Alienware M17
Posted 04/20/09 at 10:05:00 AM by Michael Brown
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The Alienware brand conjures images of powerful and elite computing hardware—think of the nearly invincible antagonist from the 1987 action flick, Predator. Alienware’s M17 looks the part, but the unit we received for review was about as dangerous as E.T.
Our zero-point notebook is based on Intel’s Core 2 Duo E6700 and Nvidia’s GeForce Go 8600M, so we’ve grown accustomed to newer challengers gutting it. But for all its bulk and menacing looks, the M17 proved to be only slightly faster than that aging reference rig, and it was considerably slower in our nongaming benchmarks than the HP HDX 18 we reviewed in January.
Despite the presence of two ATI Mobility Radeon HD 3870 GPUs running in CrossFire X, the M17, which came equipped with 64-bit Vista Home Premium, turned in an anemic performance in our gaming benchmarks, with Quake 4 clocking in at 119.2fps and FEAR at just 26fps. Compare that to the Gateway P-7811 FX we examined in our October issue, which pumped out Quake 4 at 133fps and FEAR at 108fps.
We knocked the HDX 18 for its portly proportions, but the M17’s lap weight is more than half a pound heavier, despite having a single 160GB hard drive to the HP’s dual 320s, 3GB of DDR3 memory to the HP’s 4GB of DDR2, and a 17-inch screen compared to the HP’s monstrous 18.4-inch display. Could the extra GPU really weigh that much?
Outfitting this particular M17 with middle-of-the-road components—including an Intel Core 2 Duo Mobile P8400 and an 8x DVD burner—enabled Alienware to price this review unit at $1,750. You do get a long list of features for your dough, including a seven-in-one media card reader, an 802.11n Wi-Fi adapter, Blue-tooth, eSATA, a webcam, a fingerprint reader, and HDMI, but the aforementioned Gateway machine had all that (less the nominally useful fingerprint reader and
Bluetooth), delivered better gaming performance, and cost $350 less.
This being a desktop replacement, we didn’t have high expectations for the M17’s battery life, but we were surprised that its nine-cell crapped out after just one hour and 38 minutes. The six-cell battery in HP’s HDX 18 outlasted it by a full 10 minutes. And it’s a shame that the M17’s speakers sound so absolutely dreadful, because this system runs almost silently.
We do, however, dig the Alienware’s finish. The glossy piano black that’s so popular these days looks sexy—until you handle the device, and then every scratch, smudge, and fingerprint shows up like a cold sore. The M17 is wrapped in a matte black, rubberlike material that rejected our every attempt to muck it up; at least until we rummaged through a bag of greasy potato chips. Even then, it took nothing more than a dry tissue to restore its luster.
As configured, this Alienware M17 doesn’t serve any particular mission well: It’s too heavy for frequent road trips, it’s not powerful enough for hardcore gaming, and without a TV tuner or Blu-ray drive, it’s not much of a media system.
Ethel M
Hip finish, luscious display, cool backlit keyboard.
Cold Ethel
Heavy, unimpressive gaming performance, terrible speakers.
Vista Benchmarks
| Zero Point | ||
|---|---|---|
| Premiere Pro CS3 | 1, 860 sec | 1, 727 sec |
| Photoshop CS3 | 237 sec | 208 sec |
| ProShow | 2,416 sec | 1, 967 |
| MainConcept | 3,498 sec | 3, 642 sec (-4.0%) |
| FEAR1.07 | 4 fps | 26 fps |
| Quake 4 | 29.1 fps | 119.2 fps (+309.6%) |
Our zero point notebook uses a 2.6GHz Core 2 Duo E6700, 2GB of DDR2/667 RAM, an 80GB hard drive, GeForce Go 8600M and Windows Vista Home Premium.
Specifications
| Lenovo W700 | |
|---|---|
| CPU | Intel 2.6GHz Core 2 Duo P8400 |
| RAM | 3GB DDR3 SDRAM |
| Chipset | Intel PM45 |
| Hard Drive | 160GB Seagate Momentus [7,200 RP] |
| Optical | Optiarc AD-7590S DVD RW |
| GPU | Dual ATI Radeon HD 3870 (CrossFireX) |
| Boot/Down | 73 sec/21 sec |
| Lap/Carry | 9lbs, 8oz/11lbs, 6oz |
Sorry to hear about your
Submitted by rob41 on Fri, 05/01/2009 - 8:08pm
Sorry to hear about your luck Phantom_Wood.
I suspect they don't stock many of the power units and yours is the first failure of an AC adapter for this model I've heard of.
Alienware had nothing to do with the connector. The chassis is in fact made by Flextronics and the AC adapter is made by Li Shin International. Alienware gets these Items already speced by their respective manufacturers and then installs their choice of components, software, and finishing touches.
Usually their laptops ship out much faster as well. My M17 was delivered to my door in the far north of Michigan just 10 days after I placed the order on a Saturday.
I'm sure there are a lot of people that would love to have your "paperweight".
In all fairness, do you think you could come back after you've used it for a while and let us know what you think of it?
Submitted by Phantom_Wood on Sat, 05/02/2009 - 8:08pm
I will give a fair review once its up and running for more then 4 hours. As of today which is 3 weeks from the day I placed the call to get a replacement for my ac adapter, I have yet to receive it. After more calls with Alienware, all I can get from them is that it has shipped and they aren't willing to claim it was lost until 4 weeks from the day it was shipped.
Submitted by Phantom_Wood on Wed, 07/01/2009 - 7:34pm
Ok after just a little over 2 months of waiting, closer to 3 really, I finally received my power adapter. I boot it back up and started to play Sins of a Solar Empire. Roughly 10 mins in, I got a BSOD. I promptly reboot the laptop and as it boots up, it shows my raid array and lets me know that an error has occured on the secondary harddrive and won't boot into Vista due to it being Raid 0. Force to rebuild the raid array and lose all data that I had on the laptop (thankfully, I only had a few games installed; no photos or personal data). After using the Alienware Respawn CD to put it back to factory installation, I turn it off and go to bed to full around with it the next day. Next day comes and try to boot it up to find the same error has happened again. Called Alienware and they will be shipping me a new harddrive shortly. Maybe I just have bad luck with this laptop or Alienware just is not up to the standards I thought they were. Either way, my brief experience with this model at this time.
Submitted by Phantom_Wood on Sun, 04/26/2009 - 10:14pm
I actually bought one of these laptops on 26Feb, maxed out everything pretty much and received it about a month and half later. I wish I could say how well it performed, but it was only turned on for about 4 hours before the power adapter burnt out. The process of getting it replaced was pretty simple, but told me it will take 3 days to process, then another 3 days to send the item out. It has been over 2 weeks now still no sign of this power adapter and after calling Alienware they told me to call back the next day after they pull the information up. So after waiting a week I went around looking to replace the adapter myself and you can't find the same adapter they use. You can find the model of it, but the connector that goes into the laptop is completely different then what every website or place sales that I could find. So it seems Alienware changed out the connector so you are force to go through them to get a replacement for it. After all this mess I will probably never buy Alienware again, but this is just my brief experience with them and having a $4000 paper weight sitting under my desk for the past 2 weeks.
Both this model, and your hardship is disapointing
Submitted by Stry8993 on Mon, 04/27/2009 - 4:29am
My youngest brother kinda cheaped out with his laptop, and was rather disapointed, so I looked up a build he could work for... and to be honest I would much rather build him a desktop anyways... but to think that this could've been a rather shoddy deal, is a bit unnerving.
Submitted by rocketman_2004 on Sun, 04/26/2009 - 9:07pm
i quote the review:
As configured, this Alienware M17 doesn’t serve any particular mission
well: It’s too heavy for frequent road trips, it’s not powerful enough
for hardcore gaming, and without a TV tuner or Blu-ray drive, it’s not
much of a media system. (end quote)AS CONFIGURED, though. A TV tuner, a blu-ray drive, a better CPU, and even more RAM can be had as one of the M17's many options on www.alienware.com.
I recently purchased an M17 with 4GB ram, a core 2 quad (Q9000) CPU, a blu-ray drive, an HD screen, and 2x250GB drives in a RAID 0. I am confident it will perform much better then the configuration maximumPC used for this review.
what is dumb thou is what the heck was Alienware, a company that appeals to gamers craving power and cutting edge tech, thinking submitting a notebook configured this modestly for review? what did they think was going to happen lol.If you are going to get an M17 plan on spending ~$2,800 to configure it properly.
but that is no reason to lash out at the good people of MaximumPC.
Submitted by rob41 on Wed, 04/22/2009 - 8:20pm
Alienware is a small botique brand and yet any time there is even a mention of them the douchebags come out of the woodwork to flap their lips about how Alienware sucks. I've owned several Alienware laptops (as well as others) over the years and have never had a problem. I guess it's to be expected. Envy and jeolously are powerful emotions.
The slackers (or maybe manager is more appropriate) at Maximum PC seem to be the least educated when it comes to gaming laptops. Yup, Alienware costs a bit more than other laptops. That's to be expected when you want the best.
They complained about the weight of the laptop. No shit! It's amazingly durable and a little heavier because it's got a magnisium chassis.
Their "test unit" had a slow processor. When you step up to this level of laptop gaming prowess ya get a better proc. like my M17 with the X9100 extreme processor or the QX9300 extreme quad. If the reviewer had the qualifications to review a gaming laptop he would have known that the ATI mobility 3870's are very CPU dependent. Because of this, the gaming performance is directly proportional to which processoryou choose. This fact should have at least been a side note.
I get more than 15,200 3dmark06 and amazing frame rates. Excuse me Minimum PC, just wondering, what is the highest score in 3dmark06 you've ever seen in a laptop. Yeah, I already know the answer. You've never tested a laptop that scored that high even though it's totally routine for M17/OCZ whitebook owners. Just go to Futuremark Orb and you'll see scores topping 17,000. I play Crysis with everything set to maximum and average 30 to 35 fps with totally fluid gameplay. Cmon, in a laptop, that's amazing!
The new Asus W90 is just able to achieve this level and that's with dual ATI 4870's.
Why do you call it Maximum PC if you don't test the Maximum.
Your zero point unit, HP HDX 18, and Gateway P-7811 FX, couldn'thold a candle next to a loaded M17. Shit, they shouldn't even be spoken in the same breath since the only thing they have in common is the fact that they are laptops. Minors and Majors buddy.
Not even going to reply to the dipshit who says you're not a gamer unless you're on a desktop.
Hey Maximum PC, why don't you review a maximum laptop so you can do a maximum review. Seems like Maximum Pc ought to review the best of the best for their readers. Not under equiped rigs and leave readers with the impression that this model laptop sucks and only scores a 5.
Your pathetic review is misleading at best. The M17 is one of the most powerful laptop gaming rigs ever built.
Maybe someday you'll do a proper review.
Here is your review, Verdict.......................2!
I'm really not trying to flame you guys at Maximum Pc, but son of a bitch, when are you gonna step up to the plate and get it right. The whole "Maximum PC", "Kick-ass" award, gaming, overclocking, building rigs etc, etc is so cool. Imagine what it would be if you expected more of yourselves and lived up to the name.
Ummm, not slamming the Mac guy but Apple ditched their hardware a few years ago because it couldn't perform like PC hardware. So since you play games with Vista you've got a PC with an apple on the lid. The Macbook "pro" doesn't even offer the high end hardware that you can get in the M17.
Hey I would say ET was
Submitted by Keith E. Whisman on Mon, 04/20/2009 - 6:37pm
Hey I would say ET was pretty dangerous. He had that light up finger. You don't know where that finger has been. And why was he so attached to those children? He was preying on those children. ET was an Alien Pedifile that came to Earth to sexually prey on our young children especially the boys.
So Yes I would say that ET was pretty damn dangerous.
Submitted by DMI PC Repair on Mon, 04/20/2009 - 8:53am
Gay, Gay , and Gay. Alienware sucks!!! If I had a nickle for alienware I had to fix in Florida I would put them in a sock and beat them sensless. As for the dude with the Mac way to go. You have proven to me that people with money are stupid.
Submitted by QuadCoreAbe on Mon, 04/20/2009 - 5:22pm
I am having trouble understanding your "If I had a nickel" joke... and I own an alienware laptop which is very satisfying.
Submitted by guest001 on Mon, 04/20/2009 - 11:19am
Double Post. Sorry
Submitted by guest001 on Mon, 04/20/2009 - 7:11am
You guys mentioned in the april issue that you would be releasing a new bench because fear wasn't able to perform well on Radeon cards. Still waiting for that review.
Submitted by db on Mon, 04/20/2009 - 6:33am
The problem with gaming laptops is that no serious gamer would ever play on a laptop. Nor would a serious gamer ever pay $1399 for a laptop when he could build a more powerful desktop under $1000. And how many gamers do you know who really care about performance that would play on a 17" screen? More like Failienware imo.
Gamer on the road
Submitted by Bravo_18 on Mon, 04/20/2009 - 9:00am
I have a P200 toshiba 17" gaming rig..cost me $1300 usd..pre configured for gaming..
i'm always on the road or travelling elsewhere..as a serious gamer..i believe it would not be practical bringing my pc gaming rig at the airport all the time..
For a SERIOUS gamer $1000 bucks of PC gaming is only for entry level to mid range..
My little 17" desktop replacement notebok is serious for gaming....
Ctrl-Alt-Del...Restart..
Submitted by db on Mon, 04/20/2009 - 9:11am
For a SERIOUS gamer $1000 bucks of PC gaming is only for entry level to mid range..
If you buy a prebuilt system then sure, $1000 is around entry level. If you buy $1000 worth of parts on Newegg and build your own, you get something upper-mid range. Either way it will be a hell of a lot better than the fastest "gaming" laptop.
Submitted by Bravo_18 on Mon, 04/20/2009 - 10:10pm
The point of having a Notebook gaming rig is for MOBILITY..you can play anytime and anyware..you can never do that to a PC.....I have a High end Gaming PC..but i cant bring it when i travel...they never handle it with care..so whats the point of having something that fast and can't use it...
SERIOUS gamers ( HArdcore types) never go mid-range specs...HIGH ENDS specs...( SLI or Crossfire Flavor)..and a $1000 budget does not cut it...and they dont buy prebuilt system...
Ctrl-Alt-Del...Restart..
Submitted by Keith E. Whisman on Mon, 04/20/2009 - 11:33pm
I think what he is getting at is that $1300 bucks gets you a Laptop capable of gaming. Laptop prices have really come down and being capable of playing games for $1300bucks is amazing. Sure the resolution is going to not exactly be the highest and I'm sure some of the eye candy has to be turned off but you can play games.
Laptops were always prohibitively expensive for most people except business executives that could actually justify the expense. Not only have laptops been historically alot more expensive than desktops. Laptop displays were always sucky with midrange CPU's and integrated GPU's were a guarantee. Laptops never came with more than the minimum ammount of ram for Windows to work.
Yes you can get alot of Laptop for your dollar these days and it's great. You need only go up from the basic gaming capable laptop to a kickass $2500dollar laptop. For a long time the minimum price for a laptop was $2000 dollars. Anything less wasn't worth more than a calculator.
Submitted by Bravo_18 on Tue, 04/21/2009 - 4:32am
Business executive laptops are lame...and over priced
This notebook is less than $2000 mark and does really well with the latest games..and its not a calculator..:)
and seriously..gamers do play using notebooks..most of them has a PC and a gaming notebook..so dont say that " Serious Gamer wouldn't play games using a notebook"...I have a good gaming PC rig..same price as my notebook..so
SAGER NP5797 (Clevo M570TU) Gaming Laptop
The topic is about alienware M17 review comparing it to other notebooks at its range..not about a PC..
and its not always about paying high premium for a brand name and configuration that for most gamers are too much. They sited that the gateway with less price tag made a better impression in their test review.
Ctrl-Alt-Del...Restart..
Scuse me? I'm a VERY serious
Submitted by StormEffect on Mon, 04/20/2009 - 8:01am
Scuse me? I'm a VERY serious PC gaming enthusiast, and my gaming system is a Macbook Pro running Vista.
I use an external keyboard and mouse (and sometimes an external screen), but it performs perfectly when running at native resolution (1440x900).
So PLEASE drop it with your bullshit.
Submitted by sasquatch42 on Mon, 04/20/2009 - 1:19pm
drop the Mac bullshit
we know they aren't worthy of gaming
a sub 1k gaming notebook could totaly pwn it in every game
Submitted by db on Mon, 04/20/2009 - 9:09am
Scuse me? I'm a VERY serious PC gaming enthusiast, and my gaming system is a Macbook Pro
This is where I stopped reading.
Submitted by Bravo_18 on Mon, 04/20/2009 - 2:14am
Its all about performance & price ratio...
aesthetics is just a plus..
gateway did a good job on system specs and price ration..less on beauty aspects..
Ctrl-Alt-Del...Restart..
Submitted by mlee19 on Mon, 04/20/2009 - 9:33am
Don't forget about Asus gaming mobile machine.
As we all have known for awhile, alienware is just a Dell but even more over priced.
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