System setup and notes
Hardware and Software
Test Platforms
| System | Rock Xtreme Ti laptop | Dell Inspiron XPS Gen 2 laptop | AMD Athlon 64 desktop system |
| Processor(s) | Intel Pentium 4 560 | Intel Pentium M 770 | AMD Athlon 64 4000+ |
| Mainboard | Intel i915P PCI-Express | Intel i915PM Sonoma | ABIT AX8 VIA K8T890 PCI-Express |
| Memory | 1GByte (2x512MB) Samsung PC4200 DDR2 SODIMMs | 1GByte (2x512MB) Samsung PC4200 DDR2 SODIMMs | 1GByte (2x512MB) Corsair XMS3200XL | Memory timings | 4-4-4-11 | 4-4-4-11 | 2-2-2-5 1T |
| Graphics Cards | Mobility RADEON X800 256MB | GeForce 6800 Go Ultra 256MB | GeForce 6800 GT 256MB (desktop) | Disk drive(s) | 2x 60GB Hitachi 7,200RPM in RAID0 | Fujitsu 100GB 4,200RPM | 160GB Western Digital 160JB | Screen | 17-inch WSXGA (1680x1050) X-Glass | 17-inch WUXGA (1920x1200) | 20-inch Dell 2001FP (1600x1200) | Operating system | Windows XP Home SP2 | Windows XP Home SP2 | Windows XP Professional SP2 | Price | £1939.56 inc. VAT | £1939.56 inc. VAT | £1500 inc. VAT |
Benchmark Software
HEXUS.in-house Cryptography Benchmark
HEXUS Pifast Benchmark
ScienceMark 2.0 (7th February 2005)
Realstorm 2004
CINEBENCH 2003 multi-CPU render
HEXUS.in-house MP3 Encoding Benchmark using LAME 3.97a (Intel HT compiler) - 701MB WAV
picCOLOR 32-bit v4.0
KribiBench v1.1
Simpli Software's HDTach 3.01
DOOM 3 Timedemo 1
3DMark05 b1.2.0
Half-Lfe 2 - HEXUS custom benchmark (prison demo)
Notes
Rock's desktop replacement laptop will be compared to Dell's new Inspiron XPS Gen 2, a laptop that boasts a Pentium M 770 CPU and the impressive NVIDIA GeForce 6800 Go Ultra 256MB mobile GPU. These kind of laptops are designed to be direct desktop replacements, so I'll see just how well they compare against a decent desktop system, featuring an AMD Athlon 64 4000+ CPU, 1GB RAM and a GeForce 6800 GT 256MB video card.
Other than the heat problems imposed by the design of the chassis and choice of components there were no other problems to report. Battery life isn't considered a major concern for true DTR laptops. Gaming on a full charge offered up no more than 40 minutes of usage befor the low battery alarm was activated. Do yourself a favour and keep it on the mains; that's what it is designed for.
