The Xtreme 770 was our favourite desktop replacement laptop of 2007 and if you just looking at the pictures, you’d be forgiven for thinking that Rock has made very few changes to its flagship gaming laptop since. Looks can be deceiving though, as under the surface, Rock has been busy updating and upgrading almost all of the Xtreme 770’s components (including a new Penryn Core 2 Duo processor), adding a further £400 to its already considerable price.

The model we reviewed came in at £2,200 and had a spec list to make most desktop PCs jealous, making it clear that that Rock still isn’t interested in trivial such matters as budget and practicality with its Xtreme range. If you’ve yet to sample the delights of a 17in desktop replacement, rest assured that at 3.8kg, the Xtreme 770 isn’t a laptop to quickly whip out on the train to work on a spreadsheet.

The wedge-shaped case with its sturdy rubber feet certainly feels most at home on a large desk. As with many high-end laptops, the 770’s fans will sound overworked if the laptop is placed on a soft carpet, lap or duvet – though it must be said that while the fans can get loud, they remain at an acceptably low pitch. If you ever find yourself sans power socket, you’ll be able to wring around an hour of use while gaming, or a couple of hours of light use with Wi-Fi disabled.

Criticising portability and battery life is, of course, to completely miss the point of a laptop like this and the Xtreme 770’s plus points are many. The keyboard is widely spaced and has a snappy responsiveness that exudes quality, making even prolonged typing a pleasurable experience. The smoothly textured finish of the base feels comfortable on the wrists without being too grabby, and a precise and responsive track pad is the icing on the cake.

If we were being picky, the laptop sometimes gets a little too warm for comfort, even when running so undemanding as MS Word, but that’s forgivable when you consider the components housed within…

The Penryn-based Core 2 Duo T9500 sits near the top of Intel’s mobile processor range, with both cores clocked at 2.6GHz. Backed up by 2GB of memory, the Rock should have no problems keeping pace with a good desktop system when it comes to office work.

Perhaps the most significant new addition to the Xtreme 770’s spec list is a brand new graphics card. The GeForce 8800M GTX 512MB is Nvidia’s latest mobile GPU, replacing the old GeForce Go 7950 GTX found in the previous Xtreme.

Call of Duty 2 ran smoothly at full detail settings, even when playing at the demanding 1920 x 1200 native resolution – and with a glossy contrast-enhancing coating, not only did the game run smoothly, the graphics were crisp and engaging too.

Out of the very latest games we ran, Crysis represented the biggest stumbling block for the 770. The game refused to run smoothly at high detail settings, even at the lowly resolution of 1280 x 1024. While this is disappointing for such a premium system, to be fair Crysis is one of the most graphically demanding games ever made, and it still looks attractive at medium detail and modest resolutions,

While DirectX 9 performance is good, the supposed killer feature of the 512MB 8800M GTX is its DirectX 10 compatibility. However, we humbly suggest that sticking with DirectX 9 effects and choosing a high resolution tends to provide the better gaming experience, since the drop in frame rate from activating DX10 effects was considerable.

The drool-worthy toys don’t end there though. The Xtreme 770 is one of the few gaming laptops to come with an HD-DVD drive (Rock recently standardised on HD DVD across its entire laptop range) to make full use of the high resolution widescreen display.

The 1080p trailers for the new Rambo movie looked stunning, with rich colours, deep blacks and razor-sharp explosions – easily on a par with a top class desktop screen. However, the back light, as with most laptop displays, was still a little too visible during dark scenes and a 17in screen will feel a little cramped for watching movies at a comfortable distance. To make matters worse, there's no HDMI port either, so you don't have the option of plugging the 770 into an HDTV for a bigger screen experience.

Of course, visuals are only half of the equation when it comes to films, so you may also want to plug some digital 5.1 or 7.1 surround speakers in to the 3.5mm S/PDIF audio output, or at least use some decent headphones – the quiet, tinny stereo speakers built into the Rock’s base are definitely its weakest link.

A gaming laptop is dependent more on its graphics card than its CPU, so paying a hefty premium for a top of the range processor feels a little too extravagant for our tastes. That said,  if you chose to opt for a much more basic spec list using the configuration list on Rock's website, the refined layout and generally excellent build quality of the Xtreme X770 makes it a great basis for an office or gaming system. This top-of-the-range model, however, is simply a little too rich for most.

Rock Xtreme 770

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disgruntled  - rock rubbish after sale suppor   |15/02/08 1:17 PM Dear sir/madam RE :www.rock-direc t.com After purchasing a laptop from this company i have had endless phone calls and had to return the laptop on a number of occassions. Then followed by a final insult of being balmed for a broken headphone plug in the headphone socket of the machine, of which I am being accused. I did try to plug the headphones into the socket but it would not go in and hence was returned to rock. The laptop is under a three year full warrantee, they now want me to pay for fixing the headphone socket and the transit costs. Due to my refusal they refuse to return the laptop back to me with or without the machine being fixed. The se are the incidents on the laptop since purchase.: C annot remember specific dates. 1:Fir st delivery of laptop, Problem: windows media player jitters when using multiple applications. Laptop sent back to Rock, Laptop lost by CITY LINK on way back to me New laptop issued via Rock insurance. Charged to CITY LINK. 2: New laptop issued to me Problem: machine should have been built with windows vista but came with windows XP. Also Cannot activate the windows xp licence key to use laptop. Rock Informed of issue with headphone jack socket. The headphone cannot be fully inserted into jack hole due to a blockage. La ptop returned to Rock for rebuild of windows Vista. And for fixing the head phone socket. 3: Laptop received with Windows Vista, Problem : cannot access some facilities within Vista and media player and had to rebuild from restore partition myself. Still unable to use headphones due to problem with headphones socket Laptop sent back to rock for fixing. 4:Ro ck now saying it will cost me £50 to fix headphone socket and £28 for returning the laptop which cannot be trusted to perform due to previous experience. I am refusing to pay any more money. Having spoken to rock this morning they will not issue any refund. I do intend to take this matter further as the laptop totals more than £1300.00 di sgruntled Reply | Quote

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