What's particularly surprising is that the G2P uses almost as much power as the Mayhem Z5 at maximum load, despite running less than half as fast in most games at comparable settings.

The ASUS G2P is a newer offering than the A8JS, but it happens to be a case of one step forward one step back. It comes with a larger 17" chassis, which may be good or bad depending on your personal tastes. The exterior styling is also more eye-catching than a lot of other notebooks, which again could be either good or bad depending on how you see things. Our biggest complaint with the G2P is that ASUS labels it as a "gaming notebook", but it was clearly the slowest of the three units reviewed today when it comes to gaming. ASUS would have been much better off including a faster GPU if they are serious about their notebook "Gaming Series" offerings. We definitely wouldn't recommend this particular notebook to gamers, but it still performs just as well in other tasks as the A8JS. The best part about this notebook is without a doubt the LCD, which is bright and vibrant and makes all the other notebook LCDs we've seen lately pale in comparison. The resolution is a bit low for a 17" laptop, but if that's the price you have to pay in order to get this level of brightness and contrast, quite a few people will definitely be interested. Rather than looking at this as a gaming laptop, we see the best fit being people who are interested in viewing movies on the go. The larger display combined with the brilliant colors makes for a great multimedia setup. Unfortunately, battery life suffers compared to notebooks sporting a smaller LCD. The G2P costs a bit more than the A8JS, but most of the difference almost certainly is going into the improved LCD, so the final price of around $1800 is still quite reasonable, particularly when you consider the three-year warranty that you get.

The ABS Mayhem Z5 is almost the exact opposite of the G2P: it is a true gaming notebook, with one of the most powerful mobile graphics chips currently available stuffed into its chassis. There are a few games that are beginning to tax the GeForce Go 7900 GTX these days, particularly if you want to run games at the native 1920x1200 LCD resolution, so if you really want extreme gaming performance in a laptop you might consider upgrading to a 7950 GTX or else look at some of the SLI offerings on the market. We are very hesitant about actually recommending that anyone look at getting SLI in a laptop, however, as we would much rather have a single fast GPU rather than two slightly slower GPUs in SLI - not to mention the amount of heat two high-end graphics cards can generate. There are two pretty serious drawbacks to powerful gaming notebooks. First is that their battery life is generally poor at best, in some cases not even managing to reach one hour during heavy use. The other drawback is price: you can find laptops that basically have everything the Mayhem Z5 has except for the graphics card and save $600 (possibly more). Mobile gaming definitely doesn't come cheap! With a current price of around $2900, the Mayhem Z5 is worth considering if you are in the market for a gaming laptop, and it is priced competitively with similar models from other manufacturers. Unfortunately, apparently a one-year warranty is all you can get with an ABS system, so unless you're willing to live with a one-year warranty you will want to look elsewhere.