z96j vs s96j

I didn't see benchmarks for the z96j under the stickied thread...so I wanted to compare. How does the z96j compare to the s96j in various benchmarks like 3dmark05? Basically, I'm trying to find which would be a better fit for games...I already like the built-in bluetooth on the z haha. Is there that much of a difference in the first place?

 

Native resolution will be the biggest difference. The S96J should hold up better because it has a lower res.

 

Not quite.

Z96J has bigher resolution, integrated bluetooth, and the warranty is covered through Asus rather than Intel.

The higher resolution screen is a big bonus if you play older games such as Halo or Half-Life 2. Those will run great, at a pretty much constant frame frate of 60 fps. Newer games, and the older intensive games(Doom 3, Quake 4) will have a hard time running at native.

You have a few choices though. You can lower detail settings. Newer games with maxed out settings tend to run at 25-35 fps on the Z96J at native. You can bring those up close to 60 by lowering quality, or your can lower resolution.

The nice thing about the Z96J though, is that you can play games in SXGA. That is 1280x1024. Sure, it's not native on the WSXGA screen, but the image quality is better than WXGA(1280x800) and the frame rates are actually higher. There are around 20% more pixels to fill for SXGA vs. WXGA, but for some reason game framerates really suck when you try to run them in widescreen. I can play Doom 3 and Quake 4 in 1280x1024, which in my opinion looks much better than WXGA and close to WSXGA, at very high frame rates.