Workstation Review: Power and Portability

By David Cohn

Eurocom continues to build some of the world’s most powerful portable computers. Last year, the Canadian company sent us several impressive models that set new performance records—albeit with impressive price tags to match. A year later, Eurocom is back with a system it claims as the world’s first 15.6-in. notebook with a 100-watt GPU. While that higher power consumption is sure to reduce battery life, the result is a mobile workstation that once again raises the benchmark bar, while at the same time lowering the cost.
The 7-lb. (plus a sizable 2-lb. power supply) Eurocom Racer came housed in a nicely sculpted black plastic case that measures 15x10.24x1.72 in. Raising the lid reveals a full HD, 1920x1080-pixel LED backlit display.

The Eurocom P150H Racer mobile workstation. Image courtesy of Eurocom.

  The display in our Racer was powered by an NVIDIA Quadro 5010M, that company’s latest high-end GPU, equipped with 384 compute unified device architecture (CUDA) cores and 4GB of dedicated GDDR5 memory. That graphics option added a whopping $1,968 to the Racer’s base system price, and accounts for the 100-watt GPU power claim. Other, less-expensive choices include various AMD Radeon and NVIDIA GeForce cards, as well as a complete lineup of NVIDIA Quadro boards.

Lots of Choices

If that sounds like a lot of options, you’re right. The company offers lots of choices. The base model Racer comes with a 2.2GHz processor, an AMD Radeon Mobility graphics card, 4GB of memory, a 320GB hard drive, a DVD+/-RW drive, wired and wireless networking—plus Bluetooth and a 9-in-1 card reader, although the operating system is optional.

  Eurocom equipped our evaluation unit with an Intel Core i7-2960XM Extreme, the latest generation of Intel mobile processors based on the Sandy Bridge architecture. The 2.70GHz quad-core CPU has a 3.7GHz turbo speed, 8MB of L3 Smart Cache, and a thermal design power (TDP) rating of 55 watts. This configuration added $783 to the base price. Eurocom also offers a choice of 10 other CPUs.

Our evaluation unit also came with 16GB of memory, installed as four 4GB DDR3-1600 small outline dual in-line memory modules (SO-DIMMs),  which added another $257. Other memory options range from 8GB to 32GB (which could add as much as $1,615 to the base price). And while the standard primary storage drive is a 320GB, 7,200 rpm SATA drive, our evaluation unit came with a 120GB Intel solid-state drive.

Big on Performance

With all of the top-of-the-line components, we expected great performance, and the Eurocom Racer rose to the occasion. On the SPECviewperf test, which looks solely at graphics performance, the Eurocom P150HM Racer beat every other mobile workstation we’ve tested to date.

For our SolidWorks benchmark, which is more of a real-world test and additionally breaks out graphics, CPU and I/O performance separately from the overall scores, we’ve recently switched to the newer SPECapc SW 2007 version, which runs properly under Windows 7 64-bit. Here again, the Eurocom Racer surpassed all previous mobile workstations—with the exception of last year’s Eurocom Panther.

On the AutoCAD rendering test, in which the competitive edge clearly belongs to fast CPUs with multiple cores, the Racer proved to be the fastest quad-core mobile system we’ve tested.
Even the results of our battery rundown test were respectable. The standard eight-cell, 76.98WHr battery powered the Racer for 1 hour and 50 minutes.

Of course, all of the Racer’s power comes with a fairly hefty price tag attached. Our evaluation unit priced out at $4,933. Customers could easily lower that figure by opting for some less-expensive options. However, that price is more than $2,500 less than the Eurocom Panther we reviewed last year.

Our system price included Windows 7 Professional 64-bit edition. Eurocom also offers Windows 7 Premium and Ultimate. The price includes just a one-year warranty, however, and requires owners ship the system back to a factory depot for repairs. Extending the warranty for a second year adds $151, or $271 to extend it out to three years. But Eurocom continues to offer lifetime upgradability, as well as credits of up to 20% if you trade in an older system when purchasing a new Racer.

The Eurocom Racer, while definitely designed as a desktop replacement, provides a balance of power and portability at a price that should appeal to engineers, designers and graphic professionals on the go.

David Cohn is the technical publishing manager at 4D Technologies. He also does consulting and technical writing from his home in Bellingham, WA, and has been benchmarking PCs since 1984. Contact him at [email protected] or visit his website at DSCohn.com.

More Info
Eurocom Corp.

Eurocom P150H Racer
• Price: $4,933 as tested ($1,467 base price)
• Size: 15x10.24x1.72-in. (WxDxH) notebook
• Weight: 7 lbs. as tested, plus 1.9-lb. power supply
• CPU: 2.70GHz Intel Core i7-2690XM quad-core with 8MB L3 cache
• Memory: 16GB 1600MHz DDR3 SDRAM (32GB max)
• Graphics: NVIDIA Quadro 5010M with 4GB memory
• LCD: 15.6-in. diagonal (1920x1080)
• Hard disk: 120GB SSD
• Optical: 8x multi DVD+/-RW dual layer
• Audio: line-in, SP/DIF-out/Surround-out,  microphone,
headphone, built-in microphone and speakers
• Network: integrated Gigabit Ethernet (10/100/1000
NIC); Intel 802.11 a/b/g/n wireless LAN; optional integrated Bluetooth 2.0
• Other: two USB 2.0, two USB 3.0, one mini IEEE 1394 Firewire,
eSATA/USB 2.0 combo, 9-in-1 card reader, DVI-out, HDMI-out, 2MP webcam
• Keyboard: integrated 98-key keyboard with numeric keypad
• Pointing device: integrated two-button touchpad