Alienware Aurora m9700
Today we bring you an in-depth review of the mighty Alienware Aurora m9700. Featuring extreme gaming performance and a price tag to match, we'll see just how badass it is, and what you can expect from a laptop of this caliber.
+ Pros
Nice LCD for gaming
SLI graphics and 1GB of total graphics memory
Fancy design and color
Great for desktop replacement
-Cons
PRICE
No dual core CPU option
Poor battery life
Technical Specifications
The Alienware Aurora m9700 is configured with AMD's Turion 64 ML-44 mobile processor, and is clocked at 2.4GHz with 1MB L2 cache. This processor has a TDP (Thermal Design Power, or maximum thermal output) of 35W and is a 90nm 'Lancaster' core CPU. It is Socket 754 based. One wonders though why at this price, a dual core CPU is not offered.
The m9700 sports NVidia's Mobile SLI chipset, and is equipped with not one, but two 512MB NVIDIA GeForce Go 7900GS PCI-E graphics cards running in SLI mode for a total of 1GB of video memory. Built on a 90nm process with 24 pixel pipelines and 8 vertex pipelines, and core clock and memory speeds at 375MHz and 500MHz respectively, the GeForce Go 7900GS SLI is in the top tier of notebook video cards. You can expect a really kick ass gaming experience, which I will elaborate on later in the review.
On the memory front, the m9700 is outfitted with 2GB dual-channel DDR-400. Configurations start at 512MB and max out at 2GB.
Our m9700 came with 200GB of hard drive space in the form of 100GB x 2 Serial ATA 1.5GB/s 7,200 RPM w/ NCQ & 8MB Cache in RAID-0. Hard drive performance seemed to be average, and despite having two drives, they were inaudible. Alienware has a number of different hard drive configurations possible for every type of user. For users that want a single hard drive (no RAID), Alienware offers:
4200 RPM - 200GB SATA
5400 RPM - Up to 250GB SATA with NCQ
7200 RPM - Up to 200GB SATA with NCQ
For someone who wants maximum capacity, there are dual hard drives in RAID 0:
4200 RPM - 400GB SATA (2 X 200GB)
5400 RPM - Up to 500GB (2 x 250GB)
7200 RPM - Up to 400GB (2 X 200GB)
In case you skimmed that last batch of bullets quickly, that's a maximum of 500GB in the Aurora m9700. Holy $#@%!
For users who want data backup features and a more warm and cuddly feeling that their data isn't going anywhere, Alienware offers dual hard drives in RAID-1 as well:
4200 RPM - 200GB SATA (2 X 200GB)
5400 RPM - Up to 250GB (2 x 250GB)
7200 RPM - Up to 200GB (2 X 200GB)
The m9700 is equipped with an HD Audio processor which provides pretty good sound for a laptop. There are two speakers mounted on the front of the laptop base, and a subwoofer mounted in the bottom. I didn't notice a booming bass experience with this sub, but I didn't really expect to, so I won't deduct major points there.
Alienware includes a nice integrated TV tuner in the Aurora m9700. The TV tuner worked very well with Windows XP Media Center Edition, and I was up and running with my local cable channels within minutes. Recorded and live TV quality looked great and the included full size remote worked flawlessly.
I have to take this time to say that I really dug Alienware's completely barren desktop. Not many OEMs get this, but it's very gratifying when you come across one that does. To have 38,000 icons for AOL, dial up and trial movie services, and other useless crap on your desktop BEFORE you even use it is annoying as hell. Alienware put only one icon on the desktop, and that was a shortcut to an XML file that listed every driver and piece of software that was installed on the laptop, as well as the associated benchmark scores as reported by Alienware's technicians. I thought this a really cool thing to do. Alienware also has a feature called AlienGUIse, which is basically a rebranded Window Blinds-esque program that allows you to change your XP theme to one of the few alien-related selections. I tried it out briefly but actually liked the way the original theme was, so that's the way it stayed for the duration of my testing.
