Rock Xtreme 64 4200+ review

Acer's Aspire 5670 notebook on page 18 shows off Intel's new mobile dual-core processor.

Rival AMD has yet to release its dual-core mobile processor. That hasn't deterred Rock, which has taken a powerful desktop processor and shoehorned it into this desktop replacement chassis.

Both processor cores in the Athlon 64 X2 4200+ run at 2.2GHz, which gives it amazing performance for a portable computer. In our video-encoding test it managed a sensational 180. It performed well in single-threaded applications, scoring 113 in our image manipulation test. We ran our dual-core DVD encoding test as well, and it managed 53.9 per cent of the video clip while simultaneously running our usual benchmarks, with hardly any drop in performance.

The downside is the sheer bulk of its chassis. It's about twice the size of the Aspire 5670WLMi and weighs around 5.5kg, and the battery will barely see you out the front door at 67 minutes. This size allows room for a large 17" widescreen display, though. It has a massive resolution of 1,680x1,050, so there's plenty of room on your desktop to run multiple applications. The display isn't as bright as some we've seen recently, but it passed our greyscale and colour wheel image quality tests with ease.

The best use for that display is to show the full power of the nVidia Go 7800 GTX graphics chipset. This gives it enough 3D power to play any modern game at sumptuous detail levels. In our Doom 3 test, it managed 82.5fps. We installed Call of Duty 2 and were impressed by the smoothness of play and widescreen visuals. This is a great games machine with a healthy lifespan ahead.

A pair of 100GB hard disks in a RAID-0 array provide a huge 200GB of storage, although if you prefer you can choose to have a RAID-1 mirroring array when you order. This gives only 100GB of storage, but each hard disk holds a copy of your data. If either one fails, all your files are safe.

There is also a decent keyboard, a large touch pad and reasonable speakers, but many users will use external replacements for some or all of these.

The Xtreme 64 4200+ provides a lot of power. But you'll need to do some serious computing to justify the price. Gamers can get similar 3D performance for almost £600 less from Rock's Xtreme CT 2.0GHz in our Hotlist below.