Rock Xtreme CT notebook

Conclusions

Let's split the conclusions up into a few different sections.

Form factor: The Rock Xtreme CT is clearly a step in the right direction for gaming notebooks. It looks far better than the previous generation of hulking desktop replacement monsters, and the sleek back panel makes it feel like a classy buy. It's not as nice as an Apple, but then, whose industrial design can ever touch Apple? It's relatively light, it's sturdy, all in all it's a good-looking machine.

Specification: For the price, it's hard to argue with the specification. Rock have put in a great screen with a colour-intensifying coating, too. Although you can uprate the screen to 1920 x 1200 (WUXGA), we think this is too high a resolution for a 17" screen and you will also hit the limits of the 7800 in native resolution over the next couple of years. Thankfully, the screen also scales well, meaning that games run out of native don't look horrendous.

The graphics card is undoubtedly the best thing in a notebook, there's nothing else to touch it. We established in our preview that it's the same speed, basically, as a desktop 7800, despite being a few megahertz off the clock speed. This is an insane achievement for a graphics part in a notebook.

The Pentium M chip inside is not the fastest available, but we've shown that there's a little bit of headroom there. We're pretty sure that you won't get much overclocking mileage out of the next chip up, since that will already be pushing at the thermal and electrical boundaries. However, the added advantage of buying this version and overclocking (aside from the price) is that you also get the increase in bus speed and the consequent jump in memory bandwidth, which we've seen can make a real difference.

If there was one thing we'd want, it's a little bit more hard disk space. The drive is 7200RPM, which is great for a notebook, but we'd really like more than 60GB - 100GB would be a bit more like it, although this may add to the price.

We love the fact that we can get digital sound out of the notebook. Although you're unlikely to notice superlative-defying audio in the midst of a LAN party whilst tanked up on Red Bull, it's nice to have the flexibility for when you are sitting quietly at your desk enjoying a solo frag-a-thon.

Value: We've considered that the specification is good for the money. What shortfall there is is easily made up for by the coolness of being able to take a desktop-specification notebook anywhere with you. If you're a regular LANner, save yourself the hassle of taking power bricks, your rig, a monitor, peripherals and whatnot and just grab one of these and a cordless mouse - the perfect high-powered gaming combo. If you're considering the value of build your own versus buying a notebook, you also have to consider the value of the 3 year warranty in case anything happens to go wrong.

Final thoughts

What Nvidia have done with this generation of the GeForce Go is frankly incredible. For the first time a serious, hardcore gamer can replace his or her desktop rig with a notebook. You won't find the 7800 GTX lacking for power for a good couple of years yet. With the performance of the Pentium M, it's not hard to see why Intel's next generation of desktop chips are going to be running with this kind of architecture.

The novelty of the overclocking and the usefulness of the backup-restore partition are both added bonuses to what is already a fantastic notebook. If you're in the market for a portable gaming machine, this should be top of your list.


You can check out the CT over at it's product page on Rock, here.