Pricing And Conclusion
No doubt, the four contenders in our lab don’t stack up evenly. Rather, they’re for completely different customers. This is a roundup of high-end gaming PCs, though, and Killer Notebooks’ Odachi is unquestionably the fastest solution that we received.
Now, let’s factor pricing into the picture here.
| Notebook | Price |
| Alienware Area-51 m17x | $6,168 |
| ASUS G71V | $2,099 |
| Eurocom M860TU Montebello | $2,813 |
| Killer Notebooks Odachi | $4,090 |
That’s quite a substantial spread on the prices of these premium notebooks. However, those figures reaffirm the Odachi as an attractive buy. It’s hard to compare the prices of Killer Notebooks’ hardware choices to desktop equivalents without factoring in the Clevo chassis. But we did price another D900C with similar components from XoticPC and ended up with a $4,017 price tag—without an operating system or Killer’s in-house tweaks. If anything, Killer is able to do what its VAR competition can do, with the added value of hardware optimizations and software tweaks specially developed for enthusiasts able to appreciate the hours of work that go into each of Killer Notebook’s systems.
Where the Odachi comes up short is sex appeal—call it whatever you want. But this is where Alienware’s Area-51 m17x steps into play. Hands-down the best-looking notebook we’ve ever seen, the company’s all-black shell, tasteful application of LED lighting, and user-customization help it stand out amongst its whitebook competition. It’s hot—but not $6,000+ hot, especially given our performance benchmarks where the m17x is routinely routed by the Odachi. The one advantage Alienware does leverage, other than its early access to go-fast hardware, is the muscle of a tier-one, which lets it offer on-site support should you run into trouble. We applaud the innovative use of Nvidia’s bridge chip to enable SLI on the road, but the premium on good looks and an on-site support plan is too steep in this case.
At the other end of the spectrum is Eurocom’s Montebello, which is aesthetically plain in almost every way. And yet, this little workstation seemed to stand out in many of our productivity tests. We would have liked to look at a sample more apropos to this gaming comparison, but its single GeForce 9800M GT, plucky Core 2 Extreme, and individual hard drive still managed commendable performance. We wouldn’t recommend this one as a gaming platform. But as a desktop replacement workstation, Eurocom’s Montebello gave us the biggest surprise (and least trouble) of the four contenders. It’s amazing that the company crammed so much speed in a 15.4” shell able to last as long as it did away from an outlet.
In between Alienware’s flair and Killer Notebook’s software tweaks sits the ASUS G71V. As with the Eurocom, we aren’t going to recommend this one as a gaming platform. Its processor and graphics card both lag the competition, and we didn’t see playable frame rates in any of the gaming tests, save Unreal Tournament 3. But again, this is another example of a reasonable desktop workstation based on Intel’s Centrino 2 platform. It includes all of the latest technology wrapped into a package priced just over $2,000, making it the least expensive option here. And the company’s software extras show its desire to add value. While we like the G71’s rugged paint job, this one’s not quite muscular enough to be one of ASUS’ lauded Republic of Gamers offerings.
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Please use Propper size pictures as i am not zooming every one (takes 3-4 secs to load each one when doing that)
even when i use the Print option thay are still in 200 x 120 pixels when it should be 450 x 271 pixels for both print and per page viewing
rest of the review is good
Okay, I have no idea about the battery life of ANY of the contenders - no mention of them in the text and that one vital image of the battery chart is missing from Toms. Good going guys!
Not that you can claim credit for any of the graphs on this article - all the rest are borked as well. They do show up - as tiny thumbnails. Nice one. Real classy.
Now back to the actual article subject, aka Rant#2. Hasn't it occured to the OEMs that we have a major niche going unfulfilled here? I can think of several nomadic user bases (how about students for starters anyone?) who want gaming laptops but who are unwilling to part with €5000 for something that has the same performance as a €500 desktop. Even with Centrino 2 bringing the RAM and motherboard back up to scratch the near-inability to run games such as SupCom and Crysis shows that the gap between standard and mobile CPUs and GPUs is now reaching crisis point.
You'd think that with such a large potential user base some of the big facs or OEMs would be innovating, but they ain't. AMD seem to have given up on mid-high-range lappies entirely, which give nVidia and Intel carte blanche to sit there doing very little (note to Nintel fanboys - this is what would happen to desktops if your hated AMD died for you - €5000 desktops to not-run Crysis). And yet OEMs continue to specify WUXGA screens that the tiny GPUs cannot hope to power, and all that HD clarity will go out the door if you drop down the res - LCDs suffer badly when running resolutions that aren't native or a root of 2 of the native (and the root-2 res for WUXGA is 950*600 - nonstandard and way too small for use!). Why aren't OEMs using high-quality (and potentially cheaper) 1650*1080 or even 1440*900 screens instead?
As for processors... if Intel really gave a damn they should have implemented mobile quads that electrically isolate half the cores when away from AC, halving TDP. Even without this some OEMs should have put in BIOS tools that overclock and underclock CPU/GPUs depending on power status (battery, AC...). Nope. Asus did try, bless 'em, but their lappy isn't even a high-end gaming machine! Desktop-replacers take note. Alienware should be taking notes - they could really do with those features, especially as their machine is supposed to be a gaming lappy - unlike Killer, who isn't afraid to admit their "laptop" is really a small desktop light enough to be carried
At least AW got the ventiltion right... everyone else still has easily-blocked fan ports on the bottom. Why hasn't Clevo tried to put some side intakes on their larger units yet?
guess thay do not bother to read these posts any way
them pictures are to small mite be ok if my desktop was at 640x480, mite even be viewable on my PDA (if it was not for the best of media stuff)