Product Reviews

Until now, anyone looking for a powerful gaming notebook has been faced with a tough decision. Evesham's Quest A630 SLI notebook stunned us with its 3D speed last month, but it weighed almost 7kg. And it's a similar story with the A-Listed Evesham Quest A620, with its FX-60 processor and single GeForce 7800 GTX graphics pushing weight to nigh-on 6kg.

This month, Rock aims to solve this problem by pairing ATi's brand-new Mobility Radeon X1800 XT graphics with a top-end Core Duo processor. Predictably enough, the ATi chip powered through our standard gaming tests at 1,280 x 1,024: both ran at more than 70fps, which is incredibly fast even for a desktop gaming rig. However, the 17in screen has a massive native resolution of 1,920 x 1,200, and we expected upping our test settings to this would bring the Xtreme to its knees.

To a certain extent, we were right: our Far Cry with HDR test struggled at 31fps, even with anisotropic filtering and anti-aliasing removed, while Call of Duty 2 ran even slower at 27fps. Running at 1,400 x 1,050 saw 45fps and 38fps in Far Cry and Call of Duty 2 respectively, so you'll have to scale down from the screen's native resolution if you want to play graphically demanding modern games. The Xtreme CTX's fans also whine disturbingly when it's being stretched by a challenging 3D game.

This noise is almost entirely the fault of the graphics chip; in Windows applications, the Xtreme CTX is much quieter. Rockdirect uses a top-end Core Duo processor, which, despite running at 2.16GHz, doesn't create much waste heat to exhaust. And Rockdirect has attempted to give this efficient dual-core chip its head by avoiding the usual under-specified notebook parts. There's a 7,200rpm 2.5in hard disk instead of the usual 5,400rpm, while the 1GB of RAM runs at 667MHz rather than the 333MHz RAM in the Evesham Quest A620. Given this, we were slightly disappointed to see a final score of only 1.06, compared to the 1.25 of the Evesham Quest A620. The Xtreme CTX is certainly no slouch, but for all-out performance the Evesham still rules.

While the Rock has a high-resolution

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screen to keep all those disparate applications visible, its lighting seems dull in comparison to the Quest A620. We have slight reservations over its quality too; with a narrow contrast range, it lost detail in shadowy or brightly lit areas of photos and DVDs. Colour handling was good, though, with smooth colour ramps. However, the lack of contrast showed, with the brightest of colours looking muddy and dull. Consequently, our photos and films lacked the vibrancy and impact that we saw from the Evesham Quest A620. And although the 100GB hard disk is plenty for anything but the largest of media libraries, the Quest has double that capacity.

Rockdirect offers some interesting upgrades to compete with the Evesham, though. You can add an integrated hybrid TV tuner for £79, but there's no Windows MCE upgrade available. You can even buy a secondary battery, which swaps places with the Sony DVD writer (this can burn both types of dual-layer disc at 4x). Or you could buy a second hard disk for this drive bay. A 60GB 7,200rpm drive costs £129, while a 120GB 5,400rpm model will set you back a whopping £214 (all prices exc VAT).

While these upgrades offer the possibility of matching the Quest A620, the standard warranty definitely surpasses it. The third year of the warranty on the Quest A620 reverts from collect-and-return to return-to-base, but Rockdirect pays for courier charges for the whole three years. There's also a seven-day no-quibble money-back guarantee should you not be completely happy, although you'll have to foot the courier bill in this case. The icing on the cake is the insurance backing; if the industry turns on its head in the next three years and Rockdirect closes its doors, you've still got a valid warranty for this system.

But, more importantly, it's a far less offensive unit to carry around and look at than the weighty Evesham. Any power notebook will make itself felt on your shoulder over a day of travel, but the Rock is a significant 1.5kg lighter than the Evesham, while under light use it lasted for almost one hour, 45 minutes. Both systems are equally wide, allowing for full-sized keyboards with separate number pads.

Admittedly, it's debatable how important portability is when buying a power notebook: for some, it's all about speed. Judged on this criterion, the Evesham clearly wins with its significantly higher application benchmark score. It also boasts twice the storage and a far superior screen - the thing you'll actually be looking at for the next few years. However, if your priority is gaming on the move, the Rock is a great choice thanks to its superb 3D performance, relatively low weight and the fact it's £500 cheaper than the Quest.