Hardware Review: Alienware Area-51 X-58

Victor Godinez - Dallas Morning News

Alienware Area-51 X-58 Gaming PC

Grade: A-minus

Specs: Intel Core i7-965 Extreme 3.2 GHz processor, dual 2GB ATI 4870X2 graphics cards, 12GB RAM, 256GB solid-state drive, Windows Vista 64-bit Home Premium.

Pricetag: $6,379

Bleeding Edge: Look, it's pretty much impossible not to have fun with a machine like this new Alienware. Even if you wanted to spend more money, you couldn't really wring any additional horsepower out of a modern PC. Sure, you could tack on extra Blu-ray drives and a larger hard drive and such, but in terms of raw speed, there's really nothing else out there. In other words, this may be the best gaming PC money can buy.

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Room To Grow: That said, I did get this machine to choke on one game: "Crysis: Warhead." When cranked up to its highest visual quality, the original "Crysis" is well-known for its ability to bring any PC to its knees, and the sequel is equally punishing. So this was sort of a collision of an unstoppable force and an immovable object. At the farthest limit, though, at 1600x1200 resolution with 8x anti-aliasing (a technology that smoothes out jagged lines), "Warhead" finally caused my Alienware to stutter just a bit.

A Gaming PC For The Rest Of Us: Of course, a $6,000-plus computer occupies a sales niche so slender as to be translucent. But if you're working with a less stratospheric budget for your new gaming PC, the critical component is the new Core i7 processor from Intel, which is blazing fast. And Dell - which owns Alienware, by the way - has a more-than-decent i7-based Studio XPS computer starting at around $949.

Bottom Line: My only real complaint with the X-58 is that it does get hot, turning my diminutive home office into a convection oven. But hey, a little sweat is a small price to pay for thermonuclear performance.

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