Meet the new Alienware 18, completely redesigned with dual graphics to give you the ultimate gaming experience.
Now, it's clear that Alienware parent Dell stacked the deck by sending us a system configured with nearlyevery high-priced upgrade possible. The Alienware 18 starts at $2,099, and can be ordered with either Windows 7 or Windows 8. Our review configuration included an upgraded Intel Core i7 processor, a 512GB solid-state drive (SSD)/750GB hard drive storage combo, two Nvidia GeForce 780M graphics cards, and a whopping 32GB of RAM, possibly the first time we've tested a laptop with that much memory. The cost? A budget-breaking $4,249.
When you're running a 2.8GHz Intel Core i7-4900MQ CPU with 32GB of RAM, and the high-end video cards suggested above, you pretty much know what to expect from application performance. Frankly, even a PC that costs a quarter as much as this one probably has more than enough computing power for your day, even if you're a heavy multitasker, so at some point, it's just about bragging rights. If you're the type of user who really needs this much CPU/RAM horsepower, there's probably a new silo-style Mac Pro in your future. It's worth noting that, as with most other dedicated gaming laptops, heavy workloads cause the internal fans to kick in, and they are just plain loud.
The real test of a gaming laptop is, of course, games. Only the biggest gaming laptops can fit in dual video cards, allowing two GPUs to work together to boost frame rates (Nvidia calls that type of setup SLI). We ran a pair of 4GB GeForce GTX 780M cards, giving us a top-of-the-line mobile experience, times two.
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Alienware 18
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Price
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$4,249
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Display size/resolution
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18-inch, 1,920x1,080 screen
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PC CPU
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2.8GHz Intel Core i7-4900MQ
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PC memory
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32GB 1,600MHZ DDR3 SDRAM
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Graphics
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(2) 2GB Nvidia Geforce GTX 780M
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Storage
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512GB SSD + 750GB HD
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Optical drive
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BD-ROM
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Networking
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Gigabit Ethernet, 802.11ac wireless, Bluetooth 4.0
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Operating system
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Windows 7 Ultimate (64-bit)
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