Quad-core ... in a notebook?

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William Maher03 October 2007, 7:48 AM

The specs on this just-launched 5.4KG notebook have to be seen to be believed.


With this much power you could fry an egg - or not: it depends on the power mode chose, we presume.With this much power you could fry an egg - or not: it depends on the power mode chose, we presume.
Call it the tank. Call it the Godzilla of notebooks. Whatever you call it, Pioneer is raising eyebrows with its new Quad Core DreamBook Power D90 SLI. It tips the scales at 5.4KG.

Pioneer's billing it as the "world's fastest notebook", claiming they've cracked the 10,000 mark in the benchmark 3DMark06.

We've yet to verify this ourselves, and rest assured we will, but in the meantime the specs are enough entertainment.

As well as a Quad Core CPU (Core 2 Quad Q7600), there are dual nVidia GeForce Go 7950 GTX video cards (2x512MB DDR3) in SLI configuration, 4GB RAM, and four 200GB Serial ATA Hard Drives. We admire Pioneer's commitment to adequate storage, but 800GB of space in a notebook?

Total price quoted to APC is $7,501 - one of the most expensive prices we've seen quoted in a system for quite some time.

Here's a sampling of what you get:

  • Intel's Core 2 Quad Q7600
  • 17" Widescreen WUXGA+ (1920x1200) TFT Screen
  • Dual nVidia SLI GeForce Go 7950 GTX 2x512MB DDR3 PCI Express Graphics
  • 4GB (2 x 2GB) 667MHz DDR2 RAM
  • 200GB 7,200RPM Serial-ATA
  • 200GB 7,200RPM Serial-ATA
  • 200GB 7,200RPM Serial-ATA
  • 200GB 7,200RPM Serial-ATA
  • Built-in Digital TV Tuner Mini PCI

Expect more once we've run the benchmarks.

Yes, those are four fansYes, those are four fans


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FostWare:

The Dell XPS 1730 with the top Core 2 Duo will outrun this brick... Dual 8700GT's in SLI, Dual 7200rpm HDD and full Santa Rosa support mean the Panasonic will have quad bragging rights, but for half the price the Dell will be a better machine.

That being said, Dell can suck d*nkey b*lls for releasing this six months after I bought my 1710. :~(

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Anonymoo:

Dell released the 1730 ONE month after I bought my 1710... [pissed off]

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Rndom:

fully sick bro

but where's the 8800GTX

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tin:

It's a Clevo OEM laptop. Build quality says "just don't" if my past experience of Clevo is anything to go off.

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eBagel:

Whats the battery life on this monster? Does it lie in the order of a few minutes?

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William Maher:

Good point, we'll definitely be testing battery life along with system performance. It's a little unfair to hammer a system like this for poor battery life - they're really desktop machines. That said, I've been surprised by these notebooks before - the Dell Inspiron 1720, a big, reasonably heavy brick, managed a great result in our battery testing - lasting 3 hours 20 minutes playing DVDs (with a 9-cell batt mind you). That doesn't sound like a long time - but it's WAY better than most of the "portable" notebooks I see in our lab.



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julzzw:

Put it this way, it's really an attempt to put a fully speced Desktop, along with keyboard, mouse and monitor into a single form factor. Kind of like Apple with their iMac's.

Don't get me wrong, its a KILLER machine, but I can't see anyone carrying this brick around.

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blake:

I cant beleive you are complaining about carrying this brick around. 5.4 KG, if thats too heavy for you, is suggest you get your skinny butt to the gym, what are you a man or a mouse? Give me a break 5.4 KG is not that heavy, get over it!

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Developerdude:

Carry on Baggage is only 7kg. So I hope you have a very light bag to carry this in and if you go out to remote areas on Qantas Dash's it is only 4kg's.

Surely they could remove 3 of the hard drives.

Oh and were is the solar panel ? it has everything else.

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Mike Hammond:

I wish there was a solar panel on it! That would me awesome. We need more solar panels in Sydney.

There is a nice challenge to PC makers, lets get a REAL mobile office happening... one with solar panels that Powers itself!!

In the mean time, I'll just have to be content with the Photovoltaics on my roof.

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Anom Amos:

Why did they bother ?
There used to be things called Transportables
Basically a small form factor PC in a carry case with fould out Screen and keyboard. Most didn't have batteries at all.
They were great devices as you could add standard Hard drives and PC cards and used standard ram etc and oddly enough wieghed the same or even less than comparable laptops of the time (24kg) the last best one was a Pentiom 30mhz sl with 4 meg of ram a 30 meg hard drive 12" 256 grey scale orange plasma screen or a 8" 16 colour LCD.
All in a neat fould out box of 10 kg. not including the leather carry case all for the low price of $28,999
Ah the good old days :}
Given todays technology a really nice system could be built in the same way.

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Vico:

How long do the battery's last? 2 hours? lol won't be surprised if they last less....(but still pretty cool lappie)

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John Dee:

My one and only Pioneer laptop was a lemon. It ran very hot, had a mother board that shorted out in a puff of smoke and the third party warranty company they used refused to pay out claiming a power spike. While Pioneer agreed with me that a spike was not the cause I had to pay over $600 to get it fixed. Very unhappy. Also the fans sounded like a MAC truck when they came on. I had to use software to slow down the processor to keep it cool.

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Masalai:

Obviously you picked the wrong CPU. My machine had an AMD which I took to work in PNG & Solomon Islands. Everyone was having concerned panic attacks, saying it would blow up if I didn't mount it on a multifan cooling rack. I felt their machines & would agree, THEY had a great risk of fusion in their name-brand machines. Mine was on for three days whilst I was away in the field with no problems. Alas someone wanted the machine urgently and stole it. I am still with Pioneer but had difficulty getting AMD power and am now waiting for AMD quad 64 notebook from? who-ever can deliver, so in the interim I am suffering without AMD but continuing with Linux

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