Rock Xtreme 770-T9300-8800

Manufacturer:
Price:	£1949 inc VAT
Reviewer:	Clive Webster
Review Date:	Feb 2008
Speed	34/40	86%
Features	28/30	93%
Value	20/30	67%
Overall	82%

Verdict: Penryn-based 45nm CPUs go mobile as Rock updates its gaming laptop.

Rock recently updated its high-end gaming laptop range with the Xtreme 770 T7800-8800, which included Nvidia's new Nvidia GeForce 8800M GTX - the fastest and most expensive mobile GPU on the planet. However, as we were finishing the previous review, Rock phoned us to say that it had just updated its Xtreme 770 range again, this time with new Penryn-based 45nm processors. Clock for clock, these CPUs should be faster and more power-efficient than the Core-based CPU of the previous Xtreme 770. The new Xtreme 770 retains the GeForce 8800M GTX, so it should be fast in games too. You can read about the benefits of the new Penryn-based Core 2 Duo processors over the old Core-based CPUs in Mobile Penryn vs Mobile Core, so we'll focus on the laptop here. The new Xtreme 770 is outwardly identical to last month's laptop. This is no bad thing, as the chassis is one of the most desirable we've seen. Unlike some gaming laptops that express their gaming credentials via flame motifs or odd colour schemes, the Xtreme 770 is much more sophisticated. It knows that you don't need to be told where the WASD keys are situated, that you'd rather add any visual embellishments yourself and that you'd prefer a quality product, rather than something showy but of little substance. To that end, the keyboard is magnificent. It's a pleasure to use and very responsive, even when you find yourself frantically mashing complex key combinations in the heat of a battle. Moments of frustration shouldn't have any dire consequences either; bash the chassis as that sniper takes you out for the fifth time in a row, and you shouldn't do much damage. One of the best features is the 17in 1,920 x 1,200 screen, with its glossy coating making images look rich and engaging. The downside of a glossy screen coating is reflectivity, with everything from your face to even dim light sources visible. With the light sources under control, however, games and films benefit from the vivid colours, depth of detail in shadows and general clarity on offer. The Xtreme 770 has an HD-DVD-ROM/DVD-RW drive as standard. While HD-DVD seems to be losing momentum in the format war, it's not yet dead and buried. Around the sizable yet graceful chassis you'll find the usual range of ports and slots. Most of these are on the right-hand edge, so USB mice won't become tangled with the optical drive's tray. The Gigabit LAN port is also positioned towards the rear to avoid tangles, and the power cable connects at the back - again helping to keep your desk tidy. With its Penryn architecture 45nm CPU, this month's Rock laptop allowed us to play Oblivion for 58 minutes, while the laptop based on the Core architecture 65nm CPU only lasted 50 minutes. We aren't convinced that you'll want to use it to play a game on the train, though, as the Xtreme 770 is large and heavy at 4.2kg (plus a substantial 0.9kg power brick) - gaming laptops are probably best regarded as foldaway home computers. The 160GB Hitachi TravelStar 7K200 can not only store plenty of data, but also has platters spinning at 7,200rpm, so it can retrieve it relatively fast too. With 2GB of PC2-5300 RAM, an Intel Core 2 Duo T9300 and a GeForce 8800M GTX, the benchmark scores should be good in all areas. Although the GeForce 8800M GTX is the fastest mobile GPU, you still need to be a little forgiving when running the latest games. No current mobile GPU has a chance of smoothly rendering modern games at 1,920 x 1,200. However, we could play Call of Duty 4 at 1,280 x 1,024 with 2x AA. Crysis needed some serious toning down to make it playable even at 1,024 x 768 - running it using high graphical detail settings provided a mere 9fps minimum and 18fps average. Despite the Intel Core 2 Duo T9300 being clocked at 2.5GHz, rather than the 2.6GHz of the T7800 in last month's Rock laptop, we saw a higher score from this laptop in the processor-intensive video encoding test - 991 compared to 964. This score makes this laptop almost as fast as our 2.66GHz Intel Core 2 Duo desktop reference PC, which scores 1,000 in this test. However, the low-speed RAM and diminutive hard disk held back the Rock in the image editing and multitasking benchmarks. Still, the overall score is just three points short of last month's higher-frequency and more expensive machine. Conclusion This Xtreme 770 runs just as fast as the previous model, is equally well-designed and pleasing to use, and is slightly cheaper too. Given that the old Xtreme 7700 found its way onto our Elite list after its review, you don't need to be a genius of Einsteinian proportions to deduce that the Xtreme 770-T9300-8800 is our favourite gaming laptop.