Sunday, July 7, 2013
Medion Erazer X6813 review
Medions Erazer X6813 branded as a "gaming notebook" – might seem like an oxymoron to some.
Gaming is a traditionally immersive endeavour, and while casual gaming marches forward with the momentum of a sinister (but casual) army of men in silly hats, there are still serious games with serious budgets that offer serious escapism, if youve got the gear to render such visual finery.
Heres where the 15.6-inch Medion Erazer X6813 comes in. Like the MSI GT680 and the diminutive 11.6-inch Alienware M11x, its designed to offer gamers the kind of frame rates theyre used to on desktop machines, but on the go – at the expense of £1,000 or more.
Heres where the incongruity kicks in – how and why would you want to play such visually impressive, immersive titles in public places? Isnt that the point of notebooks, after all?
Well, maybe youre taken with the idea of using the Medion Erazer X6813 like a traditional notebook while youre on the move, working with office apps and browsing the web, then plugging its charger in when you get home and unleashing that powerful GPU on the latest DirectX 11 games. Some notebooks such as Alienwares M18X throw that notion out of the window entirely, and compromise practicality for sheer performance.
The GPU is an absolutely pivotal component for a gaming notebook, and while the GTX 460Ms impressive architecture and performance are undeniable, Nvidias release of the GTX 570M and GTX 580M Optimus mobile discrete GPUs shoves it down the pecking order somewhat.
Not only are the GTX 570M and GTX 580M the fastest notebook GPUs ever, but they at least promise to improve battery life, the mortal enemy of gaming laptops and notebooks.
With AMDs excellent Llano APUs already hitting shelves and offering comparative performances to notebook GPUs from an integrated graphics solution with much better battery life, Medions Erazer X6813 comes at an interesting time in mobile gaming.
The biggest asset that Medion has given its Erazer X6813 is pure gaming performance. As the 3DMark 11 scores indicate, that GTX 460M under the hood does a sterling job with bleeding edge rendering techniques such as tessellation, bokeh filtering and advanced dynamic shadows and lighting.
The GTX 460M itself is based on the GTX 450 desktop GPU, which might be overshadowed by the GTX 460 (note the lack of an M) in the desktop market. Its a capable Fermi card with solid architecture.
Its not perfect, though. The chief drawback comes from the noisy fan and the hot air it chucks out. For a notebook, these are real drawbacks. MSIs GT680 is equipped with the same GPU and suffers the same problem, but as Medions Erazer X6813 will set you back £400 less, the cash you save might drown out the fan noise somewhat.
The bottom line for the GTX 460M inside this Medion Erazer X6813 is that playing new games at max settings shouldnt be a problem, even at the screens native resolution of 1920 x 1080.
Of course, it has help from the Intel Core i7 2630QM CPU, too. With four cores of eight threads at its disposal, and a Turbo Boosted running speed of 2.9 GHz, its one mighty fine piece of Sandy Bridge silicon.
The downside is that although the integrated graphics processor (iGPU) in the 2630QM is capable in present day integrated graphics terms, early testing of AMD Llano chips blows this Intel HD Graphics 3000 engine out of the water.
And when the AC adapters unplugged from the Medion Erazer X6813, youre relying on integrated graphics for rendering tasks. As is the status quo with gaming notebooks, youre only really able to make use of the notebooks full gaming performance when youre hooked up to mains power.
Gaming is a traditionally immersive endeavour, and while casual gaming marches forward with the momentum of a sinister (but casual) army of men in silly hats, there are still serious games with serious budgets that offer serious escapism, if youve got the gear to render such visual finery.
Heres where the 15.6-inch Medion Erazer X6813 comes in. Like the MSI GT680 and the diminutive 11.6-inch Alienware M11x, its designed to offer gamers the kind of frame rates theyre used to on desktop machines, but on the go – at the expense of £1,000 or more.
Heres where the incongruity kicks in – how and why would you want to play such visually impressive, immersive titles in public places? Isnt that the point of notebooks, after all?
Well, maybe youre taken with the idea of using the Medion Erazer X6813 like a traditional notebook while youre on the move, working with office apps and browsing the web, then plugging its charger in when you get home and unleashing that powerful GPU on the latest DirectX 11 games. Some notebooks such as Alienwares M18X throw that notion out of the window entirely, and compromise practicality for sheer performance.
The GPU is an absolutely pivotal component for a gaming notebook, and while the GTX 460Ms impressive architecture and performance are undeniable, Nvidias release of the GTX 570M and GTX 580M Optimus mobile discrete GPUs shoves it down the pecking order somewhat.
Not only are the GTX 570M and GTX 580M the fastest notebook GPUs ever, but they at least promise to improve battery life, the mortal enemy of gaming laptops and notebooks.
With AMDs excellent Llano APUs already hitting shelves and offering comparative performances to notebook GPUs from an integrated graphics solution with much better battery life, Medions Erazer X6813 comes at an interesting time in mobile gaming.
The biggest asset that Medion has given its Erazer X6813 is pure gaming performance. As the 3DMark 11 scores indicate, that GTX 460M under the hood does a sterling job with bleeding edge rendering techniques such as tessellation, bokeh filtering and advanced dynamic shadows and lighting.
The GTX 460M itself is based on the GTX 450 desktop GPU, which might be overshadowed by the GTX 460 (note the lack of an M) in the desktop market. Its a capable Fermi card with solid architecture.
Its not perfect, though. The chief drawback comes from the noisy fan and the hot air it chucks out. For a notebook, these are real drawbacks. MSIs GT680 is equipped with the same GPU and suffers the same problem, but as Medions Erazer X6813 will set you back £400 less, the cash you save might drown out the fan noise somewhat.
The bottom line for the GTX 460M inside this Medion Erazer X6813 is that playing new games at max settings shouldnt be a problem, even at the screens native resolution of 1920 x 1080.
Of course, it has help from the Intel Core i7 2630QM CPU, too. With four cores of eight threads at its disposal, and a Turbo Boosted running speed of 2.9 GHz, its one mighty fine piece of Sandy Bridge silicon.
The downside is that although the integrated graphics processor (iGPU) in the 2630QM is capable in present day integrated graphics terms, early testing of AMD Llano chips blows this Intel HD Graphics 3000 engine out of the water.
And when the AC adapters unplugged from the Medion Erazer X6813, youre relying on integrated graphics for rendering tasks. As is the status quo with gaming notebooks, youre only really able to make use of the notebooks full gaming performance when youre hooked up to mains power.
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