus. To tell you the truth we are not quite sure why WinBook opted to use an SDR system memory bus on the high end J4. Looking at the lower end J4 model, the one based off of the SiS 650 chipset, we see that this unit uses DDR PC2100 system memory. The supposedly higher end J4 that we took a look at today, based off of the Intel 845 chipset, uses a SDR PC133 memory bus. Our first thought was that perhaps price had something to do with it but with the J4's maximum price tag of almost $3,400 USD it does not seem like price is that large of a concern. Our second idea was that WinBook wanted to save battery life by using DDR memory. This idea, however, had no clout as even Intel's own dedicated mobile chipset, the 845MP, uses a DDR memory bus. With these options ruled out, your guess is as good as ours as to why the high end J4 uses SDR memory. A fairly simple modification of the board should be all that is necessary to enable an 845 DDR chipset solution on the J4; a modification that would help performance tremendously at the higher clock speeds that the J4 is able to accept.
Next we come to the Mobility Radeon 7500 clock speed decision. We know that the Mobility Radeon 7500 is able to run at 270/183MHz and that even most of the high-end notebooks that use the Mobility Radeon 7500 run the chip at this speed. So why does the Mobility Radeon 7500 in the WinBook J4 run at 260/143MHz? Again, your guess is as good as ours. The only idea that we had regarding the lower clock speed of the chip is that heat was becoming an issue. With a desktop Pentium 4 2.4GHz processor close at hand, the internals of the J4 are sure to get a might bit toasty. It could be that WinBook was having problems cooling the Mobility Radeon 7500 in the J4 and decided to ship the chips at a lower clock speed to ensure stability. This seems like the most likely case but we can not be sure. All we can be sure of is that by lowering the core clock speed by 10MHz and the memory clock speed by 40MHz, 3D performance of the J4 has suffered.
We were pleased with the 2D performance of the WinBook J4, as it was able to readily beat any of the other notebooks we have reviewed in office and content creation type tasks. One thing to keep in mind, however, is that any system with a similar speed processor (2.2GHz, 2.3GHz, 2.4GHz) should have no problem beating out the WinBook J4 2.4GHz provided that the system uses a DDR system memory bus. At the higher clock speeds of the Pentium 4 the system memory bus speed becomes increasingly important and can not be traded for raw MHz.
The WinBook J4 2.4GHz is a stable system and well built with easy access to many of the unit's guts. We liked the integrated wireless, the CD audio controls at the front of the system, and the system's generous keyboard. At $3,393.00 USD, however, we suggest that you look elsewhere for your power desktop replacement; that or wait for the J4s with a DDR system memory bus and a full speed Mobility Radeon 7500 to come out.
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