Evesham Voyager C720 with 7800 GTX Go

Preliminary benchmarks

We've mentioned that we didn't have much time to test the overall system speed. However, there was one thing we really wanted to know - is this as good as the desktop part?

Of course, one of the problems with testing laptops against desktops is that so many of the parts are incredibly different. However, we came up with a cunning plan.

The laptop is based on a 915 chipset, with a 2.13GHz Pentium M and 1GB or RAM. We got in contact with MSI and Intel, who sent us over, respectively, a MSI 9625 Pentium M motheboard and a 2.13GHz Pentium M. We set that up with 1GB of Crucial Ballistix and a XFX 7800 GTX clocked at 490/1300, and bang! Almost identical platforms.

Hopefully, this will allow for a true comparison between the two graphics cards.

We used the latest ForceWare driver, 78.01, on the desktop. On the laptop, we used a 'currently unreleased driver revision'. (read: more than 79.99). This driver enabled a minor performance gain (to compensate, we thought, for the extra clock speed on the XFX card!) and also enabled some of the PowerMizer settings and other paraphenalia.

Doom 3

We tested Doom 3 at 1280x1024 with 4x Anti Aliasing, 8x Anisotropic filtering and all details set to High. We used Timedemo 1 to get an average frames per second.

Wow! At idential settings on very similar platforms, the mobile 7800 chip is right up there with the desktop part. Our laptop only supported 1440 wide, and Doom doesn't support widescreen resolutions, so 1280x1024 was the most we could play at. The speed shown here is pretty phenomenal.

Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory

Splinter Cell does support widescreen resolutions, so we were able to test at 1440x900. We enabled HDR lighting, Parallax Mapping, Tone Mapping and all the other gorgeous features available through Shader Model 3.0. NVIDIA claim in their documentation that the implementation of these features in 3.0 leads to far better image quality than the ATI implementation in the recently-patched 1.04 version. However, we stand by our original analysis, which is that you will notice the difference in side by side screenshots, but probably not in-game.

Again, the mobile chip is easily able to keep up. Frankly, we weren't expecting it to - not with all the demanding eye candy that Splinter Cell offers. But, it seems that NVIDIA are right when they say that the desktop and mobile parts share the same heritage - they share almost the same frame rates, too!

Conclusions

The Evesham laptop: This laptop is something of a stunner. It's form factor is the best we've seen for 17" mobile PCs, and the battery life we obtained was pretty damn impressive. We like the fact that hardcore gamers - and let's face it, who else is going to buy this thing? - can have a DVI output for a secondary display. However, the most amazing thing about this laptop is the price. The 2.0GHz model comes in at £1349, which for the graphics power you are getting, is absolutely outrageous. Even with the extra processor speed, the uprated display and the faster hard drive, it's still only £1700 - which for the amount of PC under the hood, is brilliant, in this form factor. Our only quibble is with the design - we would really like something a little racier.

We've said we didn't have enough time with the machine to test it fully, and so we can't call this a review and give it an award. However, we can wholeheartedly suggest you check out this machine if you're in the market for a gaming notebook.

The GeForce Go 7800: Frankly, we didn't believe NVIDIA when it told us that this mobile chip was going to be as fast as the desktop chip. However, leaving aside the fact that desktop enthusiast mainboards and chips are faster than laptops, the graphics chip itself appears to be almost exactly as fast as the 7800 GTX - that's an incredible feat.

ATI have traditionally been the kings of the notebook graphics arena, and they are going to have to make sure that their mobile derivative of R520 is just as fast as the desktop version to make sure they don't lose footing here.

The term 'desktop replacement' has been bandied around for a while now. For hardcore gamers, this is the first true desktop replacement.

NVIDIA have done another hard launch with Go 7800 - you will be able to go out and order laptops based around the chip tomorrow. If you've got a LAN party coming up this weekend, you could be the belle of the ball - or, rather, the Lord of the LAN, the Pwner of the Party.

Have I been playing too much Chaos Theory again? I'm pretty sure there's a dark spot in the corner where the courier collectors won't see me, especially if I shoot out the lights. Maybe if I hide for a while, I won't have to give it back?