Is That A Notebook? MALIBAL's Six-Core, Dual-GPU, Speed Demon

Test Settings

We included the fastest of our previously-tested notebooks in today’s comparison, though it’s really not a fair fight when the X7200 uses a desktop CPU.

In order to make this a fair fight, a desktop platform had to be added to the mix. Gigabyte’s X58A-UD3R was chosen for its comparable quality and features, and we even used MALIBAL’s hard drives and CPU to test it. Manually selecting a 133.0 MHz base clock disabled Gigabyte’s auto-overclock method while simultaneously underclocking that frequency by 1/3 of 1 MHz compared to reference specification.

Here’s where things get a little strange: we didn’t have three matching 4 GB modules on hand, so we used three unmatched DDR3-1600 modules from a previous roundup to match MALIBAL’s DDR3-1333 CAS 9-9-9-24 configuration. Identical internal organization between all three modules made triple-channel mode possible in spite of the differing brands.

Yet, that’s not where the oddness ends. Nvidia’s GeForce GTX 480M graphics processor is nothing other than a 2 GB version of its GeForce GTX 465, underclocked so excessively that no high-end desktop part is slow enough to compete. Since the responsibility for this performance-to-naming disparity rests purely on Nvidia, we didn’t want to punish MALIBAL or its supplier Clevo by comparing it to a vastly-superior GeForce GTX 480 desktop card. Instead, we chose the GeForce GTS 450 for the desktop’s SLI configuration. MSI and ECS’ GTS 450 cards were paired because of their identical clock speeds.

We’re sure that some readers will view this mishmash of components as an intentional crippling of the desktop platform, but we’re equally sure that our benchmark set will prove the validity of these choices.