KribiBench, WAV, Raytracing and HDTach
A close-knit affair in the Kribibench, the software renderer. Intel CPUs usually do well here. We reckon the GeForce FX Go5200 64MB card may be holding the Dell's peformance back here.
What do the words 'desktop replacement' mean. In our view it's the ability to seamlessly transfer from a bulky case and heavy CRT to a powerful laptop without noticing much of a performance difference. If we hold that definition to be valid, Voodoo PC's Envy m:855 fits our bill. Just don't expect it to match a Radeon 9800XT's performance.
Turning your favourite DVDs into smaller XvID-compressed files is no problem, either. Think of the Voodoo as a desktop Athlon 64 Model 3200+ CPU with just a touch of performance knocked off. That still makes for a blazingly fast PC in non-3D mode - as long as you keep it plugged into the mains. Battery power reduces the Athlon 64's speed to 800MHz, and consequently slower performance.
The HDTach graph is equally impressive, no doubt helped by the 60GB 7200RPM hard drive. Our only concern centres around the high CPU usage, which is now a 'feature' of the VIA K8T800 chipset.