$4,000 Alienware Aurora ALX benchmarked: domination this world has never seen

Alienware's Aurora ALX, which was just unveiled this week alongside ATI's blisteringly fast Radeon HD 5870 GPU, gets going at $2,299. If that doesn't bother you, the late-October estimated ship date might. Somehow, the benchmarking fiends over at HotHardware were able to grab hold of one of these rigs, and the results are fairly stunning (if not expected). Granted, their test configuration was a fully loaded $4,074 model, complete with a 3.33GHz Core i7 Extreme Edition 975 CPU, twin ATI Radeon HD 5870's in a CrossFire configuration and 6GB of DDR3 memory. Oh, and blue lights. Lots of blue lights. Put simply, the one-two CPU / GPU punch produced results that led to domination that made pretty much anything else out there look weak. Don't believe us? Hit that link for the bar-charted proof.

[aashish bhagya Posted Sep 24th 2009 6:49PM]

@Hayter d
I aplologize for my bad words but your comment seemed to be totally snobbish in bad taste and I was in also in a bad mood.M6 is a good car but its not huge or flashy so im not trying to compensate for anything.I have been commenting here for months but this is my first mention of my pocessions or bad language so you can guess how your comment pushed me off the edge.And before you make assumptions about my character,I am a practicing physician who loves gadgets and has a bad temper.Nothing more,nothing less.

[(Unverified) Posted Sep 24th 2009 7:03PM]

@deccangroove: No hard feelings, as you can see my response was based on a insult towards me on the first page.

[Mopo Posted Sep 25th 2009 5:35PM]

@Hayter
Your comments speaks clearly about the kind of person YOU are. Funny how you are okay with your snob comment, but offended at decangroove's reply to you. Why don't you get your a$$ out of here and leave your mac at the door where it belongs. Nobody cares if you can afford a Mac or not.

[(Unverified) Posted Sep 24th 2009 5:47PM]

But will it run Hello Kitty: Island Adventure?

[richb93 Posted Dec 17th 2009 3:13PM]

@(Unverified)

Why hasn't this been picked up?!

[Forcewinder Posted Sep 24th 2009 5:37PM]

Why use a i7 extreme when the HDD is going to be a bottleneck? I can run two instances of Crysis on very high on my i7 920 and it doesn't even get to 50% cpu usage.

[AlO Posted Sep 24th 2009 5:53PM]

You can customize this whole system on their website and add a 300GB Velociraptors on there website so the hard drive isn't really a problem.

[JasonC42 Posted Sep 24th 2009 5:44PM]

For all those mac users out there, Stop crying! It is obvious to me that you are JEALOUS. You'd never see this kind of POWER on a MAC because there is nothing that a MAC does that can utilize such greatness. Yes it will be used for a GOD LIKE gaming experience that you'd never know of. Not even a PS3 or Xbox can give. But there is life beyond gaming on a PC. It can do anything that a MAC can do and obviously more. It may be vulnerable in some ways, not as bad as everyone makes it out to be. The vulnerabilities actually help make the world go round in many ways. I think mac users are taking the easy way out and settling for less.

[erh Posted Sep 24th 2009 6:01PM]

None of the commenters are crying about their Macs. Nor would they have reason to, because Mac Pro users tend to use their computers for useful things, such as video editing, graphics, and publishing, not playing games. Not everyone cares about fragging 12-year-old kids online.

[aashish bhagya Posted Sep 24th 2009 6:16PM]

@ Evan
Any reason for you to think that this beast cant do Video Editing,Graphics and Publishing much faster than a similarly priced Mac Pro apart your apple obsession?....

I dont think so!!

[(Unverified) Posted Sep 24th 2009 6:26PM]

Amen to that Evan

[(Unverified) Posted Sep 24th 2009 6:34PM]

@ Evan,

The Mac Pro is not the fastest workstation either. Take a look at the HP Z800. It can is faster and cheaper than the Mac Pro, and more configurable.

http://h10010.www1.hp.com/wwpc/au/en/sm/WF05a/12454-12454-296719-296721-296721-3718645.html

[(Unverified) Posted Sep 24th 2009 6:35PM]

@deccangroove: I used to think exactly like you until i grabbed a Macbook with specs much lower than my PC and I was able to do video editing with iMovie much faster than on my PC, I've ran Adobe Premiere side by side with my PC and the Mac is still faster. Seriously, have you ever used a Mac at all? or you're just talking out of hate.

[aashish bhagya Posted Sep 24th 2009 6:58PM]

@Hayter d
Yes I have used my sisters macbook and its easier do everyday tasks on it.My only problem with Macs is their price.I was very specific in mentioning a comparison between this model and a Mac Pro of similar price point at the read link after seeing that it blew away other machines even on the PCmark vantage test which actually uses photo editing and 3D rendering as well to provide a overall computing statistic.I hope we are not comparing apples to oranges here.

[LOLOtech Posted Sep 24th 2009 5:51PM]

You can easily save $1000 when buying it at iBuypower...

[AlO Posted Sep 24th 2009 5:54PM]

iBUYPOWER case designs aren't half as cool as this one though.

[aznofazns Posted Sep 24th 2009 7:48PM]

The difference in case price is not $1000... that being said, Alienware is probably much better with quality and cable management. Besides, IBUYPOWER just sounds so awful.

[Mopo Posted Sep 25th 2009 5:43PM]

@aznofazns
Cable management is an art form; however, this is hardly a data center. It is not that difficult to hide or manage the cables with a little care and these newer wider cases make it a lot easier. Plus, most of the new PSU's have removable cables.

[Teer1998 Posted Sep 24th 2009 6:09PM]

meh. I could build it cheeper, faster, better, stronger . . .
cue Daft Punk

Nah, I'm just joshin' around. Want to know what the BIOS are like for a rig like that, assuming with the unlocked clock multiplier on that i7 you could really get silly with overclocking that badboy. Not that you'd ever need extra processing power, just nice to know its there if you want it.

[DeathroW22 Posted Sep 24th 2009 6:19PM]

Its true though.

It is good quality hardware (surprisingly) and has great build quality, but i'm here to encourage anyone and everyone to build their own! Some retailers even offer really cheap installation insurance now, break a component while installing it? Thats fine, you're covered for a replacement.

I've used scan.co.uk before, mainly because it is so cheap - not broken anything so far on any of my builds, but accidents happen. The last one i did, it cost me around £30 to insure a £1200 basket of components. Not bad, eh?

[(Unverified) Posted Sep 24th 2009 6:13PM]

I was looking for a review on the Aurora, but all I could find was one about the Area 51. Can anyone tell me if this is any good, cuz i really want to get a gaming computer.

http://www.tvlesson.com/video/39341_alienware-area-51-alx-gaming-pc.html

[aashish bhagya Posted Sep 24th 2009 6:17PM]

It was released just yesterday dude...Have some patience.

[(Unverified) Posted Sep 24th 2009 6:24PM]

Methinks the Extreme 3000 with two 5870's for about $1900 less would be just fine.....

[miquonranger03 Posted Sep 24th 2009 6:48PM]

It only has 6 stupid gigabytes of RAM? Why not ONE HUNDRED TWENTY EIGHT? Weak! Weak! LAME!

[(Unverified) Posted Sep 24th 2009 6:58PM]

45 lbs, youed get ripped taking that to LAN parties

[Agent 25i Posted Sep 24th 2009 7:22PM]

Very, very nice.
Wheres all the noobs crying "Alienware sux.", "it costs to much."(for you maybe)? Yea, I though not.
It's onions baby, onions.

[Anthology Posted Sep 24th 2009 7:27PM]

Alienware sucks.
It costs too much.

[Mopo Posted Sep 25th 2009 6:01PM]

Why would you call people that do not like Alienware noobs? I am fairly certain that most people don't like Alienware, because they are charging at least 35% to 45% more for a rig that you can buy almost every single part from newegg (minus the case and ancillary items) and build it themselves. I would say that is a smart consumer; however, I do not knock anyone that is willing to pay for convenience.

All Alienware and companies like them (I am loosely including Apple in this) are doing is getting the parts wholesale and putting it together so you don't have to. You are basically paying an extra $1500 or so for someone in a production line that makes $15/hr that can put this together in about a couple of hours.

[Slavik Posted Sep 24th 2009 9:11PM]

I believe I just jizzed in my pants.

[Rpie74 Posted Sep 24th 2009 9:16PM]

Hey guys,
Mind oif I ask a question?
I have a 30" Dell that uses a display port and 2 22" Dell's that Im gonna have vertical. These use DVI-D.
Will this card work for me?

[Streetfights Posted Sep 24th 2009 11:38PM]

yeah.

they have 4 outs: hdmi, 2 dvi-d and displayport

[(Unverified) Posted Sep 24th 2009 10:56PM]

Hokay, this is just BS,
My school is having me build a double quad-core (2x Nehalem Xeon E5530s) config on a server motherboard with 12GB of RAM, two SSD's in RAID 0, a 1TB 7200RPM HDD, and an HD5870, and it STILL comes out less than this.

[(Unverified) Posted Sep 24th 2009 11:33PM]

I just blue myself.

[NukeAssault Posted Sep 24th 2009 11:34PM]

Its... beautiful. I was the innards of my desktop were so clean.

[bwkk Posted Sep 25th 2009 1:25AM]

The Alienware system builder won't let me pick the Creative sound cards along with the dual graphics. Says, not enough PCI-E slots. :(