Voodoo Envy M:855 Part 1 - Athlon 64 DTR and Mobility Radeon 9600 Pro

Conclusion

We have extremely good impressions of the Voodoo Envy M:855 at first glance, after taking the time to put it through some benchmarks. Since this will be clearly marketed as a gaming platform, it only seemed appropriate to also look at image quality issues. From what we have been seeing and experiencing, the performance is up to par with the best of the best and is additionally ready for 64-bit computing.

That having been said, 64-bit computing won’t really take off until software support exists. The other scenario for 64-bit processors to proliferate the market is for immediate 32-bit performance benefits. But this is more of a side issue, as the M:855 is sold as a system not on the basis of the Athlon 64 DTR processor alone.

We are currently benchmarking the M:855 in more depth, and part 2 will cover what has become known as the AnandTech standard mobile review, as well as diving into the battery life of this powerhouse notebook. Voodoo claims that it fairs better than their Centrino notebook, which is indeed a very exciting claim to make. Considering it based on a K8T800 chipset and uses an Athlon 64 DTR, we aren’t expecting incredibly high battery life. After all, these are desktop and desktop like components, which aren’t designed to be that forgiving on power consumption. We will know more on this subject soon once we get the final benchmark numbers in.

In the meantime, we should mention that our system comes with a price tag just shy of 3,600 USD. (3,578 USD with 1GB of system memory to be exact, but we only used 512MB for benchmarking purposes.) With this price tag and considering its hardware, Voodoo is no doubt continuing to go after the gaming market. So far so good, as the M:855 comes with a great feel to it: tactile keyboard, crisp screen, etc..., which we will explore deeper in our part 2 coverage. The system gets only so warm as some of the Intel based desktop replacements we have seen (Pentium-M, Pentium 4 533MHz/800MHz, etc...), and is surprisingly quiet compared to many desktop replacements (about the same as the Dell Inspiron 8600 when idle in this regard). At the moment, we have no qualms about recommending the Envy M:855 for gamers or enthusiasts, as it performs extremely close to a desktop AMD Athlon 64 3200+ system in some scenarios.