Power up Your Game with CyberPower’s New Gaming Notebooks | BH inDepth

Power up Your Game with CyberPower’s New Gaming Notebooks | BH inDepth

Power up Your Game with CyberPower’s New Gaming Notebooks

By Marc Spiwak

Published Mon, 2011-08-08 12:36

Times are good for gamers these days. Online gaming is now more popular than ever, and is showing no signs of slowing. The games become more realistic every year. Computer technology, too, is advancing at an incredible rate. Gamers can now purchase notebook computers that are more than powerful enough for gaming and certainly up to the task of churning through the daily business grind. You can now bring workstation-level performance with you wherever you go.

CyberPower has introduced a new line of gaming notebooks and B&H is the place to get them. Before we take a closer look at these new gaming notebooks, let’s focus first on one thing that all of the notebooks have in common: Intel’s Core i7-2630QM processor. One of Intel’s latest and greatest offerings, the Core i7 is a quad-core processor, which means that the single component contains four individual processors that work in tandem to rip through heavy workloads like a hot knife through butter.

The 2630QM is a 2.0 GHz quad-core processor that can be overclocked to 2.9 GHz. To increase efficiency, each core can handle two threads, or instruction streams, at once, so the four-core processor can handle eight instruction streams simultaneously. All that’s important, however, is that the Core i7 is incredibly powerful, especially for a notebook computer. Let’s take a closer look at CyberPower’s new gaming notebooks.

The CyberPowerPC Gamer Xplorer GX8400 is built around a 15.6-inch widescreen display with a native resolution of 1920 x 1080 pixels. As mentioned before, and like all of CyberPower’s new gaming notebooks, the Xplorer GX8400 is powered by a quad-core 2.0 GHz Intel Core i7-2630QM processor. It also features 4GB of memory, a 500GB hard drive, a 7-in-1 card reader, integrated Intel HD 3000 graphics, gigabit Ethernet, 802.11n WiFi, Bluetooth 3.0, a 2MP webcam, premium speakers and an 8x DVD burner. Ports include two USB 3.0, two USB 2.0, VGA and HDMI. Windows Home Premium (64-bit) is the installed operating system. Gamers with a bigger budget should opt for the CyberpowerPC Gamer Xplorer GX8600, which is the same as the GX8400 except that it has 8GB of memory and a 750GB hard drive.

If you have an even bigger budget, you might want to shoot for the CyberpowerPC Gamer Xplorer GX8800; it has just 4GB of memory, a 500GB hard drive and a 1600 x 900 display, but it’s upgraded with a 9-in-1 card reader, THX TruStudio Pro speakers, a dedicated NVIDIA GeForce GT 540M graphics accelerator with 1GB of video memory and eSATA and S/PDIF ports. The NVIDIA graphics card features Optimus technology, which optimizes power usage by providing top-notch graphics performance when needed and taking things down a notch to conserve battery power whenever possible.

If you like the GX8800’s feature set but want more memory, go for the CyberpowerPC Gamer Xplorer GX8900. It has 8GB of memory combined with the 500GB hard drive, NVIDIA GeForce GT 540M, 9-in-1 card reader, eSATA and VGA ports and THX TruStudio Pro speakers.

If you like what you’re seeing so far, but want a 15.6-inch notebook with 1920 x 1080 resolution and all the bells and whistles, then check out the CyberpowerPC Gamer Xplorer GX9600. It’s loaded with the 2.0 GHz Core i7 processor, 8GB of memory, a 500GB hard drive, 8x DVD burner, 9-in-1 card reader, THX TruStudio Pro speakers, gigabit Ethernet, 802.11n WiFi, Bluetooth 3.0, a 2MP webcam and NVIDIA GeForce GTX 560M graphics with 1.5GB of video memory. The NVIDIA graphics card features Optimus technology, which optimizes power usage by providing top-notch graphics performance when needed and taking things down a notch to conserve battery power whenever possible. Ports include USB 3.0, USB 2.0, eSATA, FireWire 400, VGA, HDMI, DVI-I and S/PDIF.

About the only thing that the GX9600 doesn’t have is a Blu-ray drive; if you want Blu-ray, go with the CyberpowerPC Gamer Xplorer GX9800. It has a Blu-ray ROM drive with CD/DVD burning and a 750GB hard drive, just for good measure.

For gamers who want a notebook computer with more screen real estate, CyberPower has put together the CyberpowerPC Gamer Xplorer GX9200, a 17.3-inch model. The widescreen display has a native resolution of 1920 x 1080 pixels and it’s driven by an NVIDIA GeForce GT 555M graphics accelerator with 2GB of video memory. The NVIDIA graphics card features Optimus technology, which optimizes power usage by providing top-notch graphics performance, when needed, and taking things down a notch to conserve battery power whenever possible. The Xplorer GX9200 is powered by the 2.0 GHz Core i7 processor, and it’s loaded with 6GB of memory, a 640GB hard drive, an 8x DVD burner, a 2MP webcam, Bluetooth 3.0+HS, 802.11n Wi-Fi, USB 3.0, eSATA, HDMI and gigabit Ethernet. If you want the 17.3-inch display with a more loaded system, you should consider the CyberpowerPC Gamer Xplorer GX9400. Otherwise identical to the GX9200, the GX9400 packs 8GB of RAM, a 750GB hard drive and a Blu-ray ROM drive with CD/DVD burning.

The only problem you might have with these CyberPower notebooks is figuring out which one to buy. A good way to do that is to decide what your maximum expenditure will be, then decide which features you can’t live without, whether it be a 750GB hard drive, 8GB of memory, a Blu-ray drive or a particular screen size. Then pick the model that best meets all your criteria. You’ll have plenty of portable gaming power with any of