Review: Mesh Pegasus 7800 SLI notebook

Nvidia’s portable SLI technology redefines notebook gaming

When Nvidia beat arch-rivals ATI to create a dual-graphics card system back in early 2005 we were treated with some of the most impressive benchmark scores to date.

Now, barely a year on, Nvidia has done it again with the SLI (scalable link interface) for notebooks.

Various manufacturers are releasing notebooks supporting this new technology. Evesham, Rock and, as featured here, Mesh are all using the same Clevo M950K chassis.

The notebook makes use of an AMD Turion 64 Mobile MT-40 processor with a clock speed of 2.2GHz. A total of 2GB DDR400 Ram sits alongside the processor.

But it's the graphics we're interested in. Inside the gargantuan case lie two Nvidia Geforce Go 7800 GTX cards - each with their own 256MB of dedicated Ram.

We expected the Pegasus 7800 SLI to return some exceptional benchmark scores, and we weren't disappointed.

The previous top performing notebook to pass through the PCW Labs was Evesham's Voyager C720, which notched up 6,885 in 3Dmark05 with its single Geforce Go 7800GTX.

Although Mesh's SLI behemoth can't double this, it still managed to blitz to a score of 9,881. Take it from us; this notebook will have no trouble running the latest games.

Of course, there's no point having powerful graphics if you don't have a screen with a decent native resolution. Thankfully, the Clevo M590K comes with a 19in display (the largest we've ever seen on a notebook) that has a widescreen resolution of 1,680 x 1,050.

Viewing angles are good and overall image quality is impressive, but we’ve seen better.

A DVI port sits on the back of the chassis should you want to hook up an external display, but if you're going to be mostly using a separate monitor you might want to consider purchasing a standard desktop and save yourself some money.

The 80GB hard drive is a little disappointing, but purchasing an external drive to use in conjunction with it won't exactly make much impact on the overall weight if you do need to shift it to another location.

With such a large chassis, fitting in extra bits and bobs was never going to pose a problem. NEC's ND-6500A eight-speed dual-layer DVD writer sits to the left next to the audio outputs. Five USB2, a single Firewire and a multi-format card reader are also available.

Naturally, 802.11b/g Wifi is present, while Bluetooth and infrared are offered as alternatives.

Whether this can actually be classed as a notebook is up for debate. At 6.4kg there's simply no way you'll be carrying it around on a regular basis. It will also start crying out for power if you try using it away from the mains for any length of time.

It's best not to think of it as a notebook, but rather a portable all-in-one small form factor PC that you can carry in and out of different rooms in your house without having to unplug a monitor and detach the keyboard and mouse.

Beating the majority of desktop PC systems in our 3Dmark05 benchmark, there’s no doubt the Clevo M590K is a massive leap in terms of notebook gaming. The Turion 64's performance isn't quite as impressive, but we fully expect to see a similar model with a desktop processor in the near future.

Naturally, we're also looking forward to ATI's Crossfire response.