Dell have announced a new gaming PC exclusively for Best Buy, the Alienware Aurora Desktop. Fitted out with an AMD Phenom X4 9550 2.2GHz quad-core processor, dual ATI Radeon HD 4850 video cards with a total 1GB of GDDR3 RAM, and 4GB of DDR2 RAM, the Aurora will only be available at Best Buy retail locations and through their online store.
Continuing the tradition of slapping every new superlative video card into their high-end gaming rigs, Alienware has announced it will be offering the ATI Radeon HD 4870 X2 as an option in certain desktop models. In fact both gamers and graphic designers/CAD workers should appreciate the power on offer: the HD 4870 X2 summons up 2.4 teraflops of graphics power, 1,600 stream processing units and 2GB of dedicated GDDR5 memory.
Alienware continue their quest to be the first manufacturer with any new high-end graphics card or processor with the news that the NVIDIA Quadro FX 3600M GPU with 512MB RAM will make its 15.4-inch notebook debut on their Area-51 m15x. Intended for heavy-duty graphics processing, the GPU has support for Open GL 2.1, Shader Model 4.0 and DirectX 10 with the ability to dynamically allocate geometry, shading and pixel processing.
Presumably someone at Alienware has been talking with NVIDIA, as it hasn’t taken the gaming PC manufacturer very long to announce new versions of their Area-51 desktop using the latest GeForce GTX 280 GPU. Available on the Area-51 7500, Area-51 and Area-51 ALX machines, up to three of the 602MHz GPUs can be specified.
After a few weeks of budget, mobile laptops grabbing the headlines, its been the turn of monstrous gaming machines to storm the limelight. Acer announced their first serious gamer’s desktop, the Aspire Predator, which is intended to take the breed out of the boutique and into mainstream computer stores. Alienware struck back with an updated Area-51 ALX; the industry’s first overclocked 4GHz Core 2 Extreme aimed to put Acer back into their place.
If Acer thought rivals Alienware would take one look at their new Predator gaming PC and run for the hills, they’ve another thing coming. Alienware have dragged their already-incredible Area-51 ALX back into the lab and subjected it to some serious surgery. We’re not talking mere botox, either: how about a 3.2GHz Intel Core 2 Extreme QX9770 overclocked to 4.0GHz, 4GB of DDR3 RAM and dual ATI or NVIDIA graphics cards.
Dell is taking the unexpected step of culling its XPS Gaming Desktops range in order to give its Alienware acquisition room to breathe. According to the Wall Street Journal, the move is intended to reinvigorate Alienware’s focus as well as streamline the company’s offerings as a whole. A “combined gaming design and development unit” will tackle the seven current Alienware models and attempt to claw back sales that had been lost thanks to the XPS overlap.
More speed, more gameplay and more pixels has been the theme of the week, with a variety of new hardware launches and upgrades together with some long awaited titles getting released. Apple lived up to the rumors and introduced new processors and faster FSB for their iMac range, together with stirring up a little controversy over whether they’d had access to Intel’s future product line first. Faux-Apple hardware also get plenty of attention, as Psystar’s OS X-running Open Computer took time out from being sniped at by fanboys to get benchmarked.
Alienware have released their latest gaming laptop, the m17x, and while it’s no ultraportable the specs more than make up for it. Dual NVIDIA GeForce 8800M GTX SLI graphics driving a 17-inch WUXGA 1920 x 1200 LCD display, a choice of Core 2 Duo and Duo Extreme processors and an optional 1TB RAID0 array are the headline grabbers. The m17x can take up to 4GB of Dual Channel DDR2 667MHz RAM, as well as up to 1GB of dedicated video memory.
Its not quite their best desktop, I think the ALX still holds that marker, but its their flagship desktop for sure. They are adding the two new products that were announced from NVIDIA the other day, the 790i SLI Ultra motherboard and the GeForce 9800 GX2.
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