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Gaming Notebooks: The Full Story

Author	Stuart Andrews
Published	22nd Mar 2007

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So the big question: would I be happy using either of these notebooks as my main gaming system? In the case of the Pegasus 335, not really. The compromises are too many for my liking, and if the Pegasus struggles with my test titles now, it’s unlikely to do justice to games coming out by the end of the year. If, however, I wanted a second machine for mobile use and fancied the odd spot of gaming on the move, then the Pegasus would fit the bill pretty well. There are plenty of older games I could play on it, while I still enjoyed playing the newer ones and World of Warcraft certainly wouldn’t pose any difficulties. It’s also worth noting that games companies are beginning to notice that there’s a huge audience of notebook users out there who don’t have high end graphics hardware. For example, EA’s The Sims: Life Stories series is aimed entirely at casual gamers and is being marketed as notebook friendly. Provided you don’t expect to play Crysis at anything above minimal detail levels, you should be perfectly happy with a notebook in this category – but you’ll want something more beefy to play the big games at their best.

When it comes to the Xtreme SL Pro the answer is an unqualified ‘yes’. It’s ludicrously powerful – far more so than my current gaming desktop system – and with its huge screen and comfortable, full-sized keyboard, the actual playing experience is every bit as intuitive, immersive and compelling. The real question here is: could I afford to? And there the answer is, sadly, no. The Xtreme SL Pro is the notebook equivalent of the 46in, 1080p LCD TV or that high-end Pioneer surround system: something I’d love to own, but just can’t find or justify the funds necessary.

Let’s look at it in the cold light of day. Right now, for £2,438 I could go to Alienware – not the cheapest company in the business – and buy an SLi-ready Area 51 7500 desktop with a Core 2 Duo E6400, 4GB of DDR2 RAM, a single 640MB GeForce 8800GTS and goodies like a Creative X-Fi soundcard, Razor mouse and 24in Dell widescreen monitor. In the unlikely event that this ran out of power any time soon, I could simply add another graphics card.

Even buying a gaming PC from Alienware will set you back far less than a high-end gaming notebook - but it stil has to take up masses of space in your home!

Alternatively, if I were willing to do without the luxuries and go with a less prestigious marquee, I could probably knock hundreds of pounds off that. A self-build system would be even more competitive. Without even trying I was able to put together a killer gaming system – Core 2 Duo E6600, 2GB DDR2 PC-6400 RAM, 640MB GeForce 8800GTS graphics, Samsung 22in monitor – for less than £1250 including VAT. Unless you really need the space or the portability, or you have the wherewithal to demand the luxury, the Xtreme SL Pro is a pretty hard sell. That said, Rock and Alienware both do cheaper, 17in widescreen models, and if you can find the right balance between price and performance these could easily work as a primary gaming system.

Looking at Rock's website you can pick up a 17in Xtreme CTX Pro with a Core 2 Duo T7200, GeForce Go 7950, 1GB of RAM and a 100GB hard disk for under £1,400. Obviously you don't get that ridiculous SLI power, but it will still do a very good job with most games, without the need for you to take out a second mortgage to buy one.

Basically, you need to weigh up the pros and cons. If saving space and style are your prime considerations, there is now no reason why you couldn’t use a notebook as your main gaming system. At the moment, you will be limited to DirectX 9 GPUs, but it’s an open secret that nVidia will launch a mobile 8800 series GPU to go with Intel’s Centrino Pro platform in May (AMD/ATI are currently keeping their plans somewhat closer to their chest). On the cons side, there’s no doubt that desktop systems still offer far more bang for your buck, not to mention a wider range of upgrade paths when that bang is no longer big enough to satisfy. We all know that most major upgrades in reality mean a change of motherboard, but it’s still a lot cheaper than buying a whole new notebook. Buying a notebook for games is now a very valid choice, but while desktops have that sort of advantage, it still isn’t necessarily the most logical decision.

TrustedReviews would like to thank Rock for supplying us with the notebooks used in this feature. We would also like to thank Creative, Genius and Logitech.