System builders prep monster 19in SLI notebooks

Two more system builders have announced AMD-based widescreen notebooks with 19in displays driven by twin high-end Nvidia mobile graphics chips almost certainly operating in SLI mode. Well, what would be the point otherwise? Step forward AJP and Eurocom, who announced their new offerings yesterday, a week after WidowPC informed world+dog it was working on such a beast.

To be fair, both AJP and Eurocom provided specifications for their machines, which is more than WidowPC was able to manage last week. AJP first: its M590K contains two GeForce Go 7800 GPUs, each with 256MB of GDDR 3. The machine's 19in display has a resolution of 1,680 x 1,050, and contains a 2.2GHz, 1MB L2 AMD Turion 64 MT-40 processor backed by 2GB of DDR SDRAM and a 100GB 7,200rpm Serial ATA hard drive.

There's a DVD-RW/CD-RW optical drive in there too, along with a digital and analogue TV tuner. The M590K also features an MMC/SD/MemoryStick/MemoryStick Pro card reader, Gigibit Ethernet, five USB 2.0 ports, TV out, HDTV out, one Firewire port, Bluetooth and 802.11a/b/g Wi-Fi. It has four built-in speakers plus an integrated sub-woofer.

The machine measures 47.6 x 34.3 x 3cm and weighs 6.5kg. Eurocom's Emperor M590K, not only shares the same model number but possesses the same vital statistics too - no great surprise since they're both, like the WidowPC Sting 919, based on the same Clevo-made chassis, we believe.

Eurocom's offering a choice of Turion ML to MT CPU, but its machine has the same display and also ships with 2GB of DDR memory. But its drive is a 120GB model, and it will have an 8x dual-layer DVD writer. All the ports appear the same as those on the AJP machine, as does the Eurocom notebook's speaker array. The Emperor M590K has an integrated webcam and so does the AJP box.

AJP said its M590K will cost £2,350 including VAT, though delivery of the monster is the best part of £46 extra. AJP didn't say when the machine will ship, but Eurocom expects to have its M590K out on 9 March for a price as yet unspecified.

Stop Press And we've just heard system builder SavRow has one of these M590K boxes in the pipeline too. We're sure there'll be others. ®