Rock Xtreme 790 Laptop Review

Performance Analysis

The last Core i7 laptop we saw was the Kobalt G860 which we used to benchmark Intel’s new Core i7-720QM, a mobile processor that's actually based on Intel's new Lynnfield architecture. The Kobalt is also about £500 cheaper than the Rock and we were interested to see how its cheaper mobile Core i7 fared against a desktop chip.

Starting off with the GIMP image editing test, the differences weren’t anything to write to a postcard about. The Kobalt managed 1,048 points whereas the Rock hit 1,141, an increase of around 10% and less than you'd want for a laptop that costs 25% more. The Handbrake h.264 video encoding test was a different story though, with the benchmark's love for CPU horsepower meaning the difference between 2,017 points for the Rock and 1,397 points for the Kobalt - an astonishing difference of 56%. With more memory and a more powerful CPU, the Rock also fared better in multitasking, clocking up 1,231 to the Kobalt’s 961, another significant number of extra points in the bag.

We’ve found that the difference in gaming performance of the GTX 280M and GTX 260M is minimal, with about 2fps in minimum and average frame rates between the two cards. However, we’ve also found that Crysis runs particularly well when backed up by a Core i7 processor so we wanted some big numbers from the Rock. However, we were disappointed to find that for all its LGA1366 glory, the Rock only improved the minimum frame rate scored by the Kobalt from 17fps to 19fps. Again not exactly what you'd expect given the price difference between the two machines.

We installed Borderlands and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 to see how the laptop faired in less demanding but more current games with its 1,900 x 1,200 display. With its cell-shady graphics that the Xbox 360 can run, Borderlands isn’t an especially demanding game - at least not for a desktop PC - and for £2,000 you’d want to play the game at max settings at the native resolution of the display. However, the minimum frame rate dropped to 18fps at these settings, meaning appreciable frame rate choppiness occurs. We had to drop the texture quality setting to medium to boost the frame rate to a smooth 28fps minimum. In fairness, this didn’t make too much of a difference to the aesthetics, but the fact that we had to drop the settings at all hints that a 1,920 x 1,200 display is pushing the hardware somewhat.


Modern Warfare 2 is part of the franchise that’s been going at the rate of one a month since the late 1700s and as a result, it’s very easy-going on your hardware. Even at 1,920 x 1,200 and all the sauce turned on, the Xtreme 790 churned out a minimum frame rate of 41fps, leaving plenty of buffer to avoid slowdown when things get busy on screen.

For the better portion of two grand, and with one of the best overclocking CPUs ever made, we were hoping for a BIOS that let us perform some tweaking. Sadly though, we had no such luck. We can only imaging that the cooling required to stuff such a beast of a CPU in the close confines a laptop chassis is already pushing the cooling to the brink.

Conclusion

It’s big; it’s powerful; it’s ugly. Having a full-cream Core i7-920 nestled inside its bulk means the Rock Xtreme 790 can nom through CPU intensive applications quicker than Baz can munch cheesecake. And, rest assured, that’s some seriously fast eating. This is the fastest laptop we've seen to date, a fact that will have many reaching for their credit cards irrespective of the rest of the conclusion. However, for £500 less you could bag yourself a Kobalt G860. Although this laptop features a less powerful CPU and smaller, 15.6in display, it’s still very capable with a mobile version of the Core i7 chip and it’s a damned site more portable. The 1,680 x 900 native resolution of the display is more suitable for the GPU it features and the chassis is a whole lot sexier too. Much of this verdict applies to the Alienware M17x, too - it lacks the Core i7 CPU, but it's far better looking than the Xtreme 790.

Considering these are gaming laptops, the games results are a paramount factor. Despite the Xtreme 790's extra CPU power, the minimum frame rate of Crysis at 1,680 x 1,920 with 2x AA was only 2fps faster than the G860 - and only 4fps faster than the Alienware. The Xtreme 790 will no doubt appeal to many, predominantly people who like Jaguars with six litre V12 engines that happen to do a lot of video encoding and earn a lot of money. However, we felt that endearing qualities such as the excellent display and Core i7-920 CPU weren't enough to justify the price tag, low portability and lack of sexy curves, especially when there are many other alternatives.

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• 9/10

• Features
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• 6/10

• Value
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• 4/10

• Overall
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• 6/10

Score Guide