Mention the acronym 'SLI' and the word 'notebook' in the same sentence and you get a mental picture of a massive, slab-like laptop that has to be confined to a desk because of its weight.

This is only partly true for Evesham's Quest Nemesis: it's just 42mm thick, which for this type of notebook is almost thin, but it still weighs in at an impressive 5.2kg with its AC power adapter.

At the heart of the Nemesis is one of AMD's Turion64 ML-44 mobile processors, clocked at 2.41GHz. This, together with 1GB of DDR333 memory, gives it good but not great performance, as proved by its Sysmark04SE score of 182.

But what the Nemesis is all about is 3D graphics performance. Hidden in the chassis is a pair of Nvidia's GO 7900GS graphics processors with 256MB of memory each, which are controlled by a version of Nvidia's nForce4 SLI chipset.

Together with the 17-inch widescreen display with its 1,680 by 1,050 pixel resolution and X-Bright technology, you have a first-rate gaming laptop. It produces a 3DMark05 score of 9,665 when tested at a 1,024 by 768 pixel resolution

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Its real-life game score was a little disappointing; just 56.59fps in FarCry, but this was more down to a bug in the graphics driver than anything else and the next driver release should hopefully fix the problem. But whatever game you play, having an SLI setup will allow you to play with a fair degree of detail turned on and without too much loss of playing performance.

Also squeezed into the chassis in our review system was a pair of 100GB hard drives controlled by Nvidia's Megashield RAID controller. The review sample came with the disks arranged in a RAID 0 (Striped) array for speed but you can configure a different array at the time you order the Nemesis.

To help free up drive space and to back-up data there's a Dual Layer DVD burner, and you get a 7-in-1 card reader for good measure.

While the Nemesis comes with Windows Media Center installed, disappointingly there isn't a remote control included. Nor, for that matter, is there a TV tuner, which considering the chassis size is a bit of a let-down. Evesham does offer both as a package for an additional £79.99 (plus VAT).

When it comes to connecting to the outside world, the Nemesis offers what has become standard issue for a high-end notebook these days; Gigabit LAN, a V.90 56Kbps modem, 802.11b/g Wireless LAN and Bluetooth.

Evesham supports the Nemesis with a Gold three-year warranty, the first two years being in-home support while the third is return-to-base.

Housed in a thinner chassis than is the norm for this genre of notebook, the Nemesis might not be the most all-round powerful laptop available, but when it comes to gaming it's a very impressive package, especially when you consider the price.