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 ESTIntroducing the Clevo X7200 UPS
If you're after raw performance in a transportable notebook, clearly the Clevo X7200 can deliver. We've shattered every notebook benchmark in our test suite—hardly surprising since the system manages to keep pace with full size desktops! But some will inevitably ask, "What about battery life?" We ran our standard set of tests just for fun, because let's be honest: no one expects a DTR system to deliver great battery life, and when you start stuffing multiple GPUs and desktop CPUs into a notebook the battery life is laughable. Ready for the shortest battery life result we've ever measured?
Yes, we top out at a maximum battery life of 43 minutes—doing nothing beyond sitting at the desktop. We've set the CPU to 0% maximum (i.e. run at the minimum clock speed), the display is at 100nits (42% brightness), and the HDD/SSDs are set to power down after 1 minute of inactivity. So we're essentially looking at an integrated UPS (Uninterruptible Power Supply). Do some Internet surfing and battery life drops to 38 minutes, and we come up with just over a half hour of video playback time. Even the old D900F with a desktop i7-965 gets 33% more battery life per Wh, but then it only supports a single GPU. Similarly, the W880CU with a single 480M and a puny 42Wh battery bests the X7200. With .49 minutes per Wh, you’d have to carry around a massive 240Wh battery just to surf the Internet for a couple hours…but it would be great exercise!
If you're curious about the size of the power brick, that's a 120W power adapter from the Toshiba A665-3DV. It's relatively large compared to many bricks but dwarfed by the X7200 adapter! Dimensions on the Clevo power brick are 8.13" x 4.44" x 1.94" (L x W x H). We don't have a scale that's accurate for objects this size, but we'd estimate the weight at close to three pounds.
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Iketh - Thursday, October 7, 2010 - link
Very enjoyable read... thanks a bunch!!Sabresiberian - Thursday, October 7, 2010 - link
I'm not interested in a high-end rig that has to limit its own capabilities to keep from overloading itself. There is no point in paying the nose-bleed price for the extra power the SLI'd 480Ms have if they can't deliver more than the Crossfired Mobility Radeons.;)
JarredWalton - Thursday, October 7, 2010 - link
Furmark is hardly a realistic example of power requirements. I consider it more of a test of whether or not a system will outright crash, or fail gracefully. I'd prefer to see the power brick limit things rather than shutting off and leaving you on battery power, though.5150Joker - Thursday, October 7, 2010 - link
The X7200 also shuts off during long gaming sessions that push both the CPU and GPU. The 480M SLi's are a major fail: They're very expensive, they run hot (as evidenced by your furmark results and confirmed on NBR) and they don't outperform Crossfire 5870s by much at all.marraco - Thursday, October 7, 2010 - link
The hard disk is a waste of weigth, money and energy.Once you have 500 Gb of SSD, just use an extenal HD for back up.
marvdmartian - Thursday, October 7, 2010 - link
That's no moon. It's a space station!nitrousoxide - Thursday, October 7, 2010 - link
Such thing should never appear in this universe...because it even overwhelmed the power of Alienware :)AVADirect - Thursday, October 7, 2010 - link
:)Harmattan - Thursday, October 7, 2010 - link
Sure, you can buy three similarly-powerful desktops for the price of this laptop. However, from years of owning both high-end desktops and laptops, there is nothing like having the versitility and compact efficiency of a DTR/gaming laptop. Just the amount of engineering, design and testing that goes into a top-end gaming laptop will forcibly make them much more expensive than a desktop (which is essencially a bunch of components bolted into a metal box.) On a simpler level, it's just amazing to think you can have something that is 5-10x more powerful than a gaming console in a self-contained 15lb package.
Would be very interesting to see a review of this DTR's closest competitor in brand and GPU, the m17x R2 with 5870 Crossfire.
kallogan - Thursday, October 7, 2010 - link
I'm idling at 25W with a P9600/ 9600MT/15,4" and two hard drives with max brightness. I'm looking for a mainstream laptop which can idle at 15W so 105W not for me ;)