Pros: After shopping around for a gaming laptop I stumbled upon the Toshiba Qosmio Q706. The first thing that jumps out at you is the hardware under the hood (especially the dual 9800M GTS's). Having run sli in my desktops for years now I know the benefit of utilizing two graphics cards for gaming. I was considering purchasing a more expensive brand with a single 9800M GTX but knowing dual 9800M GTS's in sli mode outguns it attracted me to this Toshiba. The 320gb 7200rpm hdd is a nice touch and a step up from the usual 5400rpm drives you find in most laptops. 4 gigs of ddr3 memory is also a welcome addition as again most companies are still running ddr2. Sound system absolutely rocks with 4 Harmon Kardon speakers and a built in sub-woofer....nothing else out there even compares! The real treat comes in the form of a 17" WSXGA+ monitor. From the moment you fire this machine up the first thing you notice is how black the background is which makes the colors standout with such richness. Price.

Cons: very few here but there are some. The 2.26ghz P8400 is a very capable processor for most applications but running some of todays graphically intense resourse hungry games tends to bog down the system. I've noticed some slow down and chugging while playing Far Cry 2 on high settings....this is not an issue on my desktop which sports a 3 ghz E8400 as well as dual 9800 GTX's in sli mode. In my opinion the 9800M GTS's are capable of handling this game but the cpu is what holds it back. Perhaps Toshiba should have put the faster 2.53ghz cpu in instead. Slight hestitations were also noticed while playing COD4 but immature drivers could be the reason for that and an update should fix it. Some might complain about the weight of this laptop but considering another name for a gaming laptop is a desktop replacement you're not going to be sporting this baby around town.

Overall Review: This is by far and away one of the most strikingly beautiful laptops on the market.....kudos to Toshiba. From the moment you unpack this beauty you're treated to a custom ferrari red paintjob that sports flames on the outside cover of the monitor. Upon opening the lid ones jaw drops to the ground as you are treated to a visually stunning and breathtaking sight. The top panel is done up in a custom metallic red with gloss black trim that will send your friends home green with envy. Designer grill covers overlay the lower speaker array and the top speakers are adorned with red lights that light up when the system is turned on. I've seen many a laptop but none come close to this one in appearance. Toshiba sure has done it's homework and hit this one out of the park with it's Qosmio line. For power, looks and value.......you can't do any better than the Q706!

Pros: rock solid built card especially with the attached back plate improved cooling solution with ACX 3.0...fans are ultra quiet even at full speed RGB led's add a nice visual display for those with a clear side panel.....looks like Christmas with 2 of them going! boosts to over 2000 MHz out of the box cards run cool even at full load and temps can be held below 70 with custom fan curve can run any game with settings maxed out and at 1080P 144mhz that's framerates well over 100 in every game Pascal architecture no coil whine EVGA's excellent customer service and warrantee

Cons: availability for most ( I was lucky twice to have had my cell phone on me when the newegg notification came through and got my orders in in time......less than 5 minutes after I placed my orders the card was back on auto notify ) had to wait a week for delivery although this is not a true con......came from clear across the country a lot of reviewers mention price as a con but then again...what did they expect to pay for a top of the line card? I can assume that those who did list price as a con were probably used to buying lower end cards but for those of us who regularly buy high end cards this is exactly what you would expect to pay no cons when it comes to raw power and performance

Overall Review: upgraded to these bad boyz from an sli ftw 670 setup and was amazed at how much higher performance there was...actually there is no comparison....the 1080's performance is off the charts. And while I'm gaming for now at 1080P I purchased 2 of these cards for when I move up to 4k gaming....not ready to give up my 27" BenQ ultimate gaming monitor,,,,4k monitors are limited to 60 MHz refresh rate and I'm enjoying gaming at 144 MHz...talk about smooth! So if you're still gaming at 1080 like me...don't let the reviewers who say to go with a lower end card talk you out of getting one or two of these cards....they're just jealous that your framerates will blow theirs out of the water! Now for the juicy stuff.....ran 3DMark Firestrike twice on an i7 3930k sandy bridge-E / Rampage IV extreme X79...first at stock clock ( 3.2ghz ) and then again overclocked to 4.5ghz. First run resulted in a score of 20,297 and the second overclocked run yielded an amazing score of 23,735...over 3,000 points higher. Now take into consideration that the 1080's themselves are running at stock clocks and I will update the post with the resulting scores when I o/c them and rerun the benchmark. These cards handle every game I throw at them with framerates over 100 consistently even at ultra graphic settings...amazing. I have no problem recommending the FTW edition 1080 to those looking to inject there gaming rigs with the fastest card on the planet. Now a special note to the reviewer who made me chuckle when he said he would keep his FTW 1080 unless EVGA came out with a 1080 ti in time for him to "step up"...well the good news is there is a 1080 ti in the pascal roadmap...the bad news is like the 980 and the 980 ti...there will be approximately a years difference in releases. So if you're waiting for a ti version you'll have to wait till 2017

Pros: Very fast drive...upgraded from a 10,000rpm 600gb WD Velociraptor as my primary drive. Significant improvements in read and write speeds. As a result my boot times and data response have improved dramatically and write times are one of the fastest I've seen. Installation is easy thanks to the included conversion tray and supplied screws.

Cons: Only con I have it doesn't include the software disk available as a download

Overall Review: Core i7 3930k Sandy Bridge-E 3.2 @ 5.1 [o/c ] Asus Rampage IV Extreme X-79 pci 3.0 quad channel mem [2] EVGA GTX 670 FTW edition cards in SLI Plextor M5P Series 256GB Sata III SSD WD 600GB 10,000rpm Velociraptor WD 1TB Caviar black edition Corsair 16GB Dominator DDR3 1866 Corsair Obsidian 800D casing Corsair HX1000W psu Corsair H100 water cooler Corsair digital link Corsair Vengence 1500 USB 7.1 digital surround headset