Eurocom’s Core i7 Notebook: Walking The Panther

Eurocom D900F Panther

Sporting a 17” 1920x1200-pixel display, the D900F is designed to provide moderate portability with little sacrifice in performance. Its 14.4 pound transit weight (including adapter) almost tops the 17” notebook class, but much of that weight is concentrated in the extra cooling and power required for its Core i7-965 Extreme desktop processor. A sore shoulder is the price we pay for performance, and its certainly easier to lug around than a desktop, monitor, and peripherals.

Eurocom provides custom metallic paint on the display lid, highlighted with an inset brushed-aluminum panel. The base is also framed in custom high-gloss paint.

Power and DVI connectors are found on the rear panel, while HDMI is located on the left side. We would have preferred to see both connectors on the back to ease clutter on the sides, but the Core i7 processor’s extensive cooling demanded additional ventilation slots instead.

Desktop users might be surprised to see that high-end notebooks still come with telephone modems, but business travelers might find these useful for sending faxes. A high-speed path to external storage is provided in eSATA, while high-end legacy devices can instead use the 400 megabit FireWire port.

Also found on the left side are Gigabit Ethernet, an ExpressCard slot, a multi-format flash card drive, and the Blu-ray Disk player/DVD burner. Our configuration did not include a TV tuner, though the connector is still present.

The D900F Panther's right side connectors are limited to four USB 2.0 ports.

Front panel connections include line-level audio input, digital audio out, microphone, and headphone jacks. We prefer to see these on the left side, since cable clutter at the front of a notebook can be difficult to manage.

An 11A, 220W power brick almost resembles an actual brick in size, but this sort of large adapter is a requirement for the combination of Core i7-series processor and high-end graphics.

Thomas Soderstrom
Thomas Soderstrom is a Senior Staff Editor at Tom's Hardware US. He tests and reviews cases, cooling, memory and motherboards.
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  • lemonade4
    I really don't understand the point of this review. The two products in here are so different from each other.
    Reply
  • Crashman
    lemonade4I really don't understand the point of this review. The two products in here are so different from each other.
    Second fastest mobile processor vs second-fastest desktop processor, it shows the weakness of mobile CPUs AND the weakness of the latest notebook GPU's.

    It had to be compared to something...and it's the only notebook platform available with Core i7 so you can forget about that type of comparison.

    The real point of picking the MSI notebook was to compare the HD 4850 to the GTX 280m. None of Tom's Hardware's suppliers were able to deliver an HD 4870 notebook.
    Reply
  • the brick: 20 volt x 11 ampere is merely 220 watt?

    I'm not that familiar with those kinds of power supply, but isn't that way to low for these kinds of hardware setups?
    Reply
  • Crashman
    bodyglovethe brick: 20 volt x 11 ampere is merely 220 watt?I'm not that familiar with those kinds of power supply, but isn't that way to low for these kinds of hardware setups?
    Did you look at the power draw numbers on Page 12?
    Reply
  • falchard
    I think the point of the review is to show how much the Eurocon $5000 model is a waste of money. The MSI model should have been so outclassed in every aspect, yet it managed to be competitive at lower power envelops.
    Just look at the game selection, 2 games based on the same engine that heavily favor nVidia Architecture and 1 that is more processor bound.
    Reply
  • mike989
    I think the main problem with this review is, that people forget that Laptop's are designed to be portable, you obviously loose some performance. It’s a compromise between battery life and performance.
    Reply
  • scook9
    These 2 laptop articles today have only made me more and more happy with my Flextronics/Arima W840DI (thats an Alienware M17 for the less informed - I got it barebones though). Coming in at around $2500 now, I have 3870x2, a QX9300 (ES but still latest revision - TY ebay), 4GB DDR3 and 2 320GB 7200RPM hdd's. My system is slightly more capable than the eurocom above for gaming but of course is crushed in the CPU oriented benchmarks (not that mine does badly). Given that I am paying half as much for a smaller and lighter notebook, OK by me.
    Reply
  • sublifer
    Some of the productivity benchmarks are also likely helped by the DF900's RAIDed hdd set up vs the single hdd. Not sure if you forgot about that but I thought it would help to remind people.
    Reply
  • scook9
    well the m17 (w840di) can do raid as well, albeit, only across 2 drives.
    Reply
  • xi1inx
    Eurocom is reputed to lunch big desktop replacement at high cost. The only thing I suppose to be the point on this review, is the hype of the first Core i7 desktop replacement. The worst is the cost of this computer with another g92 derivate whith slighty poor performance. However, you can have 5k$ stover under your hands!
    Reply