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My second contender was a genuine beast of a mobile gaming system. The Rock Xtreme SL Pro is based on a Turion X2 TL-60 processor with 1GB of RAM and - wait for it - two GeForce Go 7950GTX GPUs in a dual SLi configuration. For most notebooks, with their 1,280 x 800 or 1,280 x 1024 resolution screens this would be overkill, but the sheer vastness of this monster desktop replacement is partly explained by its enormous 20.1in 1,680 x 1050 resolution screen. Two years ago this would have been an extravagance even in a desktop system. Fitted to a notebook, it's a wonder to behold.

Needless to say, moving from a desktop system to this is a lot less difficult than it was with the practicably portable Pegasus, for the simple reason that the Xtreme SL Pro is, in a sense, a desktop system. The keyboard, for example, is full-sized and has a fairly traditional UK layout, with the Ctrl and Shift keys exactly where you might expect them. The screen is every bit as big as the increasingly popular 20.1in desktop monitors, and the performance is better than most desktops - including mine.

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Dark Messiah looked absolutely stunning on the Xtreme SL Pro, blowing the Pegasus out of the water.

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Frankly, it was hard to find anything that the Xtreme SL Pro couldn't handle, even with the resolution set to the panel's native 1680 x 1050, 4xAA and 4xAF switched on, and every detail option going set to high, full or ultra. With these settings, Dark Messiah of Might and Magic is just stunning, with no perceptible drop in frame rate during play - though FRAPs did report the odd drop down to 26FPS in larger areas where the HDR lighting effects were in full bloom. The detailed textures and gorgeous water effects looked out of this world. Battlefield 2142 is beginning to look a little dated these days, but you won't see it looking better than it did on this Rock with everything turned up to full. With GTR2, I went beyond the Full general detail setting to switch every option listed up to full, and the Xtreme SL Pro still didn't break a sweat.

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With every setting turned up to max, GTR2 looked awesome on the Xtreme Pro SL. Far better than on my desktop PC in fact.

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