AVADirect's Clevo P170HM with GeForce GTX 485M: High-End You've Been Waiting For
by Dustin Sklavos on February 28, 2011 7:15 PM ESTSandy Bridge: Breaking Hearts and Records
We've had a chance to look at some faster Sandy Bridge kit previously, but the Intel Core i7-2720QM we requested in our review unit promises to supplant the commonly seen older i7-720QM and i7-740QM floating around in the marketplace today. Those chips sport Turbo clocks that peak on a single core below what the 2720QM is capable of on all four cores, so our application testing is liable to be a bloodbath for last generation's gaming notebooks.
Even ignoring the way PCMark tends to skew in favor of SSD-equipped notebooks, it's still impressive to see the Core i7-2720QM take nearly every chip on the block to task. Only the Clevo X7200, with its hex-core, 130-watt i7-980X is able to best it: last generation's i7-820QM can't catch up.
Futuremark's 3DMark suite bears out the equally improved performance of NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 485M: it trounces the 480M and Mobility Radeon HD 5870 by extension, and is only eclipsed by the X7200 with its pair of 480Ms in SLI. Of course, if you were completely insane you could always order the X7200 with two 485Ms and get in the mobile space what was, at least for a time (and arguably may still be), one of the best desktop GPU pairings available. Sure it'll cost you an extra $1,400 for the upgrade over the stock 460M, but that's still an awful lot of performance to be able to pick up and move.
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Hrel - Tuesday, March 1, 2011 - link
There a few notebooks I'd REALLY love to see reviewed.Clevo: P151HM1, W150HN. Both with 1080p screen. The first has the GTX460M and the second has the GT540M. I already have a solid idea of performance with the given parts, but I'm very interested in speaker quality, chassis quality, keyboard quality. Things Jarred, you tend to hit on well. Unfortunately these still aren't available in actual stores so the only way I can find this stuff out is a really good review; or buy it and take that risk.
Compal: I don't know the model number cause I can't find it anywhere anymore but a 15.6" 1080p Compal with the GT540M and Sandy Bridge.
What are the chances of getting these in house for a review? And what kind of time frame would we be looking at? Thanks!
Hrel - Friday, March 4, 2011 - link
Jarred! Why have you ignored my comment?SimKill - Tuesday, March 1, 2011 - link
"Begging the question" in your first paragraph isn't what you think it means.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Begging_the_question
Otherwise, a great article!
JarredWalton - Tuesday, March 1, 2011 - link
Interesting. I've never heard this before, and honestly it strikes me as one of those areas where the language has changed and the "modernized" usage has become accepted. The thing is, to beg (ask earnestly; entreat) for a question hardly seems to be a clear translation of "petitio principii" (petitioning for a principle point). Honestly, I'm not going to change my usage on this one, simply because I have never heard it used before as "assuming the initial point" -- certainly not by anyone I know! I suppose maybe if I were a lawyer it would have come up before.jcompagner - Tuesday, March 1, 2011 - link
I am waiting and waiting for the real high end, ok there is one already there the 17" of apple but i rather have a "normal" windows laptop but then as apple does in a high end 16:10 configuration (1920x1200)alephxero - Tuesday, March 1, 2011 - link
It seems kind of disingenuous to list the starting price but not the configured price. Looking at AVADirect's site the price for the reviewed model is in the $2600 range, a far cry from the 1600 base price.JarredWalton - Tuesday, March 1, 2011 - link
You're correct, and we usually list the configured pricing. I'll update the table.bennyg - Thursday, March 3, 2011 - link
Powafulest GPU feasible for multimedia performance... check.CPU good enough to run it with room to spare... check.
Enough of a thermal solution to keep them both from burning up... check.
Great quality LCD panel...
Even if all Clevo focus on is incremental improvement in their products, like remedying the tiny battery of the w8x0cu designs, why would they settle for a mid-range screen on a top-of-the-range laptop...
-1 buyer of this laptop as a result.
Also, just give me manual graphics switching already! I don't care about Optimus and it's performance tradeoffs - to have the same hardware present and capable that cheaper/smaller laptops use to run >5hrs on battery - but no interface to use it - is just silly. I would get great benefit out of this feature, I don't use my laptop just for multimedia.