2. Conclusions

If you haven't already done so, be sure to take a look at the slideshows. They will help you see how we reached the conclusions presented here.

1. Photos of the outside and inside of the Alienware Aurora m9700

Slide Show

2. The results of tests with 3DMark05 (graphics processor speed), PCMark05 (CPU, memory and disk drive speed), MobileMark 2005 (performance and battery life when running multitasking office applications and playing DVDs) and our gaming tests. The performance slideshow also includes the results of our Display Brightness and Contrast Tests. As an added bonus, we tested the m9700 running both Windows XP and XP Media Center Edition (MCE) just to see if MCE, which comes with a lot of high end graphics notebooks these days, helps or hinders performance.

Slide Show

Alienware definitely knows how to make high powered graphics oriented notebooks. The SLI based Aurora m9700 did very well on our performance tests. On 3DMark05 it turned in scores as high as 10,000 3DMarks at 1024x768 and 8,400 3DMarks at 1600x1200. It also did well on our gaming tests and its hardware scored impressively on PCMark05. Though the m9700's display wasn't the best we've tested, it delivered good brightness and very good contrast. Add to this the notebook's cool Alienware styling and you've at least got to consider buying one if you need a solidly performing mobile gaming or graphics computer.

As of this writing the Alienware Aurora m9700 configured as we tested it costs around $4,200. You can configure an Aurora m9700 that costs less by cutting back on CPU speed, memory, hard disk configuration, display resolution and by going for a single graphics processor as opposed to two SLI linked graphics processors. Find out more about the m9700 at www.alienware.com.

It's not easy to compare the performance of graphically oriented notebook computers, because it's usually impossible to hold the components in each constant. This is much easier with desktop machines where you can usually just slip each graphics card or cards you want to test into the same computer with the same monitor. So, read the related articles below with care. Interpret graphics performance tests while keeping in mind the CPU, graphics processor(s), amount and speed of memory, display resolutions and disk drives in place when each test was conducted.

Related Articles:
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Gaming Notebooks Compared: Eurocom SLI Emperor, Eurocom F-Bomb and Dell M1710
Eurocom's D900K F-Bomb Is The Monster Car of Gaming Notebooks
Is Dell's XPS M1710 The Fastest Graphics Notebook Ever? Part I
Is Dell's XPS M1710 The Fastest Graphics Notebook Ever? Part II

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