Asus has a good track record in producing high-quality gaming laptops (see our Asus G70 gaming laptop review) but it is now gunning for the fastest laptop in the west with its new G71 notebook.

Never mind the credit crunch, feel the quality - for around £2000 you can get a lappie with a 17-inch screen that packs an Intel Core 2 Extreme QX9300 chip running at 2.53GHz (this is basically a desktop processor wedged into a laptop.

The so-called Republic of Gamers computer also manages to slide in a 512MB Geforce 9700M GPU from Nvidia and 4GB of DDR3 memory (running at 1066MHz). There is also two 250GB hard drives to shove all your movies and music on.

Not only does the 17-inch screen boast an impressive 1920 by 1200 resolution, there is also a small LCD screen for IM. Built into the display frame is a 2-Megapixel webcam.

Thankfully, Asus has built in 802.11n wireless connectivity, Bluetooth 2.1+EDR plus HDMI and eSATA ports. Optical disc options include a Blu-ray/DVD±R/RW combo drive.

Sound-wise it has two large Altec Lansing speakers and a sub-woofer (handy for Call of Duty).

If you are financially embarassed, a cheaper version with an Intel Core 2 Duo processor is also available for £1349.

Pictures on next page....