Aftershock Titan - Dual-GPU Desktop Quality Notebook Gaming

Meet the Titan

Aftershock PC is a fairly new addition to the gaming scene. Based in Singapore, the small team specializes in custom-built gaming notebooks and offers a highly personal level of service and attention to detail for every notebook built. Each notebook receives a 48-hour burn-in testing and monitoring period to ensure against hardware defects, as well as a full test run of benchmarks to check that system performance is up to standard. A massive choice of configurations are available for each notebook, with options ranging from the display type (both matte or glossy are available) right down to the type of thermal paste used.

The Titan is Aftershock's newest creation, a 17.3-inch gaming notebook with a dual-GPU setup. Both 2-way AMD Radeon HD 7970M CrossFireX and NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680M SLI configurations are available. Our review unit has been fitted with an Intel Core-i7 3630QM (2.4GHz) processor, NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680M 2-way SLI with 4GB GDDR5 (combined amount of VRAM), 8GB RAM, 750GB HDD + 256GB SSD and Windows 8 Pro. This configuration will set you back S$4507, while a similar unit but with a 2-way Radeon HD 7970M CrossFireX setup will cost S$4077.

Note:- As of 3rd December 2012, the Titan is not listed on Aftershock's website, however, if you get in touch with them, it is available for order. We're told that due to high demand, orders for the Titan will take about 2 weeks to ship.

Design

Custom-built notebooks have a reputation for being unattractive rectangular bricks. This isn't really their fault as there just isn’t a high enough demand for custom chassis to make sleek, nice looking ones widely available. Furthermore, more compact customized designs would also impede on how the internal components are laid out or what's eligible to fit inside. Due to these constraints, custom-built notebook designs are unlikely to change much anytime soon. While the guys at Aftershock have done their best with the Titan, including using a soft-touch matte black finish that is somewhat reminiscent of the Stealth Black finish used by Dell on its Alienware notebooks, and a pair of shiny cooling exhaust vents found on the back of the machine that look a bit like stripped-down versions of the ones ASUS uses on its G74SX, essentially the Titan is still a huge, black, rectangular brick. 

Having said that, sometimes manufacturers can go a bit overboard on ‘gamer aesthetics’, so a simple, understated look isn’t all that unwanted. A small Aftershock logo on the lid is the only branding found on the notebook and, in fact, you can opt for no branding at all if you prefer. Opening it up, the interior is just as plain, although a black, brushed aluminum panel surrounding the keyboard does spruce things up a little bit. The wrist rest features the same soft-touch matte black finish as the exterior. 

The notebook is fairly heavy, weighing in at 4.3kg. To make matters worse, it also uses the biggest power brick we've ever seen, which itself weighs a massive 1.5kg. Just for comparison, the power brick alone is heavier than most Ultrabooks!

The Display

Our review unit is equipped with a full HD, 1920 x 1080 pixels resolution matte display although, as mentioned, if you prefer, a glossy option is also available. The display on our unit was excellent with a bright screen, good color reproduction and fairly wide viewing angles. As good as the display is, we did notice a fair bit of flex with the lid, so do be careful when opening or closing it.

Audio Matters

Audio was decent but nothing particularly impressive. While it was loud enough, the built-in subwoofer was a bit disappointing, as the bass was not pronounced enough. There are definitely much better 2.1-channel audio setups on other gaming notebooks out there (MSI's GT70 is one example). 

Keyboard

The Titan is equipped with a full-sized backlit keyboard which includes a number pad. While the latter is a nice addition, it unfortunately makes everything a bit cramped as there’s no space between the keyboard and number pad section. The arrow keys have also been jammed in, which worsens the overcrowding problem. We also noticed a fair bit of keyboard flex. On the plus side, the keys themselves are quite firm, with reasonable travel distance and provide a nice tactile feel when bottoming out.

Gamers will be pleased to see that the Windows key has been relocated to the right-side. Having said that, we did notice a minor quirk regarding the keyboard layout: the sleep button has been precariously sandwiched between the mute and volume controls, so do be careful not to put the machine to sleep while you're trying to adjust the volume.

Trackpad

The trackpad on the Titan is a bit of a mixed bag. On the one hand, it's one of the largest 'clickpads' we've ever seen. For those not familiar with the term, clickpads are usually found on Ultrabooks and feature an entire clickable surface rather than the usual right and left click buttons positioned beneath the pad. The click response is nice and firm, with a surprisingly high amount of travel, so there's no danger in accidental mis-clicking if you have heavy fingers.

On the other hand, the clickpad has been coated in a glossy finish that results in quite a high level of surface friction. As such, you'll often find your finger 'sticking' as you drag it across the pad. Unfortunately, this made it quite unacceptable for gaming. We expect most gamers will want to connect the mouse of their choice for gaming on the Titan.

Next to the trackpad you'll find a fingerprint scanner, normally only found on business notebooks. While this is a nice additional security feature, it's a bit superfluous as we expect you'll be keeping the Titan firmly at home on your desk 99% of the time, although gamers who want to keep pesky siblings off their TItan might find some mileage here.

Ports and Connectivity Options

Performance & Benchmarking

As one of the few dual-GPU gaming notebooks available in this region, the Titan doesn't have much direct competition. However, its price point is quite good and actually puts it just above many of its single-GPU competitors such as Dell's Alienware M17XR4 and MSI's GTX 680M equipped GT70. As such we'll be taking a look at how it competes with some of the major gaming contenders out there:

PC Mark 7

PC Mark 7 tests a system's overall performance. The Titan scored well here with its SSD drive and dual-GPU graphics giving it a small lead over the rest of our test notebooks. As expected, its creativity and computation scores were particularly impressive, with both of these benchmarks making use of the GPU processor.

3DMark 11

3DMark 11 is a synthetic benchmark designed to test a notebook's GPU performance at various aspects of DirectX 11 such as tessellation and DirectCompute. As expected, the Titan's dual-GTX 680M setup was miles ahead of the competition, outscoring the MSI GT70's single GTX 680M by 70% on the performance preset and a whopping 93% at Extreme. Dual GPUs rarely provide twice the performance of their single GPU equivalents, so the Titan's performance here is very impressive.

Just in case you're wondering, the Titan's performance scores put it on par with a desktop GeForce GTX 680, NVIDIA's flagship graphics card.

Far Cry 2

DX10 game Far Cry 2 was no match for the Titan, which easily scored over 160 FPS at the Medium setting. At Very High it continued to impress, scoring 125 FPS, 48% higher than MSI's GT70.

Dirt 3

In our first DX11 game test, the Titan again maintained triple-digit FPS at both the High and Ultra settings. It once again outscored the GT70 by about 50% at the Ultra preset. 

Crysis 2

The very intensive Crysis 2 finally presented a challenge to the Titan, however, it was still able to provide very good FPS, being the only notebook to surpass 60 FPS at the High setting, and also coming very close to 60 FPS even on Ultra settings, outscoring the GT70 by 58%. Just to put things in perspective, the Titan's score on Ultra was as good as the best efforts from Dell and MSI on the High setting. 

Battery Life

Gaming notebooks tend to follow the formula of more power = less battery life and portability. In the case of the Titan, its power is provided by a 6-cell 89WHr battery, which is very similar in capacity to the battery used by Dell in its Alienware M17XR4. The Titan also uses Windows 8, whereas all of our other notebooks are running Windows 7 - some evidence suggests that Windows 8 is less power consuming than previous versions of Windows.

The Titan's battery life wasn't great, but was not significantly worse than our other notebooks, lasting 1 hour and 55 minutes, placing it right behind the Alienware M17XR4. Do note that PowerMark benchmarks battery life through non-gaming usage, mainly word processing, internet browsing and some light multimedia use, so don't expect it to last as long if you're gaming without the power supply plugged in.

Power consumption was rather high, due to the unit's dual GPUs sucking up power, even when not actively in use.

Portability Index

Our Portability Index factors in battery life, weight and volume so you can see which notebook is the most worthwhile to carry around. Gaming notebooks generally aren't meant to be portable, and the Titan is certainly no exception. Already weighing a hefty 4.5kg, if you do plan on taking it out with you and getting any serious gaming done, you'll also need to carry its monstrous 1.5kg power brick with you. As you can see from our graph below, the Titan's ratio is already quite poor, sitting at 0.068, with only the 5.3kg M17X R4 scoring worse. When we included the battery as part of its calculation, this plummeted to 0.040 (although do note that none of the other notebooks include the power brick as part of their score).  

Conclusion

When it comes to notebooks you generally can't have it all. If you're looking for portability, your performance is probably going to suffer (see: Razer Blade). Likewise, if you're after performance, you probably won't be taking your machine around with you everywhere - at least not without some major back pain. The Aftershock Titan sits all the way over on the performance side of the scale. It's not going to win any awards for design, innovation or mobility. It hasn't got any fancy LED lighting. It doesn't look like a fighter jet or an alien space ship. It doesn't have a 3D screen. It doesn't even come supplied with extra gaming peripherals or a free mouse mat and t-shirt. But it is, without a doubt, the most powerful gaming notebook available locally, right now.

Aftershock should be commended for keeping the price of the Titan fairly affordable, even with a pair of GeForce GTX 680M GPUs inside - which aren't cheap. To give you an idea, upgrading a Dell Alienware M17XR4 from a GTX 675M to a single GTX 680M will set you back an extra S$561.75. Using another comparison, at only S$208 more than MSI's single GTX 680M-equipped GT70, you're getting about 50% more performance at the highest settings, a massive improvement that will mean the difference between playing games on the High setting, and playing games on the Ultra setting. As mentioned previously, it provides roughly the same level of performance as a single desktop NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680, NVIDIA's flagship graphics card - an impressive feat, especially when you consider the size and weight of a GTX 680.

All things considered, the Titan will be a great choice for gamers who refuse to compromise on game quality settings and don't plan on moving their notebook - don't forget, its power brick alone weighs more than most Ultrabooks. While you'll probably want to plug in your own peripherals (definitely a mouse at least), and it's not likely to turn many heads, in return you get enthusiast-level desktop gaming quality, something previously unheard of in a notebook from this region.

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