System setup and notes
Here's a quick rundown of the test system should you wish to compare benchmark results with your own.Rock Xtreme XTR-3.2 laptop.
Voodoo PC Envy m:855 laptop. Full specs.
here.
AMD Athlon 64 Model 3200+ desktop PC with:
ATI Radeon 9600 XT graphics adapter
160GB Western Digital 8MB cache PATA drive
4x Pioneer 106 DVD-RW
512MB Corair XMS3500C2 run at 2.5-2-2-6
EPoX 8HDA3+ VIA K8T880 S754 motherboard (12/12/03 BIOS)
Dell P991 19" monitor
Windows XP Professional w/SP1
Software
Windows XP Home w/SP1
Intel 5.01.1002 drivers
VIA Hyperion 4.51 drivers
ATI CATALYST 4.1 drivers and control panel (modded to 4.1s for both laptops)
NVIDIA ForeWare 3.13 drivers
Pifast v41 to 10m places
LAME v3.92 MP3 encoding with Razor-Lame 1.15 front-end using U2's Pop album
(607MB)
Gordian Knot - XviD encoding test using first vob of Sleepy Hollow. 1433kbit/s bitrate
Kribi Bench 1.1
ScienceMark 2.0
Realstorm Raytracing benchmark 320x180x32
SimpliSoftware HDTach 2.70
3DMark 2001SE v330
UT2003 Retail (Build 2225) - 2 custom benchmarks
AquaMark3
3DMark03 b340
Call of Duty HEXUS Custom test
Quake 3 v1.30 HQ
Notes
We recently reviewed a Voodoo PC Envy m:855 laptop here and found it to be an excellent all-around performer. Powered by AMD's Athlon 64 Model 3200+ CPU and ATI's Mobility Radeon 9600 Pro 64MB (350/400) graphics adapter, it proved to be especially good in gaming. Rock's power laptop uses a similarly powerful Intel Pentium 4 3.2GHz CPU and a slightly faster graphics card (MR 9600 Turbo Pro - 128MB - 345/470).
Rock's effort also improves on the Envy m:855 by having 128MB of onboard RAM, so gaming benchmarks will be close. Benchmarks will be run at 1024x768x32 unless otherwise stated. Further, gaming benchmarks will be run in mains and battery mode. Just like the Voodoo PC review, our aim is to see what kind of effect a slower CPU has on performance. We'll then discuss battery life and gather our thoughts for a conclusion. An aside, no major settings could be changed within the BIOS.
Rock's Xtreme XTR-3.2 didn't falter in a week-long testing session. Our main, pre-benchmark complaint isn't regarding performance, it centres around noise. In full-blown performance mode, that is, run off the mains with a performance bias, the Xtreme's three fans combine and cause an unholy racket, which is significantly louder than the Voodoo's noise profile.
A quick word on performance setup. 512MBs of DDR400 SODIMM memory seems excellent on first glance. However, Rock's achieved it by raising latencies to 3-3-3-8 levels. That's par for the course in laptop terms, but won't bring out the best in the 3.2GHz Pentium 4 and i865PE motherboard. Low-latency SODIMMs, however, are as rare as the proverbial hen's teeth. Another factor that will have some bearing on results is differences in the operating system Rock uses Windows XP Home but both the Voodoo PC m:855 and desktop comparison used XP Professional.
