Eurocom Scorpius

In the world of high-end PC gaming, speed rules. No matter how good your ability is, if your PC can't handle graphics-intensive games, you'll have to deal with critical lag time that could mean the difference between bragging rights and second best. If the lack of speed is your problem, the Eurocom Scorpius has the solution. This monstrous 17-inch laptop is the fastest portable gaming system to hit PC Labs, boasting the latest Intel Core i7 Extreme Edition processor, dual high-end Nvidia GeForce graphics controllers, and dual high-capacity solid-state drives (SSDs). Its feature set is as good as it gets. The downside? You'll have to shell out over $5K for this kind of performance, and its travel weight is downright prohibitive. The chassis is rather dowdy looking too. That said, when it comes to high-end gaming laptops, the Scorpius is the undisputed heavyweight champ and our Editors' Choice for high-end gaming laptops.

Design and Features The Scorpius is based on the Clevo P370EM, a fairly ordinary-looking chassis featuring a black rubberized lid with beveled edges. There's shiny Eurocom logo on the center of the lid and another on the display's lower bezel. Our test model tipped the scales at 9.3 pounds, which is lighter than the Alienware M18x (12.9 pounds). However, once you add in the two 3.3-pound AC power bricks your total travel weight jumps to a staggering 15-plus pounds. (Eurocom suggests using both bricks for optimal performance when operating under an extreme load.) With the Scorpius measuring 16.5-by-11.3?by-1.9 inches (HWD) , and the power bricks measuring 8-by-4.5-by-2 inches each, you'll need a suitcase (preferably with wheels) to haul this rig to and from LAN parties.

The 17.3-inch display is as good as you'll find on any laptop. It has a maximum resolution of 1,920-by-1,080 and is treated with a matte anti-glare coating that is non-reflective. The panel delivers excellent color fidelity, dark blacks, and exquisite image detail. Blu-ray playback was outstanding while watching The Incredible Hulk in full 1080p, and the PC version of Assassin's Creed II looked incredible on the big screen.

A pair of 2-watt Onkyo speakers and a built-in subwoofer provides loud, well-balanced audio output. The subwoofer is small and doesn't bring deep bass tones. but it does contribute a little bottom to the mix.

The spacious traditional-style keyboard is backlit, which gives it a cool look while adequately illuminating the keys for night gaming. You can choose from seven colors and light up three separate zones on the keyboard. There are also seven lighting patterns that you can use to create a keyboard light show, including wave, dancing, tempo, random, breathing, cycle, and flash. The custom mode lets you assign different colors to different zones.

The keys are quiet and comfortable to type on. A numeric keypad sits off to the right and there's a huge one-piece clickpad/mouse button ensemble embedded in the rubberized wrist rest. The clickpad has a flimsy feel to it and is noisy, but it is responsive and gets the job done. A fingerprint reader is positioned on the far right side of the wrist rest.

The left side of the chassis is home to a 9-in-1 card reader slot, a LAN port, and four audio jacks (headphone, microphone, line-in, S/PDIF-out). The right side holds three USB 3.0 ports, an eSATA/USB 2.0 combo port, and a tray-loading optical drive that reads and writes to Blu-ray media and is a multi-format well as DVD/CD burner as well. Around back are HDMI and DisplayPort digital video outputs and a fourth USB 3.0 port.

The Scorpius is equipped with two SSDs for enhanced performance; one is a 256GB Crucial M4 and the other is a 480 GB Intel 520 drive. Windows 7 Home Premium is the OS of choice, and thankfully, the system is free of bloatware. Wireless features include Wi-Fi N and Bluetooth 4.0 radios.

The laptop's internal cooling fans are relatively quiet under a normal load, but once the Scorpius kicks in to high-performance mode (that is, when the CPU and dual GPUs are presented with a heavy load), the fans can get pretty loud. To be fair, this is common with high-performance laptops (particularly those with SLI or Crossfire graphic solutions) and helps prevent damage from overheated components.

Performance You'd expect premium performance from a $5K laptop, and the Scorpius does not disappoint. Its Intel Core i7-3920XM Extreme Edition CPU is a quad-core processor with a 2.9GHz clock speed and a maximum turbo boost speed of 3.8 GHz. With 8 GB of RAM and the added boost from the two solid state drives, the Scorpius posted an impressive PCMark 7 score of 5,317. That's just shy of the 5,641 scored by the Origin EON17 , which uses the same CPU as the Scorpius but has 16GB of memory, and almost 2,000 points higher than the Alienware M18x. Its Cinebench R11.5 score of 7.31 was slightly higher than the EON17 (7.29) and significantly higher than both the Eurocom Leopard 2.0 (5.96) and the M18x (6.52).

The Scorpius handled our multimedia tests with aplomb. It's Handbrake score of 1 minute 7 seconds was 6 seconds behind that of the EON17 but 11 seconds faster than the Eurocom Leopard 2.0 and 8 seconds ahead of the Alienware M18x. It completed the Photoshop CS5 test in 2:54. Again, the EON17 (2:27) beat that score with help from 16GB of RAM, but the M18x (3:56) and Leopard 2.0 (3:20) couldn't keep pace.

Graphics performance was off the charts. The dual Nvidia GeForce GTX 680M adapters working in SLI mode produced 3DMark 11 scores of 13,566 (Entry) and 3,736 (Extreme), both of which are thousands of points higher than any laptop we've tested. The second closest scores belong to the Eurocom Leopard 2.0 (9,135 and 2,199 rexpoectively), which uses a dual Radeon solution in a Crossfire configuration.

The SLI arrangement delivered incredible frame rates on all of our gaming tests. Scores of 199.5 frames per second or fps (at medium quality) and 123.8 fps (at high quality) on the Lost Planet 2 DX9 benchmark test blew every other high-end gaming laptop out of the water. Similarly, its Crysis scores of 109.3 fps (at medium quality) and 79.4 fps (at high quality) show that the Scorpius handles DX10 games with ease. Its performance on the demanding Lost Planet 2 DX11 tests was equally mind-boggling; it churned out a blistering 109.4 fps on the high-quality test. That's more than 40 frames per second faster than the Alienware M18x.

The 8-cell battery, rated for 89 WHr, lasted 2 hours 32 minutes on the MobileMark 2007 battery test, which is quite good for a high-end gaming rig and is almost identical to the Origin EON17 (2:33). The Eurocom Leopard 2.0 and Alienware M18x lasted only 1:48 and 1:38, respectively.

The oft used saying "you get what you pay for" is particularly true in the case of the Eurocom Scorpius. What you get for your $5,297 is the fastest mobile processor available, not one but two of the fastest Nvidia graphics cards on the market, a gorgeous HD display, Blu-ray reading and writing capabilities, and a multi-color backlit keyboard. It may be heavy, and it may not be the flashiest gaming rig out there, but when it comes to sheer graphics horsepower, nothing else comes close. That's why it replaces the Alienware M18x as our Editors' Choice for high-end gaming laptops.

BENCHMARK TEST RESULTS: Check out the test scores for the

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