Verdict: If you're looking for a performance laptop, but don't want to break the bank, the Evesham Voyager C720DC should be on your shortlist.
At the heart of the Evesham is the CPU formely known as 'Merom' - an Intel Core 2 Duo CPU. However, clocked at a measly 1.66GHz, the Evesham's T5500 CPU is the lowest clocked Merom chip available. However, this isn't to say we were expecting it to be slow, as the T5500 is a dual-core CPU, endowed with 2MB of Level 2 cache. And, of course, the Core 2 architecture itself has so far been a revelation - just look at this year's Dream PCs (see October issue of Custom PC) for proof.
To satisfy the demands of the gaming fanatics, Evesham has paired this CPU with a GeForce Go 7900 GTX, equipped with 256MB of GDDR3 memory clocked at 600MHz (1.2GHz effective) and a GPU core speed of 500MHz. Evesham has told us that this will be upgraded to a 512MB version of the 7900 GTX, as seen in the Dell XPS M1710 (see Issue 36, p 40), by the time this review goes to press.
Rather than being solely orientated towards gaming, the Evesham has aspirations to be a complete home entertainment centre. Our review system came with Windows XP Media Centre Edition 2005, which provides a user-friendly interface to watch and record TV programmes, as well as making a variety of media files easily accessible with a remote-control while sitting on the sofa. With this in mind, it is disappointing that the Evesham isn't bundled with a TV tuner or an MCE remote control. However the 1,920 x 1,200 17in widescreen panel can accommodate wonderfully sharp, top-end 1080p HD video, and there is also an S/PDIF optical audio output at the back of the Evesham, so you can hook up some serious digital speakers such as the Elite listed Logitech Z-5500s.
The display is similar to the panels that we've seen in gaming laptops from Rock and Dell, so we found its rich, vibrant colours and spot-on contrast pleasantly familiar. Like its competitors, the Evesham's display still suffers from distracting reflectivity at times, due to its Sony X-Black style surface, but the pay-off is that, in a room with soft lighting, films and games look stunning thanks to the deep blacks and increased contrast the coating provides.
The Evesham comes with 1GB of 667MHz DDR2 RAM, which is a reasonable amount. However, Battlefield 2, Everquest 2 and F.E.A.R. benefit significantly from having 2GB of RAM, so you may want to consider including this upgrade when configuring your built-to-order system - this will cost an extra £125 though.
As for the rest of the spec, the Evesham has everything you would expect from a high-end laptop, including a 100GB 7,200 SATA hard drive, Bluetooth, a six format memory card reader, Gigabit LAN, a 56k modem, 8-channel Intel HD Audio, four USB 2 ports, FireWire, a DVI-D output, a TV Out and though few manufacturers actually make products for it, an Express Card slot.
PERFORMANCE
The dual-core Pentium M, Core Duo that we saw in the Dell and the Rock laptops is an excellent chip, but definitely has its limitations, especially when it comes to applications like media encoding. The Core architecture attempts to retain the best characteristics of the Pentium M and yet provide it with more power, so we had high hopes for the Evesham and its Merom-based Core 2 Duo, despite the T5500's lowly 1.66GHz clock-speed.
Image manipulation proved to be no problem for the Evesham, and its score of 1.11 is jaw dropping, considering that the Evesham's CPU is over 1.1GHz slower than the PC which scores 1.0, the 2.8GHz Pentium D 820-powered reference PC. It's also very promising when you put it next to the Rock Xtreme CTX, which score 1.19, as the Rock has a 2.16GHz Core Duo T2600 CPU. The Evesham's Core 2 Duo proved very handy in the multiple application test, where it scored a good 1.23. The weakest link proved to be the video compression benchmark, although the Evesham's score of 0.98 still compares well to the 1.05 the Rock scores. Although the Evesham's bottom of the range Core 2 Duo can't out muscle a top of the range Core Duo, the T5500 certainly proves that Intel has completely abandoned the gigahertz race; for a 1.66GHz CPU to offer this much performance is incredible. Scoring 1.10 overall, the Evesham is impressively fast - although 2GB of RAM, as Dell showed last issue, would certainly boost this.
The other bonus of the modestly clocked CPU is that, although the Evesham gets noticeably warm, it doesn't get uncomfortably hot. This means that its fans don't have to be overworked to tame the heat, so the Evesham is also fairly quiet.
In terms of gaming, the Evesham is also a great performer. TFT screens only look at their best in their native resolution, and it's asking a lot for a single graphics card to handle rendering games at 1,920 x 1,200. Need for Speed: Most Wanted is chock full of modern shader effects, and yet the Evesham managed a playable frame rate at the native resolution of the screen, even with some anti-aliasing and anisotropic filtering enabled. The average frame rate of 39fps is excellent considering the high graphics settings. The minimum of 26fps is borderline though, but you could always drop the AA if you needed a few more fps.
CONCLUSION
The Evesham's spec is a great compromise between a sensible price tag and performance. While the budget-friendly Core 2 Duo T5500 CPU doesn't allow the laptop to hit the heady performance heights of the £2,000 Dell M1710 in our Media Benchmarks, it still offers plenty of power, especially as the GeForce Go 7900 GTX is more than happy to do most of the work when you're gaming. Even taking into consideration the price of a 2GB RAM upgrade, the Evesham is £500 cheaper than the Dell M1710. If you're looking for a performance laptop, but don't want to break the bank, the Evesham Voyager C720DC should be on your shortlist.
