Review

LAPTOP Magazine
Vigor Artorius Pro
Vigor's latest gaming rig sports an attractive design and good performance for the price.

Price: $2,394

by Russ Fischer    December 11, 2007

Vigor Artorius Pro Specifications >>

Vigor's mainstream line of gaming notebooks gets a welcome update with the Artorius Pro. This Santa Rosa-based system brings Intel's new Turbo Memory on board and packs DirectX 10 gaming into a package that's relatively light on both your shoulder and your wallet. The system's performance and usability make it a worthwhile investment for gamers who don't need to ride the cutting edge. Artorius Pro Design The 8.4-pound, 15.6 x 11.5 x 1.8-inch notebook is black with a red-stripe trim; the cover sports a small Vigor winged icon but is otherwise devoid of flashy touches. We appreciate the minimalist design, which runs counter to the gaming notebook standard. Colored finishes (red, gray, blue, and yellow) are also available for a $139 premium. Below the LCD is a full keyboard and number pad with three small quick-launch buttons for mail, a Web browser, and one you program. The keyboard had a satisfying throw depth, and the trackpad was responsive with a slightly rough finish. We had little trouble acclimating to either keys or touchpad, and found the keyboard usable over stretches of use (4 hours or more).

Nice Screen and Speakers Under the lid, the WUXGA display on the Artorius Pro looked stellar; at native resolution, colors were rich in DVD, photo, and gaming applications, and text was crisp and very legible. Pixar's DVDs are great for demonstrating how displays handle color and detail, and Ratatouille looked clear and bright. The screen's color fidelity added to the Artorius Pro's gaming experience, as did the fast 7,200-rpm hard drive. We also appreciated the loud and beefy sound performance from the 2.1-channel speaker system that emulates 7.1 output, thanks to steadily improving SRS WOW algorithms. F.E.A.R.'s ambient sounds were as looming and unsettling as we've experienced on any other rig, and we enjoyed the booming destruction in Company of Heroes.

Artorius Pro Specs Our review unit came equipped with three major upgrades from the $1,899 base model, which boosted the price to $2,394: a 2.4-GHz Intel Core 2 Duo Mobile T7700, a Seagate 160GB 7,200-rpm hard drive, and the 1920 x 1200-pixel widescreen display. Otherwise, our unit was close to stock with 1GB of RAM (you can expand to up to 4GB) and 1GB of Intel Turbo Memory, the Santa Rosa feature that caches frequently used settings and data for faster response and reduced hard drive access. Connections Aplenty Audio ports line the Artorius Pro's front bezel; the left side features only the optical drive bay, while the right is adorned with two USB 2.0 ports, a FireWire port, ExpressCard slot, 7-in-1 card reader, Gigabit Ethernet and modem jacks, and CATV jack for use with a TV tuner ($120). The rear sports two more USB ports, S-Video, DVI, a serial port, and the AC connection. The I/O setup is minimal compared with some gaming rigs but should be suitable for the average user.

Artorius Pro Graphics Performance We've been spoiled by SLI notebooks, but the Artorius Pro delivered decent performance with a single Nvidia GeForce Go 8700M GT card with 512MB of RAM. A 3DMark06 score of 3,871 in native resolution is a reasonable start, and we were able to get 44 frames per second in F.E.A.R. at its autodetect settings and 1024 x 768 resolution and 18 fps on maximum settings, though our best results came after knocking down the game's settings for physical details and bouncing particle effects a bit. The Artorius Pro's 3DMark03 score of 14,577 is solid, especially when stacked up against a similar machine like the Toshiba Satellite X205. But the X205 garnered a second-best 13,279 in 3DMark03, and it notched similar frame rates-with a slower processor and 5,400-rpm hard drives. Considering the Vigor's beefier specs, we'd have expected a more significant performance difference.

Shaky DX10 Experience We had to dial down texture detail and physics behavior in Company of Heroes to get a playable 30 fps rate under DirectX 10, but when we rendered with DX 9, we saw a smooth frame rate as large military forces clashed. The high levels of detail in CoH can drag and stutter on underpowered systems, but we found it smooth enough to be entertaining and enjoyable. For $165, you can get the Nvidia GeForce Go 7950 GTX, which benchmarks slightly higher in DX 9. Driver revisions could improve the benchmarks, but buyers looking exclusively for DX 10 support should opt for another rig. Artorius Pro Productivity and Battery Life Outside of gaming, the Artorius Pro is a better-than-competent notebook. Its 2.4-GHz Intel Core 2 Duo Mobile T7700, with 1GB of RAM and another gigabyte of Turbo Memory scored a solid (though not amazing) 160 on MobileMark 2007 and 2,401 on the new PCMArk Vantage test. Multitasking with several Word docs, a pair of 50MB Photoshop files, and browsing the Web while watching DVDs proved no problem, though some image-wide filters took an extra few seconds to apply. Battery life was okay but not great, at 1 hour and 56 minutes with Wi-Fi off; this is just a few minutes longer than the X205's 1 hour and 51 minutes, which means it's on track for its components. Wireless scores were very good, at 19.3 Mbps and 18.5 Mbps at 15 and 50 feet, respectively, from our access point. Verdict The Artorius Pro system is no less portable than most mainstream gaming notebooks, and it's much more affordable than those with the new PhysX processors or even those with Nvidia's 9750 chipset. Its bright screen, comfortable keyboard, and strong audio make it a worthy upgrade to the line. Yet a similarly equipped and priced Toshiba Satellite X205, which has a slightly poorer screen and slower hard drives, is still a slightly more compelling value, with very similar performance and double the storage for media and games.

Vigor Artorius Pro Specifications >>