AVADirect Clevo X7200: Six Cores, SSD RAID, and GTX 480M SLI Yields World's Fastest DTR Notebook
by Jarred Walton on October 7, 2010 12:30 AM ESTClevo X7200: This is your games on 480M SLI
Take the fastest desktop CPU and two of the fastest mobile GPUs, stuff them in a 17.3" chassis with a monster power brick, and you've got the Clevo X7200 in a nutshell. While we still question the sanity of spending this much money on a gaming notebook, if you have the necessary funds or a "need" for serious gaming performance—and you don't want a desktop or even a mini-ITX gaming system—the X7200 is the new champion. Most of our previous high-end laptops were tested prior to our latest gaming suite, but let's put things in perspective first by looking at how gaming performance stacks up at our high detail gaming settings relative to other recently reviewed laptops.
We're running at non-native 900p for comparison; the X7200 pushes 50% to 125% more frames per second relative to the W880CU with a single 480M. It also manages 50% to 150% higher performance than the old GTX 280M. We also ran a couple other gaming tests that we haven't widely benchmarked, Mafia II and Metro 2033; we used the built-in benchmarks on both.
Maxing out all the graphics options, Mafia II still manages to run at 52FPS at the native 1080p; turn on High PhysX and that drops to 33.3. Metro 2033 isn't quite so forgiving; DX11 and "High" detail results in a reasonable 49FPS, but bump up to Very High and enable antialiasing and you're looking at high-teens for frame rates (we measured 19.2FPS). If you want to max things out and enable PhysX, Metro 2033 drops to just 17.3FPS—and that's on the beefiest laptop hardware around. That said, the difference between "High" and "Very High" isn't enough to warrant the performance hit, and antialiasing in a demanding game like Metro isn't a luxury you can afford.
Can you play games at maximum detail on the X7200? Yes, yes you can! In fact, it's so much faster than most notebooks (hello: an average of 4x faster than the Toshiba A665-3DV, which topped our midrange notebook performance charts) that we're going to move up to comparisons with desktop systems to really see what it can handle.
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Candide08 - Saturday, October 9, 2010 - link
Some companies, like mine, are no longer buying workstations. We are issued "desktop replacement" laptops, like HP 88740W with dual i7 quad cores and 8GB of memory. Throw in Virtual-Box and run one or two other VM's and its workable as a full function portable desktop with 1920 x 1200 screen resolution and a 5.9 Win 7 rating.The 8740W is not quite a spec'd-out as this, but its in the same league.
Yes, its heavy. Yes, the power brick is huge. Yes, I bought a rolling laptop case.
crackedwiseman - Thursday, October 7, 2010 - link
Honestly, why not go for a desktop GPU with those sort of thermals? You could quadfire a mobile Juniper GPU, or use a vanilla, normally binned 5870 and still come in with the same power draw.Meaker10 - Sunday, October 10, 2010 - link
Because:A: It's easier to cool two separate sources of heat.
B: Moduals are of the smaller size are made already with mobile GPUs.
C: Quadfire would take up more space and would suck for efficiency.
D: Desktop drivers do not have some of the mobility options.
E: Mobile 480M crossfire is faster than a single desktop 5870.
rsgeiger - Thursday, October 7, 2010 - link
I forgot if you guys ever got a review unit from Alienware, or are going to in the near future, but a comparison of the dual GPU notebooks out there would be fun to see.Otherwise great review! I really read closely this time the Powerdraw, heat, and noise comparisons. This always the most important buying decision I have when buying DTRs.
JarredWalton - Thursday, October 7, 2010 - link
We looked at the previous generation M980NU with QX9300 and SLI GTX 280M, which is pretty similar to the older M17x. Now M17x is doing up to i7-940XM, with either HD 5870 CF or GTX 285M SLI. (5870 CF is going to be faster than 285M SLI by around 20-25% I think, but no PhysX or CUDA.) Anyway we updated our gaming benchmarks and don't typically have the opportunity to rerun new tests on previous reviews, which is why we focused on comparisons to desktops.You can always get a rough estimate by comparing 3DMarks, but it's pretty safe to say the M17x needs a new revision before it's going to come anywhere near the performance of the X7200. Pricing for a maxed out M17x is currently $3900 without the RAID 0 C300 SSDs, so $5000 total with 5870 CF and 8GB RAM. But you have to look at what you're missing: 480M SLI is quite a big jump from 5870 CF, and the i7-980X is, as I mention in the text, about 50% faster than even the i7-940XM. Alienware does have a much nicer LCD panel, though: 1920x1200 with RGB LED backlighting.
Rasterman - Thursday, October 7, 2010 - link
CPU wise the 980x is 136% faster than the 940xm.http://www.cpubenchmark.net/high_end_cpus.html
5150Joker - Thursday, October 7, 2010 - link
It's not "much faster" than an M17x with 5870m Crossfire + 940xm. If you look at NBR, you'd see that the 480M SLi barely outpaces the 5870s by a mere 500-800 3dmark vantage points. That's basically nothing. When both are overclocked, the X7200 again does not surpass the M17x, they are about even.The biggest advantage the X7200 has is the desktop processor but there's a program called ThrottleStop that allows end users to manipulate TDP/TDC + multiplier settings for the 940xm in the M17x. I've gotten the 940xm as high as 3.8 GHz on all 4 cores (8 threads) so again, the X7200's desktop processor advantage is diminished even if it is 6 cores.
You have to keep in mind the X7200 is severely limited by it's 300W PSU as you discovered so there's no real room for overclocking. One of the first users to purchase the X7200 on NBR discovered that his 480m SLI + 980x setup was shutting off during the Mafia 2 benchmark and he was running the system at stock!
JarredWalton - Thursday, October 7, 2010 - link
I'm out of town now so I can't test other scenarios, but I ran every benchmark several times and the only thing to ever overload the power brick was Furmark. All the other tests I saw topped out at power draws of around 310W, but it's possible some combination could get that higher. I'd like to know exactly what others have seen overload the PSU, though. Note that I did get beta drivers from NVIDIA for testing (260.80 I think -- the WHQL drivers should release "soon" according to NVIDIA), and that might be why I didn't experience other overloads.As for performance comparisons, you can't cite 3DMark Vantage as a meaningful item. I include it as a quick point of reference, but it's not a game and it doesn't really behave like most games. Simply getting GPU PhysX to work should boost the score I posted by 1000 or more, but it's ultimately the games that matter.
For gaming, the X7200 with 480M SLI beats the tar out of everything else in the notebook world. If you had a similar X7200 with HD 5870 CF, the difference would be smaller (thanks to having a fast CPU), but with a large cross section of games it's pretty clear 480M is faster. It's also more power hungry by a large amount, though, so I can understand going the 5870 CF route. It's too bad that the only way to do get 5870 CF is the M17x or Clevo X8100, since that also gives up the desktop CPU and you get areas where you're CPU limited.
Meaker10 - Sunday, October 10, 2010 - link
PhysX scores are not valid results for comparisons.The original intention of the test was for 3rd party physX cards at showing the potential in the future, even then the scores were not valid.
Nvidia twisted this and while it has not been removed, PhysX scores will not appear in comparison searches unless you specifically choose them to. They will never appear in the hall of fame.
Futuremark recommends that reviewers keep PhysX off when using 3dmark to review graphics cards.
silverblue - Thursday, October 7, 2010 - link
Ouch... :) I'd be surprised if mine is over 25lb, though it's hardly a power machine. I'd love to have a play with a 50lb desktop... see if the power/weight ratio is favourable. ;)