HP DM3 Laptop/Netbook

Testing and Benchmarks:

Our synthetic benchmarks for the DM3 included:

• Sisoft Sandra
• Crystalmark
• Battery Eater Pro 2.70
• Windows Experience Index

SiSoft Sandra

As you can see the DM3 is not going to win any awards for computing muscle when compared against a full size laptop equipped with an AMD X, Turion, or the Intel Core 2 Duo. When compared though, against an Intel Atom it shows its true colors and demonstrates AMD’s low power offering in a whole new light. The DM3 is able to out muscle an Atom based netbook around every turn and in each department. The Intel GMA 945 and 950 video pale in comparison against the ATI 3200 and the AMD L335 true dual core is not only 64 bit capable it finally makes multi-tasking a reality with an ultra portable.

CrystalMark

We like CrystalMark for its objectivity and for its ability to allow you the reader to run this simple light test on your own system and compare your numbers to our results.

The important areas here to pay attention to are the ALU, FPU, MEM, GDI and OGL. The scores for ALU and FPU relate to the AMD L335’s ability as a CPU to crunch math. We dare anyone with an Atom based notebook to come close to these figures. The MEM rather obviously relates here to the DM3’s RAM and its bandwidth. Once again since the DM3 is firmly outside the “netbook” category HP is free to outfit it with up to 8GB of RAM in the case of this notebook. In the case of the Atom processor Intel has deliberately chosen to cripple the chip so that it will not recognize more than 2GB of RAM. This is likely so that the Atom does not compete with its notebook line of processors. The GDI and OGL assist you in determininig the relative strength of the onboard video. When compared to the Atom’s Intel GMA950 these scores are roughly 2 and 11 times as great respectively. We are talking about the ability to really play some 3D based games here. Ok so not Crysis but it would more than handle Quake 3, Serious Sam II, and more.

Battery Eater Pro

Ok so here comes our first bit of disappointment in the benchmarks and in a critical area no less. There had to be trade-offs with a laptop like this and it seems battery life is one of the area’s hardest hit. In our testing the DM3 lasted a meager 2 hours 34 Minutes with Battery Eater Pro 2.70. Real life testing consisted of regular browsing, watching video’s online, and replying to e-mails amidst other regular use. During our real life testing the DM3 managed to squeeze out 3 hours 10 minutes of use before indicating the need to shut down due to low battery (3%).  HP like to many other vendors have choosen to show the remaining battery life in a percentage rather than our favorite “time remaining” which we used to have under XP. While the percentage remaining is much more accurate than the time remaining displayed in XP, we still prefer to see our battery life remaining in the old way.

Windows Experience Index

Finally, rounding out our benchmarks is the Windows Experience Index which shows a series of scores based around the most important aspects of your system. The Windows Experience Index was introduced to us with Windows Vista and has been retained in Windows 7.  Our DM3 achieved respectable scores for any mobile laptop/notebook and even more so when compared to a netbook. The overall score is always displayed as the lowest score for the component in the system, which in the DM3 is the ATI 3200 video card.  With a score of  3.5 the ATI is more than capable of running the Windows Vista/7 Aero interface which a lot of notebooks and Netbooks cannot. It should be mentioned that the ATI HD3200 graphics on the DM3 actually has 128MB of dedicated RAM and 256MB of shared system memory for a total of 384MB.

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