Big Gaming On A Smaller Scale

Big Gaming On A Smaller Scale?

Can upper-mainstream gaming and true mobility coexist? We’ve seen many attempts (perhaps hundreds?) by vendors during the last several years to pack desktop gaming horsepower in a portable package. But performance lagged and did not live up to the claims. We almost got there in 2004 with ATI's Radeon 9600 XT-based Mobility Radeon 9700. Yet, at that time, mobile processing still fell short. Intel released its Core Duo mobile processors two years later, but new games made the elder GPU obsolete. While CPU and GPU manufacturers continuously chase the rainbow of efficiency, technological convergence appears as mythical as the pot of gold at the rainbow’s end.

There have been "desktop-replacement” PCs that are notebooks almost in name only, such as Eurocom’s recently-reviewed Core i7-based D900F Panther. Perhaps light enough to carry from your office to the parking lot, such behemoths appeal mostly to those who want a desktop they can take home rather than a computing device they can take anywhere. This explains the drive by Intel to put Core i7 technology in a smaller, more heat-efficient product suitable for a wider user base, which we recently revealed as Clarksfield.

|