Review: Rock Xtreme CTX Pro laptop

The Rock Xtreme CTX Pro is an incremental upgrade to the Rock laptop (confusingly with the same name) we reviewed in August 2006. The only difference is that it houses a higher resolution screen and Nvidia's new laptop graphics card, the Geforce Go 7950GTX.

The Geforce Go 7950GTX has 512MB of video Ram. It is a 90nm, 278 million transistor chip, identical to the Go 7900GTX except that it is clocked at 575MHz core and 700MHz memory as opposed to 500MHz core and 600MHz memory.

All the other laptop specifications remain the same as the older Rock model. The Intel Core Duo T7600 is still the fastest mobile processor on the market. It runs at 2.33GHz with a hefty 4MB L2 cache. In addition to 1GB of Ram, a top-end Hitachi 7200rpm serial ATA (Sata) hard disk is fitted.

Our review sample came with an LCD screen with a native resolution of 1,920x1,200, which is higher than the 1,680x1,050 in the old Rock. However, it disappointed us because of back-light bleeding from the bottom. The display was also dimmer than we'd hoped for and the brightness controls had limited effect. If you're paying this much for a notebook, you'd expect the display to be top-notch.

The plastic finish of the chassis feels solid while the vast array of function buttons and the mini LED display are useful. Rather bizarrely, the 6 key was visibly lower than the other keys, but the keyboard does the job well and feels reasonably firm. The numeric keypad pad takes some getting used to though, and we repeatedly hit the Enter key accidentally during use.

A 1.3megapixel webcam is embedded into the case just above the LCD and produces a slightly dark, but overall good-quality picture. The lack of a lens-cover or indicator light on the webcam won't please those who feel paranoid that the camera might be turned on without them knowing.

Nvidia's new graphics card pushed the laptop to 6,095 in PCmark05 and 9,683 in 3Dmark05. These are the best scores we've ever seen in a laptop and it represents an 11 per cent improvement on the Go 7900GTX in 3DMark05. You see how this compares with other notebooks we've tested by visiting our benchmarking site.

One problem we noted when we first tested the notebook was that a rash of artefacts popped up on the screen during testing. They appeared as small squiggles all over the desktop and reminded us of the old days when artefacts appeared if you tried to heavily overclock a graphics card in order to squeeze out extra performance.

Since the Geforce Go 7950GTX is nothing other than an overclocked Go 7900GTX, we feel confident as to the source of our suspicions. When we rebooted the machine the artefacts disappeared and didn't reappear throughout the remainder of our testing. The screenshot in our image gallery shows the problem in action.

When questioned about this, Rock said it would offer customers a new notebook if it happened "within the first 30 days of ownership provided it wasn't software caused or simply fixed". Rock went onto suggest it might be a graphics card heatsink problem.

Interestingly, when writing this review we received an almost identical Geforce Go 7950GTX laptop from Evesham that suffered from the same problem. We're currently waiting for an official response from Nvidia.

The graphics card consumes a maximum of 45W, which Nvidia says is identical to the 7900GTX Go. This, combined with the higher resolution screen, may be the reason for the disappointing DVD playback time of 90 minutes, only just long enough to watch a relatively short film. The older machine had a DVD playback time of 115 minutes.

One further criticism we have is the noise generated by the notebook. Even when in an idle state the fans would suddenly whir up creating quite a racket.

The notebook weighs 5.15kg, including the power supply, so portability definitely isn't its strong point, but it does have the fastest desktop-replacement components money can buy and the price reflects this.

Although Rock is happy to replace any notebooks that exhibit the kind of artefacts our review model temporarily suffered from, those interested in buying would do well to hold off until we find out whether the problems we've been having with both the Rock and Evesham notebooks turn out to be a problem with all notebooks running the Geforce Go 7950GTX card.

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