What started as a search for the ultimate retro gaming laptop ended with me collecting a variety of interesting machines, and here is one of them. A bit of personal history: back in 2008, my main laptop was an Acer 5930G with a Core 2 Duo and a GeForce 9600GT. It was a nice machine, but it certainly couldn't run all games at maximum settings. While visiting some retail computer shops, my eyes were caught by what was then the top machine: the Toshiba Qosmio with 9800SLI. It was truly the epitome of what some might call a "Vista book," featuring a quirky design with an all-glass surface (even the keyboard), but boasting an ultimate configuration with 9800SLI and a Core 2 Quad. Long story short, I now own it, and my quest is complete.

What do we have inside?

- Intel Core 2 Extreme QX9300 (2.53 GHz, 4 cores, 45 W)
- NVIDIA SLI 2 x GeForce 9800M GTS, 2 x 512 MB GDDR3
- Nvidia Chip MCP79MX (9400M) Northbridge
- 17" (43.2 cm) screen with a resolution of 1680 x 1050
- 4 GB SO-DIMM DDR3 1066 MHz

It's in almost good condition, except the palm rest decorative plate was broken and glued back with a glue gun, leaving some visible glue residue. The most important thing is that the GeForce 9800M GTS SLI is functional and hasn't been repaired. I spent two weeks with this laptop running benchmarks and playing demanding games like Crysis, Far Cry 2, and Lost Planet. I'm confident the video card is in good shape. The speakers were partly damaged (there are five in total), but I already bought a laptop replacement with a dead GeForce 9700 and salvaged some parts from it.

Now, about my experience with SLI: this is my first machine with this technology, and it's not an easy experience because I'm locked with certain drivers (more on this later). So, what can I say?

1. Some games support SLI and gain a performance boost. Usually, it's over 50%. For example:
- Crysis Warhead: 15 > 26 FPS = 73% increase
- F.E.A.R.: 62 > 104 FPS = 67% increase
- Half-Life 2: 74 > 124 FPS = 67% increase
- 3DMark06: 32% increase
2. Some games don't support SLI at all, and there's no positive experience reported online for games like Gothic 3 and Red Faction: Armageddon.
3. The last category is quite frustrating: games that support SLI but require later drivers, such as Hitman Absolution. Since I can't update the driver, I'm limited to using only one video card for these games.

Now, regarding my driver situation: the laptop has an NVIDIA chipset with a GeForce 9400 iGPU and 9800M GTS in SLI, so essentially, there are three video cards. When I install any official NVIDIA driver, either the 9400 is recognized as a Standard VGA Video Adapter, or when I manually include the hardware ID in the driver and get the 9400 installed correctly, there's no SLI switch in the driver, leaving me with three separate video cards. Some drivers install everything properly, but the SLI menu says I have an improper display configuration.

Despite these challenges, I love having this machine. Sure, it looks a bit odd, but it's a milestone in "Vista books"—nothing has ever looked quite so peculiar since. As with any other retro laptop I own, I'm studying it, writing publications like this, and playing some games from its era that I missed back then. Currently, I'm playing Far Cry 2.

I would like to specifically highlight how "packed" the internals are with electronics. You'd think that with a 17-inch laptop, there would be plenty of empty space. However, it has a large motherboard, two drives, an optical drive, five speakers, and two graphics cards on a separate board on top of all that. I love this kind of setup.