Eurocom M98NU XCaliber Gaming Notebook Review

Hard-core gamers are all about squeezing the best performance they can out of their rigs, while ensuring that the visual quality of the games they play are at the highest settings possible. As desktop PCs typically have access to higher-end components than notebooks--and are also far more configurable, upgradable, and tweakable--the vast majority of gamers opt for desktop systems. But with the increased performance potential of today's notebook components and their portability (LAN party anyone?), high-end gaming notebooks are becoming increasingly popular with the gaming crowd.

That said, you still won't see the same performance potential from a gaming notebook over a gaming desktop; and you'll typically pay more for the same level of performance from a notebook. Take for example the Eurocom M98NU XCaliber gaming notebook. Not counting the just-launched Intel Core i7 Mobile processor family, the M98NU XCaliber uses the speediest mobile CPU available (the 2.53GHz Intel Core 2 Extreme QX9300) and a pair of the fastest mobile GPUs (the Nvidia GeForce GTX 280M in SLI mode). The M98NU XCaliber also comes with 8GB of 1333MHz DDR3 SDRAM, two hard drives (one of which is an SSD), a Blu-ray drive, an 18.4-inch display, an integrated webcam, a biometric fingerprint reader, Bluetooth, and a 7-in-1 card reader. With such a fully-loaded system, its lofty $5,720 price tag is somewhat understandable.