Voodoo Envy M:855 Part 1 - Athlon 64 DTR and Mobility Radeon 9600 Pro

Voodoo Envy M:855 - Hexing up a Storm

Intuitively, it may appear to be odd that a seemingly obscure system vendor would be the first to showcase production samples of new technology, particularly when it comes to processors. However, the reason that Voodoo is able to do so is because of their small company size (in comparison to the big three: IBM, Dell, and HP/Compaq). As we mentioned before, when it concerns mobile technology, technology that is pertinent usually pops up about a quarter or so after the desktop market receives it. This is the case with the Pentium 4 and the Pentium 4-M, Athlon XP and Athlon XP-M, and so forth...

The reason that we don’t see the big three hitting the market with Athlon 64 notebooks now is exactly due to the reason they are big. This large market share ends up translating into more time spent qualifying any upcoming products (and to more stringent requirements), as well as all the bureaucracy accompany a large corporation. This extremely thorough process is explicitly in place because no large company wants to be the first to take that possibly fatal risk. Their reputation, customer loyalty, product perception, etc… are all up for grabs in a sense. All of this is just extenuated when it comes to the mobile side, as people tend to be more fickle in when it comes to how much money will be spent for what on the most part will be a non-user serviceable/upgradeable system.

On the other side, smaller companies have less bureaucracy to run through the mills, and at that same time, they have a less stringent qualification process. These companies, after all, are often built towards the fringe markets, and their reputation, which goes hand in hand, is centered on bringing forth the cutting edge.

For those unfamiliar with Voodoo, they are a Canadian based company that recently has been generating more press than their biggest competitor (Alienware), due to a slew of interesting products of late. It is interesting to note that Voodoo was the first system vendor to use a 7200RPM hard drive in a widely available notebook (the M:355). Their current mobile line is completely of ATI design, which isn’t a bad time to be, and when we heard about the M:855 a while back, this definitely caught our eyes. Equipped with an Athlon 64 desktop replacement processor and Mobility Radeon 9600 Pro, this is a desktop replacement of a variety in current short supply.

The New Voodoo Envy M:855

Click to enlarge.

As time as passed since the Athlon 64 official debut, we are now at the tips of the iceberg concerning Athlon 64 for notebooks (different from the mobile version of Athlon 64).