Gaming performance
2D performance isn't what the Xtreme SL is all about, is it? Dual GeForce Go 7800 GTX cards in pre-configured SLI is where notebook, and we're using that term lightly, performance is currently at.We ran 3DMark05, Far Cry and Doom 3 at 1680x1050, the 'SL's native resolution, together with 4x AA and 8/16x AF, to see how it would stack-up in relation to a reasonably high-end desktop card's performance. ATI's Radeon X1800 XL 256MB provides the comparison benchmarks.
rockdirect has chosen to run the mobile G70 cards at 400MHz core and 1000MHz memory; the latter being 100MHz slower than on the majority of machines shipping with a single GeForce Go 7800 GTX.
SLI performance, which is how the Xtreme SL is configured out of the box, is stellar, comfortably thrashing the desktop X1800 XL. Single-card performance is also pretty damn quick.
An average framerate of 80FPS shows that SLI'd G70s make short work of the Doom 3 engine.
There's something very wrong with SLI performance in Far Cry, though. No matter how the benchmark or drivers were configured, SLI figures were abysmal. SLI works just fine in notebook form, as the first two graphs highlight, so there's something amiss with the drivers/game here.