Alienware Area-51 ALX Gaming PC
Available: Now
Price: From $4,999.99
Configured: $5,798.00
Are you an extreme PC gamer that actually wants to play Crysis and Unreal Tournament III? Do you have a lot of money to spend on a gaming rig, but aren't quite sure of your ability to build one yourself?
PROS:
* Unmatched Performance
* Will Play Everything
* Alienware Support
* Clean OS Install
CONS:
* Price!
* 32-bit Vista Won't Recognize 4GB of RAM
* There's Always Something Better Right Around the Corner
* Hot & Loud (Like Your Neighbors)
If you build your own computers then move along. Depending on your expertise, you can probably build this rig for much less than what Alienware charges. If you aren’t a whiz with the thermal grease this is a great way to get a top-of-the-line gaming PC with no hassle.
You aren’t just buying the parts, you’re buying Alienware’s service, which is a great thing to have. Their best feature is a discount on upgraded hardware once you become an Alienware customer. They will even install the new hardware for you and clean up your system.
That being said, the parts in this thing are incredible. It’s easily the best computer here at G4 with its nearest competitors being other Alienware machines that don’t have dual video cards. This is what you get to play Crysis and UTIII
The betas for Crysis and UTIII both run incredibly well on this machine and it can easily crank out 60fps in these games. It’s not even worth posting a ton of charts and benchmarks for the newest games. If you can buy it now or in the near future, it will run it… faster than any other computer on the market.
The only thing that could make this computer faster is a dual quad core, but that’s just getting into the ridiculous zone. Not to mention that only a few games are even dual core optimized, let alone for eight cores.
Bottom line, if you’ve got the money and don’t want to try building your own rig that has complicated things like water-cooling and the worry-free enjoyment of a great warranty, take a look at this Alienware.
Specs:
Intel Core 2 Extreme Processor @ 3.0GHz (OC’d to 3.33GHz w/ Liquid Cooling)
4GB DDR2 800MHz MHz SDRAM
2 x 768MB NVIDIA GeForce 8800 Ultra GDDR3 in SLI
Optional Blu-Ray Drive/Burner
Up to 4TB Hard Drive over 2xRAID 0
3DMark06 Scores
Overall: 15856 (97th Percentile)
SM 2.0: 6366
HDR/SM 3.0: 7323
CPU Score: 4480
