AVADirect Clevo X7200: Six Cores, SSD RAID, and GTX 480M SLI Yields World's Fastest DTR Notebook
by Jarred Walton on October 7, 2010 12:30 AM ESTClevo X7200: This is your games on 480M SLI
Take the fastest desktop CPU and two of the fastest mobile GPUs, stuff them in a 17.3" chassis with a monster power brick, and you've got the Clevo X7200 in a nutshell. While we still question the sanity of spending this much money on a gaming notebook, if you have the necessary funds or a "need" for serious gaming performance—and you don't want a desktop or even a mini-ITX gaming system—the X7200 is the new champion. Most of our previous high-end laptops were tested prior to our latest gaming suite, but let's put things in perspective first by looking at how gaming performance stacks up at our high detail gaming settings relative to other recently reviewed laptops.
We're running at non-native 900p for comparison; the X7200 pushes 50% to 125% more frames per second relative to the W880CU with a single 480M. It also manages 50% to 150% higher performance than the old GTX 280M. We also ran a couple other gaming tests that we haven't widely benchmarked, Mafia II and Metro 2033; we used the built-in benchmarks on both.
Maxing out all the graphics options, Mafia II still manages to run at 52FPS at the native 1080p; turn on High PhysX and that drops to 33.3. Metro 2033 isn't quite so forgiving; DX11 and "High" detail results in a reasonable 49FPS, but bump up to Very High and enable antialiasing and you're looking at high-teens for frame rates (we measured 19.2FPS). If you want to max things out and enable PhysX, Metro 2033 drops to just 17.3FPS—and that's on the beefiest laptop hardware around. That said, the difference between "High" and "Very High" isn't enough to warrant the performance hit, and antialiasing in a demanding game like Metro isn't a luxury you can afford.
Can you play games at maximum detail on the X7200? Yes, yes you can! In fact, it's so much faster than most notebooks (hello: an average of 4x faster than the Toshiba A665-3DV, which topped our midrange notebook performance charts) that we're going to move up to comparisons with desktop systems to really see what it can handle.
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CharonPDX - Thursday, October 7, 2010 - link
My Macintosh Portable weighs 16 pounds. It's a monster. A gigantic behemoth.This thing weights almost as much. And once you include the power bricks, it's probably a tossup.
And whaddaya know, they're pretty close to the same physical size, too! The Macintosh Portable is 15.25" wide, so this thing is an inch wider; the Macintosh Portable is 14.83" deep, so this thing is 3.5" narrower, but this also has 2" less thickness. (4" for the Portable.)
Although the Macintosh Portable came with a 2 pound lead acid battery that could run it for nearly 10 hours... Or nearly 1400% the battery life of this new behemoth.
MeTechE - Thursday, October 7, 2010 - link
A bit heavy on the memes here, eh? Otherwise an excellent review, what an outrageous notebook...CharonPDX - Thursday, October 7, 2010 - link
I mean, with that little battery life, it's just a glorified UPS, as you call it.Why not just go for a dual-socket briefcase computer with a full-blown desktop video card in it? http://www.nextcomputing.com/products/mobile-works...
Their website doesn't list their latest models. While at Intel, I played with one that had dual Xeon L5530s in it, and a GeForce GTX 280. (The fastest GPU available at the time.)
Now you could throw in two 6-core L5640s and a GTX 480 or Radeon 5970. And with its 520W power supply, you could *POSSIBLY* go with a Crossfired pair of 5870s.
yelped - Thursday, October 7, 2010 - link
Isn't X59 under Chipset a Typo?yelped - Thursday, October 7, 2010 - link
Spotted another one. Under the specifications it says that the USB 3.0 ports are on the right side, a few paragraphs later it states that they are on the left side.I don't mean to nitpick, just making it look more professional for those who will read it later.
JarredWalton - Thursday, October 7, 2010 - link
Thanks, no problem with the corrections. Got the sides switched in the table. :-)my_body_is_ready - Thursday, October 7, 2010 - link
Choose oneSteelCity1981 - Thursday, October 7, 2010 - link
Really Clevo, only a 9 cell Battery? At least throw in a 12 cell battery for how much this thing cost.MrSpadge - Friday, October 8, 2010 - link
And that would change what except price?MrS
jed22281 - Thursday, October 7, 2010 - link
So who's getting their wallet out?Pics or it didn't happen!!! :)