Xtreme CTX Pro

We looked at Rock’s CTX Pro in detail here and decided it was a powerful if expensive laptop for the creatively minded. Its Core Duo processor and NVIDIA Geforce Go 7900 GTX graphics card meant it breezed through even the most gruelling Photoshop tests without breaking a sweat – even if it did have the looks of an Austin Allegro.

Now Rock has produced a Core 2 Duo model, and what’s more, it’s upped the creative ante by strapping NVIDIA’s Quadro FX 2500M graphics card under its hood – a true, high-end graphics card with 512MB of onboard RAM.

In benchmarking, the CTX Pro’s DVD and gaming playback didn’t appear that smooth, but that’s because the Quadro FX 2500M isn’t made for gaming, it’s made for doing, and while its frames per second are high enough and its rendering is smooth, it’s during professional tasks that its quality really shines.

Take its treatment of essential creative app Photoshop, for instance. The graphics engine on the Quadro FX 2500M took well over a minute less than the 7900GTX to rip through a huge batch of conversion script, while similar results were witnessed when running some of Photoshop CS3 Beta’s 3D tools. The message here is crystal clear: Rock is gunning for the graphics professional market here, and is making a pretty great job of it, too.

The downside of this power is a pathetic battery life. But then at 4.25kg this laptop is not particularly mobile anyway, and even if it was, it’s so ugly you’d be ashamed to leave the house with it. If you’re after raw power, the CTX Pro is great, but its looks are disappointing.