Asus Eee PC 1000HV benched: discrete graphics make a big difference?

The Asus Eee PC 1000HV was first spotted last week and it looks like this model is already hitting retail in Italy. One of the users of EeePC.it, managed to get hold of one and has given an indication as to what this new Eee PC is capable of.

As a quick recap, the 1000HV is very similar in terms of specs to the Eee PC 1000HE. However, one of the key areas in which it differs is that it packs discrete graphics with an ATi Radeon HD 3450 GPU with 256MB memory. This should, in theory, give it a significant boost when watching HD content or playing games.

The benchmarks show that the 1000HV really does deliver a significant improvement in performance when you compare it to most current netbooks. The CrystalMark benchmark gave a score of 37,430 for the 1000HV compared to 28,923 for the 1000HE. The 1000HV also bettered the Super Pi score by just under three seconds.

However, it’s when you look at the Open GL scores that you can see how much of a difference the Radeon graphics makes. The 1000HV scored 10,564 in Open GL compared to a rough average of 700 for other netbooks (1000HE was 714). This performance does come at the expense of battery life, with it expected to last around 5 hours on the 6-cell battery.

Interestingly, a new mode in the Super Hybrid Engine was also spotted. This app allows Eee users to overclock or underclock the processor depending on usage. On most models it tops out at ‘Super Performance Mode’ which overclocks the CPU to 1.75GHz. However, it seems that the 1000HV goes one step higher at ‘High Definition Mode’ (the speed is unknown). Benchmarking under this mode improved the Super Pi score by 5 seconds.