Photos: Asus G71V quad-core laptop

Yesterday, the boys and girls of Asus sent us the G71V gaming laptop, and it wasn't long before we were drooling everywhere. It uses the world's first quad-core mobile CPU, which has four processing centres all whirring away like a hyper-intelligent half octopus with brains instead of legs. Yeah.

Each core on its Intel Core 2 Extreme QX9300 runs at 2.53GHz, and can dip into a quite monstrous 12MB of L2 cache across a 1,066MHz front-side bus. If none of that makes any sense to you, we'll make it simple: it's the fastest mobile CPU money can buy.

The rest of the G71V is impressive, too. It ships with up to 4GB of DDR2 800MHz RAM, 1TB of storage across two 500GB Hitachi hard disk drives, and has the option of a 2x Blu-ray rewriter drive, so you can author your own Full HD discs (with the appropriate software).

Graphics are sorted, too. The G71V ships with an Nvidia GeForce 9700M GT with 512MB of dedicated memory. This pumps visuals through the laptop's 17-inch 1,920x1,200-pixel display, or via the HDMI port at the rear to a big-screen display of your choice.

Other specs include a 2-megapixel webcam with face recognition login, four USB ports, Dolby Home Theater surround sound, 802.11n Wi-Fi, 2GB of Intel Turbo Memory, Windows Vista Ultimate edition and Express Gate.

Availability is TBC, but you can buy the top-spec model for a quite reasonable £1,999. A cheaper model with a Core 2 Duo chip can be had for £1,349. We'll have a full review soon, but in the meantime, hit 'Continue' below to bask in its glory.

We're not too keen on the colour scheme around the keyboard section, but we've come to the conclusion that gamers are all colourblind. Why else would laptop manufacturers continue to churn out such garish designs?

Above the keyboard, you'll find a strip of touch-sensitive buttons. The blue one launches the Express Gate user interface -- a quick-booting alternative to Windows Vista that gives you access to common functions such as a Web browser, an instant messaging client and media files.

The USB ports are hidden behind flaps on either side of the laptop. Here, you'll also find a set of audio ports you can connect to a surround-sound speaker system.

At the rear, you'll find an HDMI port, an e-Sata port, VGA video output and an Ethernet port.

The left side also has a flap with two USB ports behind it. Here, you can also see a four-pin FireWire port, a memory card reader and a 2x Blu-ray writer. Sweet.

The underside has an orange vent that looks suspiciously like a subwoofer. It's not though -- it's simply for expelling heat produced by the quad-core CPU.

It wouldn't be a gaming laptop without LEDs strewn all over it. These bad boys flash quicker depending on how much graphics power you're utilising, so when your games get more intense, the chances of someone sitting opposite you suffering an epileptic increases.

The face-recognition login system analyses your face to determine whether you should be given access to the operating system. It works surprisingly well and is far more convenient than typing in a password.