Alienware M17x Gaming Laptop Review

Features & Build Quality

The screen is joined by speakers that are among the loudest that we’ve heard on a laptop, delivering a decent amount of bass and respectable sound, even if the mid-range was slightly tinny. They’ll certainly fill a room with explosions, and are far superior to the weak units included in the Asus G60Vx.

The keyboard is solidly made – a key point considering the rage-quit bashing it’s likely to take. With a reinforced WASD key cluster, you can be sure that it’ll stand up to the rigours of regular gaming sessions. The trackpad isn’t as good or as frictionless as we’d like, though, but as you’ll use a USB mouse for most of the time, this isn’t a damning criticism.

Alienware has backed up its gregarious design with an enticing roster of components. The 2.8GHz Intel Core 2 Duo T9600 is one of the most powerful mobile CPUs available, with 6MB of Level 2 cache and a 1,066MHz FSB, but it's worth noting that there are newer Core i7-based laptops starting to appear.

The 4GB of 1,333MHz DDR3 memory should help keep the M17x snappy and responsive. Gaming performance is provided by a single Nvidia GeForce GTX 260M chip. In fine Nvidia tradition, and in total contrast to its name, this isn't a new part at all - it's actually an overclocked version of the G92 core, otherwise known as the GeForce 9800M GTX. This GPU originally debuted in the GeForce 8800 GT desktop card way back in November 2007.

The GeForce GTX 260M has some decent-sounding specifications however, with a core clock speed of 550MHz and its 112 stream processors clocked at 1,375MHz. The card's 1GB of GDDR3 RAM is clocked at 950MHz (1.9GHz effective) which should help games such as Crysis which can fill 1GB of video memory.


Elsewhere, there’s a pair of 500GB Seagate Momentus 7200.4 hard disks, which are a cut above the usual mobile hard disk, offering a spindle speed of 7,200rpm and a 16MB cache. They’re also arranged in a RAID 0 array, which should slightly increase games performance and data access times. While there’s no Blu-ray drive, you can add one for an extra £99.

A host of other upgrades are available too: a 2.53GHz Core 2 Extreme QX9300 processor will set you back £690, upgrading the graphics to a pair of GTX 280M chips running in SLI will cost an additional £590, and doubling the DDR3 RAM to 8GB costs a staggering £935. There’s even the option of paying £420 extra to have a pair of 256GB SSD drives arranged in a RAID 0 array.


Plump for all of these upgrades and you’d undoubtedly have a lightning-quick machine and possibly the most powerful laptop on the planet but, as usual, the price is exorbitant: with every possible upgrade, the M17x would set you back more than £4,000.