Review: Rock Xtreme CTX T2700 notebook

Intel's Core 2 Duo notebook platform might be just round the corner, but if you're after a powerful notebook and can't wait a second longer the Xtreme CTX T2700 from Rock certainly delivers.

The design of the notebook's chassis should appeal to gamers. The silver casing looks and feels great, while the lid is home to a classy laser-etched 'X' symbol. Weighing 4.25kg, it’s unlikely you’re going to be carrying it around too much, but powerful notebooks will always tip the scales in the wrong direction.

It's powered by the latest Intel T2700 Core Duo processor, which has a clock speed of 2.33GHz, 667Mhz FSB (front side bus) and a sizeable 2MB of L2 cache.

In an effort to appeal to mobile gamers, Rock has supplied it with 1GB of DDR2 677MHz Ram and, far more importantly, an Nvidia Geforce Go 7900 GTX .

This super-fast mobile graphics card is supplied with 512MB of devoted memory - double the usual 256MB we’re used to seeing.

As a result, the Xtreme CTX T2700 took our benchmarks by storm. The processor-intensive Sysmark 2004 SE returned a score of 252; way above what many desktops can achieve and indicates this notebook will have no problems with heavyweight applications such as video editing.

The powerful Nvidia graphics card helped push the 3D benchmarks to similarly impressive scores. In 3Dmark05 it notched up 8,589; again, something majority of desktop PCs struggle to accomplish. Our Far Cry test ran at 86.89fps (frames per second), while in PCmark05 it ended up with a score of 5,592.

These are pretty astounding scores for a notebook. You can see just how well it compares to other notebooks we've reviewed by taking a look at our performance benchmarking site.

With such powerful graphics and a gaming audience in mind, Rock has taken the sensible decision to fit a 17in display as standard. With a native resolution of 1,920 x 1,200, this screen is capable of getting the most out of the 512MB Geforce Go 7900 GTX.

For an extra £57 you can opt to upgrade to an X-Glass display. Although this increases reflections, it also improves colours and widens the viewing angles; we’d recommend upping your budget to accommodate it.

Plenty of storage is available thanks to the 100GB hard drive. A dual-layer DVD drive is on hand should you want to archive data to free up space; you can alternatively upgrade to a 120GB hard drive for £29 when you order the notebook.

In terms of networking, you get an internal 802.11a/b/g Wifi adapter along with Blutetooth and a Gigabit Lan port. A multi-format card reader is also provided while a built-in webcam just above the screen will be useful for online video conversations.

Microsoft Works Suite 8 is included and should be enough for most home users’ word processing needs. Bullguard Antivirus keeps you safe from attack and, as is common with most notebooks and desktops, a 60-day trial of Microsoft Office 2003 is also thrown in.

If you're looking for a powerful notebook that's more than capable of replacing your desktop, the Xtreme CTX T2700 will deliver the goods. At £1,761.33 it's by no means cheap, but when you look over the impressive spec sheet you soon start to realise just how much you're getting for your money.

But with the Core 2 Duo launch so close, many potential buyers will no doubt want to hang on to their cash until its launch on the 28th August.

Related reviews:
£1,599 laptop group test
We test drive six of the latest desktop replacement notebooks

Like this story? Spread the news by clicking below:

 del.icio.us     Digg this     reddit!