Alienware's Benchmark Buster Lands Carrying An Otherworldly Price
For such a supposedly secret location, that Area 51 sure does turn out a lot of computers.
OK, let's be serious for a moment. Laughing in the face of this
"recession" business, Alienware's latest, the Area-51 X-58, starts at
$1,649 and quickly goes up from there once you start piling on the
features. The configuration we tested: A stunning $6,373.
The centerpiece here is the new Core i7, Intel's latest CPU. The
i7-965 Extreme installed here is the fastest and most-powerful chip
that Intel currently makes, with four cores operating at 3.2GHz.
Running the 64-bit version of Vista, Alienware has taken advantage of
the lack of the 32-bit 3-GB RAM cap and wedged 12 gigs of DDR3 RAM into
the rig.
The lascivious excess doesn't stop there: Two Radeon HD 4850 X2
cards are also installed — giving this computer a grand total of four
GPUs. It almost goes without saying that the machine would have four
hard drives in it, a variety of high-speed and high-capacity drives
that offer a total of 2.25 terabytes of storage space.
Cutting-edge tech like this doesn't come without some headaches.
Expect crashes and frustration as you delve deep into tweak menus if
you want to get all your apps to work, especially games, which can be
particularly crash-prone with a video setup like this. That said, when
you do get things up and running it'll blow the doors off your
benchmarks: The X-58 typically got about double the benchmark scores of
anything else I've tested, and four or five times the scores you'd
expect from a PC released 18 months ago.
But with performance comes price, and all of this once again brings
us around to two inevitable questions: Who spends more than six
thousand dollars on a computer? And when can we come over to your house
to play with your other toys?
WIRED Loaded with the absolute latest technology from
top to bottom. Infinite connectivity options include six USB, two
gigabit Ethernet, one eSATA, and one Firewire port ... and that's just
in the back. Includes a free hat.
TIRED Incredibly heavy and imposingly large. Only one
optical drive? At this price we'd expect more than a one-year warranty.
1200 watt power supply ensures the unit doubles as a space heater.
- Consoles:
Gaming PCs
- Manufacturer: Alienware
- Price: $6,373 (as tested)
Release Date: November 21, 2008
