Lenovo IdeaPad Y900 Gaming Benchmarks
And we’re finally showing what this is capable of in terms of gaming. Unfortunately we haven’t had a chance to test a Pascal equipped laptop as of yet so these are still being compared against Maxwell GPUs.
That aside, we do use the stock overclocking settings and rev it up for each test. It ended up making a difference, though sometimes slight. At other times it was a bit larger of a difference that could actually be perceived. The only side effect, of course, is more heat and a much louder machine. That wasn’t an issue with headphones, however. It doesn’t get quite that loud. Let’s see what can do.
Ashes of the Singularity
Assassin’s Creed: Syndicate
Batman: Arkham Knight
Star Wars Battlefront
DiRT Rally
Fallout 4
Grand Theft Auto V
HITMAN
Rise of the Tomb Raider
Overclocking, then, makes a difference even in a laptop. The extra horse-power from the CPU can help feed the still quite potent GTX 980M the information it needs to slam out frame rates at an alarming rate. Compared to it’s direct Maxwell competition, the Lenovo IdeaPad Y900 is a good gaming machine. It stretches the bounds of good with a dreamy keyboard too. The keyboard experience, on this laptop, is kind of unreal.
Battery Life
Battery life on a gaming-centric powerhouse such as this isn’t expected to be very high. This is, after all, a behemoth that even GPU switching can’t truly be of much use. But it does help productivity if it can last a bit while not plugged into the wall. Sometimes these laptops are used for more than just gaming, and it’s then that we want it to last for at least a few minutes. These battery tests are derived from PCMark 8 so that they can be replicated with ease. We calibrate to 200 nits of brightness as well.
The results are just as we expected. It doesn’t last very long while just browsing around nor does it last long while writing a few small word documents either. It’s massive and has a lot of power, so while they’re low, it’s expected. This definitely isn’t a laptop you’ll likely be taking with you on trips and actually using away from the wall. You’ll need power for this to be a useful machine, but when it’s plugged in, it’ll be a useful machine indeed.
Temperature
To test entire system temperature in a realistic scenario, and to have those temperatures go as high as we could think in a real scenario, we ran Ashes of the Singularity at the test prescribed above and recorded the temperatures during that run. We look at both the CPU and the GPU.
It does get quite hot, and that means that the heat being expelled will be capable of scalding you if you aren’t careful, and clothed. The cooling system seems efficient and doesn’t necessarily make a whole lot of noise when no overclocked, so making the fan profile a bit more aggressive can help with that. Certainly overclocking would get it warmer, but then the fans get a lot louder and work much harder. It all ends up keeping things well under control. For the most part. This is one hot laptop!
Noise
Noise is tested in the same environment as is temperature. We run the benchmark of Ashes of the Singularity and then report the maximum reported noise.
The result is not bad at all. In fact, at normal clock speeds the Y900 is surprisingly nice. The fan noise is there, but it isn’t distracting or high pitched. It’s just noticeable background noise. When OC’d, however, it becomes plain that you’ve strapped a rather large propeller to the machine and using it to cool it down. It’s loud and in your face. But the result is a nicely cooled machine. And there’s no whine or other high-pitched noise. Just a general whooshing sound you’d expect from moving so much air. And it feels like it’s moving it. The rear has some serious air pressure. Is it noisy at full blast? Yes, is it annoying? No, not at all. Just make sure you use headphones with this thing.
Expandability
The internals are relatively easily accessed, just take out a plethora of screws and pull up from the top of the wrist rest. From there you’ll have unfettered access to the inside where you can change nearly anything.
In addition to that you can actually manually overclock this beast if you’re willing. Just open up the included utility and have a gander. You have the ability to control the fan speed in addition to rudimentary control over the CPU and even the GPU. Just be advised that this is a laptop, so there’s only so much heat that can be expelled with those fans. They’re good, but not that good.
If you happen to want to make the keyboard prettier or put in a color scheme that matches whatever you’ve got going on, you can do that too. Just hop into the included app and play away. It’s also there to adjust the macro buttons as well. It’s all fairly easy to use and quite fascinating.
Conclusion
Despite the older GPU, the Lenovo IdeaPad Y90 packs quite the punch. It’s capable of some very good frame rates that are acceptable and more than enough. That piece of lacking technology will be updated soon as more mobile Pascal becomes available. If packed into the same chassis, than it’ll be a monstrous and wonderful machine. This one, with a “lowly” 980M is still potent and quite enjoyable. G-Sync, though a mostly a gimmick for most is still a nice inclusion. It only adds to the value and doesn’t cost anything extra.
- Excellent Screen
- Magnificent Keyboard
- Overclocking
- Battery Life is Poor
- Hot and Slightly Loud
- Needs Updated GPU Options