RATING 9 PRICE £1878/£2206 (EX/INC. VAT)

IN BRIEF: Xtreme by name, extreme by nature, as no other laptop can currently match its power

One glance at the Rockdirect Xtreme Ti 3.6 (£2206 inc. VAT) and any notion of portability will disappear. Weighing in at 5.6kg, this is a desktop replacement in the truest sense of the word. On any other machine, the 17-inch TFT panel would dominate the unit. On the Xtreme it merely looks right. Using X-Glass technology for improved contrast ratio, the screen makes digital images and computer games really come to life.

The keyboard is pushed up, so that it sits under the screen. Due to the numeric pad on the right-hand side, the off-centre board is a little cumbersome to use. In comparison, the touchpad and mouse buttons, take up a huge amount of space and feel lost. The build quality of the chassis is high, with the body being robust and strong.

INSIDE THE BOX

Is there any real need to owning a laptop as large and cumbersome as the Ti 3.6? What you get is the leading edge in gaming performance. Fitted with the ATi Mobility Radeon X800 PCI-Express card, you're presented with the mobile equivalent of a powerhouse. This card comes with 256MB of DDRIII memory, the fastest video memory to date and is supported by a 256-bit graphics core. Being fully DirectX 9-compliant, you'll find that the latest games will play with ease. In testing, the X800 scored an impressive 3DMark 2001 SE score of 19957, a groundbreaking feat that cannot be rivaled by any other system we have so far reviewed. To back this score up, we also ran 3Dmark 2003, with a similarly impressive score of 8831. To put these figures into context, the Rockdirect Xtreme Ti is 10 times faster than your run-of-the-mill laptop featuring integrated graphics.

Audio is provided by Azalia HD audio, and the four speakers and included sub-woofer make for an impressive sound-base. The larger chassis size helps to add Bass. The main unit is powered by an Intel Pentium 4 560 processor with a running speed of 3.6GHz and is fully Hyper-Threading compliant and is supported by 1024MB DDR2 memory running at 533MHz.

The 120GB hard drive is controlled by a Promise 2+0 RAID controller for the S-ATA disk, which is at the forefront of components designed for the larger laptop casings. As you would expect, battery life is negligible on such a system as this. Therefore, we were unable to run MobileMark 2002 for a comparative score against others systems.

With a PCMark 04 score of 5289, the system does live up to its feature set particularly well. Even a unit as big as this can be susceptible to too much power, as we found that the unit did grow rather warm over time. Although the thermals of the unit are kept in check, it does mean that the fan activity is rather constant. When it comes to other features, the Xtreme is very much in keeping with a standard laptop. Wi-Fi is supplied in the form of 802.11g and fixed networking is provided by Gigabit Ethernet. The webcam, located above the screen, can be used in conjunction with chatrooms or for use in gaming. Overall, we were impressed with the feature set of the Xtreme, making it usable not just for gamers but as a high-power desktop alternative.

If you want the latest in gaming, then you'll need to be willing to sacrifice portability and space. The enormous size of the Xtreme packs in a powerhouse of computing that'll make you the envy of any LAN party.

PROCESSOR Intel Pentium 4 560
MEMORY 1024MB DDR SDRAM
HARD DRIVE 120GB
SCREEN SIZE AND TYPE 17-inch TFT
DISPLAY RESOLUTION 1680 x 1050 pixels
GRAPHICS CARD ATi Mobility Radeon X800
DIMENSIONS 397 x 296 x 58mm
WEIGHT 5.6kg
PC CARDS (TYPE II/III) 1/0
WIRELESS LAN 802.11g
ETHERNET Gigabit
MODEM Yes
USB PORTS 4
FIREWIRE 2 (mini)
STANDARD WARRANTY 3 yr C&R
WARRANTY UPGRADE N/A
CONTACT 08709 909 192
www.rockdirect.com

VALUE FOR MONEY 7
PERFORMANCE 9
FEATURES 8
MOBILITY 2
BUILD QUALITY 9
OVERALL 9

BATTERY LIFE N/A
MOBILEMARK 2002 N/A
3DMARK 2001 19957