First Impressions Of The Alienware Aurora M7700
Source: Tom's Guide US | Keywords: 3d, gaming, notebooks, all
- 1. 3D Gaming On A Notebook PC: Fantasy Or Reality?
- 2. Bread And Circuses: Test Scenarios And Benchmarks
- 3. Overview Of Our Test Systems
- 4. Overview Of Our Test Systems, Continued
- 5. First Impressions Of The Acer Aspire 5672WLMi
- 6. Acer Aspire 5672 WLMi Support
- 7. Touchpad And Keyboard
- 8. First Impressions Of The Hewlett Packard Compaq Nx9420
- 9. Graphics Drivers: Internet Support
- 10. HP Compaq Nx9420 Support, Continued
- 11. Touchpad And Keyboard
- 12. First Impressions Of The Asus A7J
- 13. Graphics Drivers: Substandard Internet Support
- 14. A7J Support
- 15. Analog And Digital TV Plus FM Radio
- 16. Webcam As Notebook Watchdog
- 17. Sound Quality
- 18. First Impressions Of The Alienware Aurora M7700
- 19. Graphics Drivers: Excellent Internet Support
- 20. Alienware Aurora Support
- 21. Alienware Aurora Support, Continued
- 22. A Collection Of Sensible And Senseless Accessories
- 23. Sound Quality
- 24. The Graphics Processor Can Be Upgraded, But Be Careful
- 25. System Restore And Recovery Is Not For Wimps
- 26. An Overview Of Graphics Subsystems
- 27. Display Quality: Static Images
- 28. Display Quality Assessment: Static Images
- 29. Display Quality: The Motion Of Gaming
- 30. Is Gaming Possible At Native Resolution?
- 31. System Temperatures And Noise Levels While Gaming
- 32. Noise Levels For Various Usage Scenarios
- 33. Install And Load Times For Games
- 34. Benchmarks And Settings
- 35. Synthetic Game Performance
- 36. Real-World Game Performance
- 37. Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion
- 38. Spellforce 2
- 39. Need For Speed: Most Wanted V1.3
- 40. System Performance
- 41. MobileMark2005: System Performance And Battery Life
- 42. Gaming Battery Lifetimes
- 43. Which Graphics Notebook For Whom?
- 44. Is Notebook SLI The Future?
- 45. Summary And Conclusions
18. First Impressions Of The Alienware Aurora M7700
Our first thought upon hauling the Aurora M7700 out of its shipping case was "Man, what a beast of a notebook!" Notebook? Whether or not this term still applies to a monster device that's 2.4" (6 cm) thick and that weighs 13 pounds (5.91 kg) is debatable. But the color and styling of the display cover also make it unmistakable that this is an Alienware product.
Could anything be prettier than a blue Aurora M7700?
A blue Aurora M7700 in the dark...
Regular visitors to our Websites will recognize this case, as it also appeared on a test unit we used for our introduction to the GeForce Go 6800 graphics processor in the Fall of 2004. The Aurora M7700 also features an Nvidia graphics processor; in this case a GeForce Go 7800 GTX clocked at 398 MHz and built-in video memory running at 548 MHz.
If the Aurora's weight is desktop-like, so is its AMD Athlon 64 FX-60 - a classic, high-end dual core desktop processor. Likewise the Via K8T890 chipset also comes from the desktop world. All three factors surely can't foster long battery life.
But the M7700 isn't built for battery conservation. It's one of the few available in today's marketplace with room for two optical drives and two hard disks, which may be operated as a RAID 0 or 1 array. For our testing, we configured the hard disks as a RAID 0 array so as to squeeze the last erg of performance out of this blue devil of a notebook PC. Even in a notebook, RAID 0 delivers noticeably improved performance, as you can see in the two following data transfer diagrams.
The data transfer rate for RAID 1 is good, but not overwhelming...
...whereas the results for RAID 0 raise the bar for all other notebooks.
When it came to this notebook's 17" display, we left it to Alienware to choose between WUXGA+ and WXGA+ resolution. They promptly sent us a device with a somewhat low resolution WXGA+ display (1440 x 900 pixels). Because the integrated Webcam comes only on the version with the higher-res display, we didn't get a chance to check that out.
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Oblivion has got to be the best MMORGP I have ever played. WOW can not compare to how well the game fells and plays. The Ups: Awsome Graphics is a complete understatement, the game offers vanity mode and 1st person vew, costomizeable characters, and loads of weapons and quests and guilds. The Downs: Glitchy combat when rendering wolves and dogs... and thats it... BUY THE DAMN THING... YOU'LL LOVE IT!!!!!!!