AVADirect's Clevo X7200 Redux: AMD 6970M CF Takes the Crown
by Dustin Sklavos on June 2, 2011 3:05 AM ESTConclusion: Nothing Wrong with the Radeon
As far as the Clevo X7200 itself goes, our previous conclusions still apply: budget be damned, if you simply must have the fastest, most powerful notebook on the market, here it is. While Clevo's dogged persistence in using this awful keyboard feels like God's punishment for a hateful world, and the notebook itself is easily big and heavy enough to use as a murder weapon, it's also more powerful than...well, anything. It's certainly in contention with a lot of the desktops I review, and that's saying something.
The real subject of our review today is the AMD Radeon HD 6970M, specifically in CrossFire, and this is a big winner. After a long dry spell of mobile graphics having a very hard time catching up with their desktop counterparts, the 6970M at least makes a decent stride towards closing the gap. AMD's much improved CrossFire scaling pays off in spades here, too: generally you'll get close to 100% performance improvement with the second GPU (at least at higher quality settings), and that's outstanding.
Thermals for the X7200 are mostly unchanged from last time, as Intel's Gulftown processor consistently impresses in both this shell and on the desktop. Power consumption is a little bit up on the battery, a little bit down on the mains, and ultimately inconsequential: this isn't a notebook you're going to run on the battery.
If you simply must have the fastest notebook gaming performance, it stands to reason a pair of GeForce GTX 485Ms will probably (however slightly) beat the AMD Radeon HD 6970M CrossFire solution. Of course, at AVADirect you'll pay dearly for the privilege: an extra $638 more than the two 6970Ms for what'll be at best around 10% more performance and certainly nothing that's going to break any games wide open. That's not AVADirect gouging you, either; a visit to Sager reveals a similar premium, and CyberPowerPC doesn't even offer the GTX 485M.
AMD has had a storied history with their high performance mobile parts, oftentimes struggling to actually get them to market. That history is over: the 6970M is here, it's available, and it's fast. Get two.
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jackpro - Sunday, June 5, 2011 - link
It would be nice to know if the screen is aAS-IPS, cPVA, H-IPS, IPS, MVA, P-IPS, P-MVA, PVA, S-IPS, S-PVA, TN
as it would really help with understanding the colour accuracy possible.
like this excellent site does
http://pricespy.co.nz/category.php?k=393
JarredWalton - Monday, June 6, 2011 - link
If you know anything about laptops, you should also be aware that 99% of them are TN panels. HP's DreamColor upgrade is IPS (S-IPS I think, but maybe some other variant). Lenovo has IPS on a couple options. I don't believe anything else is currently using IPS on a laptop/notebook, though several tablets are going that route (iPad 1/2 and ASUS tablets).dmichelstexas - Monday, June 6, 2011 - link
Showing my ignorance of some hardware situations here so please allow me to apologize in advance if this is as dumb a question as I'm afraid it might be, but is it feasible to replace the reportedly poor keyboard on this machine with something better? Is that even an option, and if so what are the options? ThanksJarredWalton - Monday, June 6, 2011 - link
Not that I'm aware of; Clevo makes alternative keyboards that you could use, but the layouts are for different languages (i.e. German or Asian keyboards are options I think). To get a proper layout with a regular numkey area, you'd need to custom build your own, and I'm not quite sure how one would go about doing that.