Rock Xtreme 770

Verdict: Our favourite laptop gets a facelift, and the results are generally pleasing.

You don't have to be the head of EA Sports - publisher of roughly 7,000 identical FIFA games - to know that you shouldn't mess with a winning formula. Rock's laptops have won more awards in Custom PC than any other range, and it's the company's focused attitude towards gaming that impresses us. While there have always been more striking, stylish or awe-inspiring options (think Dell XPS, Sony VAIO and Alienware respectively), Rock has consistently delivered high-quality, high-performance laptops. The Rock CTX Pro walked away from our recent gaming laptops Labs test with the winning medal around its neck but, unless you were quick off the mark (and rather disappointingly) that model is no longer available.

Rock's latest offering, much like the CTX Pro, is housed inside a chunky, wedge-shaped chassis from Clevo. The styling of the 770's chassis has been overhauled, and the layout tweaked, to bring Rock's flagship gaming range bang up to date. A streak of deep orange plastic running around the sides of the 770 breaks up the smoothly textured black of the rest of the case, and the overall shape is much sleeker, if chunkier. Compared with the unconvincing styling of some gaming laptops, such as the Asus G2S, and the latest offering from MSI, this is a subtle approach, but it feels much more sporty than the business-like stuffiness of the CTX Pro's relatively bland silver case.

As it's fixed in place, a good keyboard layout is essential in a laptop. Once again, some manufacturers think that gamers want backlit keys and cool, wacky designs surrounding everything. Perhaps even highlighted WASD keys, as if you didn't already know where they are. However, such fripperies won't help if you're struggling to find the Ctrl key while someone's aiming his rifle at you. The Xtreme 770 has a full-sized keyboard, laid out in almost exactly the same way as a desktop version - only the number pad has been rearranged. What's more, the keys feel solid and responsive, offering plenty of travel without any sponginess - the key qualities of a good gaming keyboard.

When it comes to the more exciting and electrically conductive areas under the hood, the Xtreme 770 lives up to its poorly spelled name by sporting a beefy CPU in the shape of an Intel Core 2 Duo T7500 with both cores clocked at 2.2GHz. This is slightly inferior to the 2.33GHz T7700 found inside the CTX Pro, even though the 770 is a slightly more expensive laptop. Nevertheless, the T7500 offers plenty of oomph to get the best from the 256MB GeForce 7950 GTX graphics card - still the most powerful (if also the most expensive) mobile graphics card you can buy.

This powerful CPU/GPU combination is backed up by 2GB of DDR2 RAM, which is ideal for running the supplied 32-bit version of Windows Vista Home Premium smoothly. It also means that the laptop is equipped to indulge in a spot of Eve Online or serious photo editing, both of which are notoriously RAM-hungry applications.

One thing's for sure: games and films look very nice on the Rock's luxurious, pin-sharp, glossy, 1,920 x 1,200 widescreen display, which probably accounts for the majority of the price hike of the Xtreme 770. However, you get what you pay for: a fantastic screen with excellent contrast and natural colours. It brings every image to life and is easily up there with the best laptop screens we've seen. Viewing angles are as good as you'll get on a portable screen, with only some discolouration when you move your head towards or away from the screen. As well as demanding an absolutely perfect screen, it's also unreasonable to ask any mobile GPU to run modern games with high detail settings at that huge native resolution. Playing at a more modest 1,024 x 768 didn't cause too many scaling-based image quality issues, which helps when playing a graphically demanding game such as BioShock.

The price is also assuaged by the armada of integrated components, including Bluetooth, the newest form of WiFi, 802.11n (plus 802.11a/b), a DVDRW DL optical drive, Gigabit Ethernet and Intel HD Audio. There are the more standard inclusions, such as the 7-in-1 media card reader, the webcam, four USB 2 ports, an ExpressCard/34 slot and DVI output.

If you really want to push the boat out then you can send the price of the Xtreme 770 sky-rocketing up to £2,200 by choosing a 2.4GHz T7700 Core 2 Duo, upgrading to 4GB of RAM (of which the 32-bit version of Vista will only see 3.12GB at best) and sticking in an HD-DVD drive.

However, the most interesting spec option is to have Windows XP Professional instead of Vista. This costs you £59, and should you want Vista at a later date, you have the option of either buying a copy and installing it yourself or paying £XX more to have a Rock engineer install it. Still, if you're sceptical about Vista SP1 (due early next year) being the best thing ever, the option's there.

Performance

With a Core 2 Duo T7500, the Rock was no slouch when it came to our Media Benchmarks, delivering scores that, for the most part, compare well with our powerful desktop test system. The 2GB of RAM helps the Rock to race along in our photo editing test, with a high score of 818, and it managed a similarly dependable 859 in the video encoding test. As we saw in the last laptops Labs test, the multitasking test proved to be a difficult challenge; the Rock's score of 567 means that it performs only half as quickly as our desktop test system. This can be attributed to the compromises made throughout the system in order for it to be power-frugal, small and light. FSB speeds are 667MHz compared to a desktop's 1,333MHz, and the hard disk (despite being rated at 7,200rpm) won't perform anything like your 7,200rpm desktop disk, to choose two examples. In short, although the spec lists of laptops can appear to be identical to desktop machines, you still shouldn't expect comparable performance.

Nor should you expect, even with a 512MB GeForce Go 7950 GTX, to play the latest crop of graphics-heavy games at high resolutions with all the settings whacked up to maximum. We played F.E.A.R., Company of Heroes and BioShock at 1,024 x 768 to get an indication of performance and received sketchy results. Company of Heroes was jerky, with a minimum of 11fps and an average of 25fps, while F.E.A.R. returned a slightly better 13fps minimum and 29fps average. BioShock was a stuttery nightmare with a minimum of XXfps and an average of XXfps. In an ideal world, if you're spending more than £1,500 on a gaming system, you should expect to be able to play all the latest games at high resolutions; however, this is the limit of current mobile gaming technology. You'll have to dial down your detail settings to achieve smooth frame rates for modern games. As with all gaming laptops, the amount of gaming you can perform without playing 'hunt the power brick' is fairly low at 57mins.

Conclusion

While the case for buying a top-end gaming laptop isn't exactly compelling at the moment, the Rock Xtreme 770 is the best of the bunch. The evolution from the CTX Pro has introduced two main elements: 802.11n WiFi, which should provide the speed and reliability for wireless gaming (although you'll still need a power connection) and a high-resolution screen. The high-resolution nature of the screen offers you the choice of using these pixels (with lower graphical detail) for a chatbox-strewn MMO, or using high graphical details at low resolutions and relying on the screen's excellent scaling abilities. A fresh new look and the more refined feel of the Xtreme 770, plus the great keyboard and useful extras such as the 802.11n WiFi, make this a high-quality piece of kit.