Quaddra 64 - PC Advisor (Mar '05)
We’ve made the jump from WorldBench 4 to 5 (see Welcome, page 10) to test all new PCs and notebooks this issue. If we’d told you one month ago that the Quaddra 64 from Rock scored 90 points, you’d think it was rubbish, but now we’re rating it against an entirely different baseline system.
So, the Quaddra is 90 percent as fast as a desktop PC with an Athlon 64 FX-55 processor and 1GB of DDR RAM. Considering the Rock has an Athlon 64 3700+ and only 512MB of DDR RAM, this result is roughly what we’d expect.
A desktop Athlon 64 processor, 17in widescreen and 4.2kg weight make the Rock very much a desktop replacement model. And, since it’s not designed to be used on the move, we weren’t surprised that its battery lasted just over an hour and a quarter.
Backed by a 128MB Mobility Radeon 9700 video card, the excellent screen is more than up to meeting the demands of games and graphics-intensive applications. The 60GB hard drive should be plenty, and backup/home DVD authoring capabilities come in the form of a dual-format DVD burner. Connectivity options stretch to three USB 2.0 ports, a Mini FireWire interface, plus serial, parallel and PS/2.
There’s also a Secure Digital/Multimedia Card reader which is good news for digital photographers. Wireless networking isn’t built in to this laptop, but it’s a less important feature on a desktop replacement.
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VERDICT: |
Rock has put together a notebook with a great screen, good performance and specifications that can’t be faulted. Our major worry is the price tag - you can get equivalent models elsewhere for less. |
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