Specifications

Reviews
T
he Envy m:790 is a tour de force
of next-gen hardware including
PCI Express, DDR2/533, and
nVidia’s hot new 12-pipe GeForce
6800 Go for graphics. The widescreen
Envy also manages to squeeze in two
SATA drives running in RAID 0 as well
as 8-channel, 24-bit audio.
Voodoo calls the Envy m:790 an
“entertainment notebook” and thus
gives it a glossy screen that makes
video and games look richer and more
vibrant. The real star though, is the
GeForce 6800 Go, a mobile version
of nVidia’s GeForce 6800 desktop
videocard. The 12-pipe part offers full
Pixel Shader 3.0 support. Unlike earlier
6800 parts, however, the 6800 Go is
a native PCI Express graphics part,
meaning it doesn’t use an internal
bridge chip for conversion from AGP.
In our test system, the GeForce 6800
Go had a 256MB
frame buffer and
clock speeds of
300MHz for both
the core and DDR
memory.
For CPU
power, Voodoo
clamped in a
3.6GHz Pentium
4 560, a proc
not known for
its cool thermal
properties. We
counted no fewer
than four vents
in the bottom of
the Envy to keep
the CPU, GPU,
and sundry other
parts cool. Even
with its fans, the
Voodoo Envy m:790
It’s the Dream Machine in a laptop
MAXIMUMPC JANUARY 200578
GeForce 6800 Go and dual hard drives!
MAGIC EIGHT BALL
PALM READING
Ultra-expensive price and it doubles as a small
space heater.
$6,800, www.voodoopc.com
9
MAXIMUMPC
VERDICT
PCI Express,
DDR2, and a
GeForce 6800—
in a notebook!
UNDER THE HOOD
DISPLAY
STORAGE
AUDIO
BOOT: 52 sec. DOWN: 11 sec.
FINE DETAILS
THE BRAINS
Other Media reader, camera, video-in,
TV-in port
Lap weight 12.5 pounds
Carry weight 14.5 pounds
CPU 3.6GHz Pentium 4E with Hyper-
Threading and Intel 915G chipset
RAM 1GB DDR2/533
I/O ports Four Hi-Speed USB 2.0, two four-
pin FireWire A, CF, Smart Media,
Memory Stick, SD/MMC, S-video,
video in, PS/2, DVI, parallel, serial
Modem Smart Link 56K Voice Modem
LAN Intel Pro/Wireless
Realtek Gigabit Ethernet
Video nVidia GeForce 6800 Go
(300MHz core / 300MHz DDR)
Display 17-inch (1680x1050@32-bit)
Hard drive Two Fujitsu 80GB, 5,400RPM
SATA (Model) MHT2080BH in
RAID 0 using Promise FastTrack
host-based RAID controller
CD-RW/ NEC ND-6500A DVD-/+RW
DVD-ROM double-layer, 8x DVD-/+R, 4x DVD-
/+RW, 2.4x DVD+RW DL, 24x CD-R
Audio chip HD Audio Codec ALC880 Codec,
8-channel support
Windows XP Pro, Voodoo FUEL Software
Essentials, Restore DVD, Voodoo Game Doctor (1
year membership). Ahead Nero Burning ROM
BUNDLE
Our zero-point notebook is a Dell Dimension 8200, and includes a 1.7GHz P-4M
CPU, 256MB DDR266, a 64MB 128-bit DDR GeForce4 Go graphics chipset, and a
5400rpm IBM Travelstar 60H hard drive. *Our notebook Photoshop 7.0 test differs
from our new desktop Photoshop test.
0 20% 40% 60% 80%
P E R C E N T F A S T E R
ZERO
POINT
SCORES






150
720
sec
91 sec
549 sec
63.4 fps
235 min
100%


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
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





15.5
“
2.25“
Envy puts out some serious heat.
Aesthetically, the Envy features a
custom paint job that color shifts
under certain lighting. Voodoo
embedded a video camera in the lip
of the bezel but the camera has prob-
lems working in low- and moderate-
light situations. As an example, in
normal office lighting, we found that
the camera captured nothing but
4,096 shades of black.
What we really wanted to know,
though, was how the Envy stacks
up against Dell’s XPS, the reigning
champ of portable power and the
current king of benchmark perfor-
mance in the Maximum PC Lab.
Because the XPS uses a 3.4GHz
Pentium 4 Extreme Edition with
2MB of L3, it’s hard to directly com-
pare the graphics solutions. Instead,
we have to look at the whole plat-
form, and the results are a mixed bag.
In Quake III Arena and 3DMark2001,
the XPS came out on top by a slight
margin, probably because of the
P4EE’s larger L3 cache.
But it could be argued that per-
formance in today’s games is more
important than performance in
games from the last millennium.
In these benchmarking categories,
the Envy is the decisive winner.
It’s roughly 30 percent faster in the
punishing 3DMark05, cranking
out a score of 2,988. In the kinder,
gentler 3DMark03, the Envy runs
roughly 50 percent faster than the
XPS. Translation: The Envy and its
GeForce 6800 Go will be faster for
any current or next-generation game
than Dell’s XPS—and most other lap-
tops, for that matter.
In our application performance
tests, the contest was more closely
matched. Because SYSmark2002 has
issues running under WinXP SP2, we
couldn’t get the benchmark to run on
the Envy. This is not a knock against
the notebook; it just confirms that it’s
time for us to retire SYSmark2002 as
a benchmark. (We’ll soon be rolling
out a brand-new benchmarking suite,
so stay tuned.) In Adobe Photoshop
7.0, both notebooks tied. In Premiere,
however, the XPS’ Pentium 4 Extreme
CPU put it ahead of the Envy by
about 3 percent. Again, that’s pretty
close. The upshot is that the Envy is
the fastest gaming notebook we’ve
seen to date, although the XPS still
manages to hold its own in applica-
tion performance and some older
games thanks to its P4EE CPU.
At $6,800 with custom paint job,
the Envy is almost $3,000 more
expensive than the XPS. That hurts—
but at least it buys you the fastest
gaming laptop on the planet.
—GORDON MAH UNG
11.75“