Reviews / Xtreme SL Pro - 3D World
» 3D World says 7/10

Stretching the limits of laptop size. Rock’s effort is also a behemouth in specification terms.

Should you have the compulsion to work anywhere other than your desk look away now because the Xtreme SL Pro is a large, heavy lump of silver plastic. At a shade under 7kg it’s by far the heaviest machine on test.

A 20in monitor might not look that large on your desk, but when it’s hinged onto a laptop, it’s a truly excessive size. The resolution maxes out at 1,680 x 1,250 (due to lack of development in 20in panels compared to 17in iterations), leaving the SL Pro trailing several other laptops despite all that space to play with. The machine itself certainly benefits from the over-sized screen, though by increasing the display size the space available in the base is also increased with room for a manner of components.

Excitingly Rock has squeezed in a pair of overclocked GeForce 7950GTX cards running in SLI – which promise the fastest graphical performance you can currently ask of a laptop – along with a pair of swift 100GB hard drives. Sadly however, this high-end performance is marred by a distinctly low-end processor. The Turion TL-60 running a pair of cores at 2GHz just doesn’t have enough muscle to accompany its graphics cards. (Processor variations are not available under build-to-order.) Benchmark results reflect this component mismatch, although its 3Dmark 06 rating is strong in certain cases, you could be better off opting for the XPS – which offers a single graphics card – because its processor and super-fast RAM means its performance is that little bit greater.

This isn’t the best looking laptop and its scale makes it the most expensive in our test, but it still packs a powerful punch. The 7200rpm drives are as quick as they are massive and that 20in screen does offer some benefits over a 17in display. It’s certainly worth a look.

3D World awards the rock SL Pro 7/10