Impressed

Good grief. I had a feeling that this laptop would be powerful, but I didn't really expect how powerful it was until I ran the full PCMark 7 suite.

My M17x R3 blew the doors off of my desktop i7 system with a score of 3902, and the desktop coming in at 2768.

M17xR3 - 2860QM, 6990M, 4GB DDR3-1600, 500GB 7200 RPM HDD
Desktop - i7 930, GTX 470, 4GB DDR3-1600, 1TB 7200 RPM HDD

It beat the desktop in every single category, some by leaps and bounds. One thing that I did notice, and I don't really have the stomach to run the full suite again, but I noticed that my HDD related scores on the 1st pass were a little lower in areas, and the 2nd and 3rd pass the scores were higher. So there's a possibility that the 3902 score could come up some.

My desktop is basically useless right now

 

Im sure if you enabled turbo mode the desktop would still beat it.

 

The desktop CPU is still performance wise probably better, also if it can be overclocked a little bit.
The GPU is the latest and here it is no surprise that it is a little better than the desktop.

 

Have you tried running 2 "video encoding" processes (at the same time) on both machines?
My R3 slows down unless I change affinity. :|

 

Wait til you upgrade your HDD with an SSD. That will turbocharge your laptop.

 

What he said.

Also the HDD scores may have been affected by the CPU, which is why it was higher on pass2 and 3. I know if I run itunes while using Crystal Disk Mark, the numbers will be slightly higher. Run itunes playing a song, and the increase in CPU freq will affect the HDD benchmark because now it's using a CPU at a higher freq at the start. Least thats one of the observations I've made.

Also running wprime 1 thread, putting a 12% load on the CPU boosted Crystal Disk Mark HDD/SDD benchmarks. Same idea as the itunes, but a little higer load.

 

that 500Gb seagate you have...that isn't one of those Hybrid SSD drives is it ?

 

Hey guys, thanks for the replies on this, I went to bed last night after the benchmarks a little puzzled.

The i7 930 only has a max turbo frequency of 3.06 and that was enabled, I didn't have HT enabled which could account for some performance differences. So, aside from default chip configurations, neither were OC'd, and the laptop had HT enabled whereas the desktop did not.

Regarding the desktop CPU being better than the mobile CPU, I'm not sure if I agree. Every benchmark that I've seen show that the mobile CPU is faster. Can someone provide me a link showing otherwise?

Regarding putting a little load on the system to boost the scores, this must have been something that came through from PCMark 7 that came through starting on the 2nd pass but not the first. Oddly, the hard drive scores throughout the entire first pass were all quite low, whereas on the 2nd and 3rd pass, they remained consistantly higher. Both systems had antivirus disabled and most non essential background processes disabled, aside from things like synaptics driver, Intel RSD, etc, Fraps was the only app that was running alongside the benchmark. To my knowledge nothing else should have been putting a load on the system.

Also the 500GB Seagate is not a hybrid drive, just a standard platter disk.

 

Actually, I ordered a 500GB 7200 RPM drive (not hybrid) but it looks like they built mine with a ST95005620AS (Seagate Momentus XT ST95005620AS 500GB 7200 RPM 32MB Cache 2.5" SATA 3.0Gb/s with NCQ Solid State Hybrid Drive)

1 342-3651 500GB 7200RPM SATA 3Gb/s

That's what was listed on my order. Freebie upgrade

 

All you have to do with the Core i7 930 is to overclock it mildly to say 3.6ghz...it will be more powerful than the 2860. But stock for stock...the 2860 is a beast.

 

its funny how you don't know what you have until you miss it.

I was at my neighbors house helping him overclock his brand new core i7 2600k. We easily got it to 4.8ghz within 5 mins

However, i was getting really impatient waiting and waiting. It has a WD Black edition HDD which is the fastest HDD you can buy. But the waiting was driving me crazy

ONce you go to a SSD, you will never go back