Internal musings
So just how has Clevo, the original design manufacturer (ODM) been able to architect a laptop whose graphical oomph is provided by dual NVIDIA GeForce 7800 Go GTX GPUs? Let uncle Tarinder show you.
The right-hand portion hides a meaty 12-cell 6600maH battery that's easily removed. The excitement, however, is behind the large cover in the very middle.
Discussing more mundane matters first, rockdirect/Clevo has opted to use AMD's Turion 64 to provide the CPU grunt in the package. The Turion 64 ML-42 S754 mobile CPU, which is nearly identical to the desktop Athlon 64 S754 range in terms of performance, runs at 2.4GHz, sports 512KB of L2 cache, and has a maximum TDP of 35W. There's a higher model, ML-44, which runs at the same clockspeed but carries double the cache.
The Xtreme SL main design criteria is performance. Battery-life takes a distant second, although the combination of AMD's PowerNow! technology (dynamic adjustment of clockspeed/voltage, depending upon load) and NVIDIA's PowerMizer purport to offer battery longevity even on this model.
Our review sample shipped with 1GByte (2x512MByte) of DDR-400 SODIMM DRAM, run in single-channel mode. Wireless connectivity options included a standard 802.11g mini-PCI-based WiFi card and a USB-powered Bluetooth (v1.2) module. Gigabit Ethernet support was provided via Marvell's PCIe-based controller. Looking rather diminutive next to the graphics cards, rockdirect makes a fine choice in including a single Hitachi 100GB 7,200RPM SATA hard drive.
The massive width of the chassis allows a further two large heatpipe-based coolers to be used in tandem, necessary to wick away the heat produced by a couple of G70 mobile cores operating at 400MHz. For the most part, the cooling works fine, although having a number of high heat-producing components on one side has the drawback of making the chassis and, in particular, the keyboard much warmer on the right-hand side.
More 3D rendering power is hidden under these heatsinks than is present on over 95% of desktop models. Be prepared for your desktop to weep when looking at 3D numbers. Eagle-eyed readers will notice that there's no obvious SLI connector here.
Priced at £2,349 (including the dreaded VAT) the rockdirect SL isn't designed to be hot on value. Rather, it's for those of you want pant-wetting 3D performance from an all-in-one solution.
General usage notes
The Xtreme SL, in the strictest terms, isn't really fit to be called a laptop. It's too large to comfortably position on your lap, and the combined heat output makes extended use uncomfortable. Other than a complete redesign of the machine, perhaps with an aluminium chassis and integrated heatpipes, there's not much rockdirect can do; its hands are tied by the ODM's design.Reasonable cooling design and the use of a mobile CPU translates to a full-load noise profile that's a little louder than we'd like. The main culprit, of course, is the cooling and fans required to keep the twin G70 cards working at correct frequencies when in mains-powered mode. rockdirect continues to split the single hard-drive into two partitions. The main partition, formatted with NTFS, takes up the vast proportion. A 3.5GB FAT32 partition houses a recovery folder that, if accessed from BIOS, restores the laptop to factory specifications. Extremely handy if something goes awry on the software side of things.
Extras and warranty
The associated bundle will be finalised in the next couple of days. We'll report back with details as and when they're provided to us. Keeping the Xtreme SL running smoothly off mains power is a power-brick that provides 220W. Add its weight to the laptop's and there's not much spare from 8kg.Rock offers a 3-year collect-and-return warranty that includes parts and labour cover as standard. Backup is handled by the folks at mobile support, presumably a division of rockdirect as they're situated at the same address in Warwickshire and are contactable by either via email or by an 0871 national-rate number. rockdirect doesn't offer any service upgrades on the standard collect-and-return warranty, though, but it is backed up by insurance such that in the unlikely event Rockdirect ceased trading within the warranty period, a third-party would continue to fulfill support.
