Alienware Aurora m9700 17-inch Notebook

Reviews: Hardware

Motherboards | Power Supplies | Memory | Systems | Video Cards

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Max Slowik
Kurtis
Alienware
Jul. 25, 2007

Specifications

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First Looks

It's always fun when the UPS guy shoots you a look that says You lucky bastard. A friend of mine worked in the parcel world, and he threw boxes with all kinds of neat things in them (the best was a little cylinder the size of a coffee can that weighed over a hundred pounds and was wrapped in international "Radioactive Materials, Caution" tape) so the silly validation of Alienware=Cool had already passed an acid test.

And for a second, it seemed as though I was shipped a desktop--the box was titanic. After boxes inside of boxes, I found the thing. Big. Heavy. Exceptionally good-looking.

I formed a hunch when I was unboxing this computer. This thing came with a lot of extras; included was a TV tuner, a remote, a Logitech gaming mouse. . .part of the cost had to have been the markup on the numerous accessories. This, to me, is a good thing; see, you don't have to buy the accessories.

Included in the package was:

Logitech G5 Laser Gaming Mouse
Media Center Remote Control and Single NTSC TV Tuner (integrated)
Ginormous power brick

And one equally huge, striking computer:

The m9700, configured as I received it, is shown on the left below. For kicks, I configured a more economical m9700 which would still prove to be very capable.

Price	~$4,000.00 USD	~$1,600.00 USD
Processor	AMD Turion 64 ML44 2.4GHz, 1MB cache	AMD Turion 64 ML34 1.8GHz, 1MB cache
Memory	2x 1024MB DDR2 800MHz	2x 512MB DDR2 800MHz
Video Card(s)	2x GeForce 7900GS 512MB	1x GeForce 7900GS 256MB
Display	17" WUXGA 1920x1200	17" WXGA 1440x900
Hard Drive(s)	2x 150GB 7200RPM SATA (RAID 0)	1x 80GB 5400RPM SATA
Optical Drive(s)	8x DVD-DL DVD+/-RW, 24x CD-RW optical drive	24x CD-RW, 8x DVD optical drive
Features common to both m9700 configurations:
Dimensions (HxWxD): 1.85" x 15.65" x 11.75" Weight: 8.5lbs 3.5mm audio in S-Video and Coaxial in 2.1 speakers 3x 3.5mm and 1x S/PDIF audio out DVI-D, VGA, and S-Video out Wireless 802.11b/g Integrated Bluetooth Gigabit Ethernet 56K Modem 4x USB 1x Firewire 1x ExpressCard (54mm) SD/ MS/ MSPro/ MMC card reader

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Page 2 of 12

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Page 1: Introduction
Page 2: First Looks
Page 3: Test Setup
Page 4: Testing - HL2 Episode 1
Page 5: Testing - F.E.A.R.
Page 6: Testing - Company of Heroes
Page 7: Testing - Prey
Page 8: Testing - Need for Speed Most Wanted
Page 9: Testing - 3DMark 06
Page 10: Performance Summary
Page 11: Performance Summary, Continued...
Page 12: Conclusion

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2 User Comments

1 - Posted by mjsmom on July 27, 2007 - 10:07 pm

My non-tech comments. . .just browsing your articles today. . .would love to have a laptop, any laptop. . .keep writing. . .I'm loving it. gm

2 - Posted by Kurtis on July 28, 2007 - 2:09 am

Thanks for the kind words, mjsmom. :)

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