Voodoo Envy M:855 Part 1 - Athlon 64 DTR and Mobility Radeon 9600 Pro
by Andrew Ku on November 4, 2003 5:45 PM EST- Posted in
- Laptops
Voodoo Envy M:855 - Hexing up a Storm
Intuitively, it may appear to be odd that a seemingly obscure system vendor would be the first to showcase production samples of new technology, particularly when it comes to processors. However, the reason that Voodoo is able to do so is because of their small company size (in comparison to the big three: IBM, Dell, and HP/Compaq). As we mentioned before, when it concerns mobile technology, technology that is pertinent usually pops up about a quarter or so after the desktop market receives it. This is the case with the Pentium 4 and the Pentium 4-M, Athlon XP and Athlon XP-M, and so forth...
The reason that we don’t see the big three hitting the market with Athlon 64 notebooks now is exactly due to the reason they are big. This large market share ends up translating into more time spent qualifying any upcoming products (and to more stringent requirements), as well as all the bureaucracy accompany a large corporation. This extremely thorough process is explicitly in place because no large company wants to be the first to take that possibly fatal risk. Their reputation, customer loyalty, product perception, etc… are all up for grabs in a sense. All of this is just extenuated when it comes to the mobile side, as people tend to be more fickle in when it comes to how much money will be spent for what on the most part will be a non-user serviceable/upgradeable system.
On the other side, smaller companies have less bureaucracy to run through the mills, and at that same time, they have a less stringent qualification process. These companies, after all, are often built towards the fringe markets, and their reputation, which goes hand in hand, is centered on bringing forth the cutting edge.
For those unfamiliar with Voodoo, they are a Canadian based company that recently has been generating more press than their biggest competitor (Alienware), due to a slew of interesting products of late. It is interesting to note that Voodoo was the first system vendor to use a 7200RPM hard drive in a widely available notebook (the M:355). Their current mobile line is completely of ATI design, which isn’t a bad time to be, and when we heard about the M:855 a while back, this definitely caught our eyes. Equipped with an Athlon 64 desktop replacement processor and Mobility Radeon 9600 Pro, this is a desktop replacement of a variety in current short supply.
The New Voodoo Envy M:855
Click to enlarge.
As time as passed since the Athlon 64 official debut, we are now at the tips of the iceberg concerning Athlon 64 for notebooks (different from the mobile version of Athlon 64).
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Madcat207 - Tuesday, November 4, 2003 - link
No offence, but bad review.The Voodoo was put up against no real competition, so of course it won. Why did anandtech not bother with getting a Sager 5680 or 8890 to compare with, since those are P4 machines with real 9600 pros....
TheInvincibleMustard - Tuesday, November 4, 2003 - link
1) Is it hard to have the product in question (ie, the one being reviewed) highlighted in some way on the graphs? It can't be that hard to do the bar in red or whatever. Granted, when comparing the M10 to the Go5650, there's not as much sense, but when comparing 10 or so CPU's it'd sure be nice to quickly identify what stands where.2) Should the X2 performance scores with 4xAA/8xAF be taken with a grain of salt? Why does the M10 increase approx 25% going from 1024x768 to 1280x1024 ... ?
Adul - Tuesday, November 4, 2003 - link
The battery life performance will come in part 2 of this review.AlexWade - Tuesday, November 4, 2003 - link
Deat AT:What is the battery life on this notebook? I but notebooks based on battery life, not performence.