 |
Alienware Area-51 Extreme Review - Page Two |
 |
I've always been a huge proponent of Asus motherboards, so I was happy to see one of their newest creations secured inside the computer. The P4C800-E Deluxe is a superb motherboard, offering Dual-Channel DDR technology (which effectively doubles the bandwidth of your system memory), Intel's Hyper-Threading and Performance Acceleration Technologies, built-in multi-RAID and Gigabit network controllers, and a virtually crash-free BIOS. Coupled with Intel's 3.2 GHz Extreme Edition processor, you really can't build anything faster. When it comes to performance, Alienware obviously knows how to choose their hardware.
This particular Alienware computer came loaded with Windows XP Professional (with Service Pack 1) and had all relative software and drivers already installed. Once I keyed in the name of the PC and my local domain, I was at the desktop and ready to start installing games. To get an idea of what the computer was capable of, I installed several resource-intensive 3D games, including Morrowind, Soldier of Fortune II, Quake III Arena, Microsoft Flight Simulator 2004, Halo, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, and the recently released Unreal Tournament 2004 demo. Although the previous gaming computer I used was of decent performance, nothing could have prepared me for just how much the Alienware computer would outperform it. In fact, with the ATI Radeon 9800 XT installed, the games look especially vivid and realistic in many aspects. For example, water now shimmers in the sunlight and slowly laps upon a beach, whereas it always appeared quite stale on my old machine. All the vehicles and buildings in Halo have become much more defined, the clouds and landscapes in Microsoft Flight Simulator 2004 are of picture quality, and the lighting effects in all recent games make just about any object look like you can reach into your monitor and grab it. On top of the newfound realism, every game I tried ran absolutely fluid without even the slightest graphic lag whatsoever. But don't just take my word for it. Running with a 412 MHz engine clock, the Radeon 9800 XT can churn out 3.3 Gigapixels/second and run Quake III at ~400 FPS.
Another piece of hardware that took me by surprise was the Sound Blaster Audigy 2 ZS Platinum Pro. The sound quality over the past couple of years from my Sound Blaster Live! has always been great, so I have never felt the need to upgrade. However, the Audigy 2 ZS has proven to me that sound can indeed get better. The environmental audio effects definitely add to the overall experience with some of the more recent games like Halo, and the 7.1 surround sound puts my somewhat dated home theater system to shame. In addition to the audio connections on the internal sound card itself, the external I/O box offers a multitude of options for your every sound need, including volume controls, an optical input and output, microphone input, headphone output, and even a FireWire connection. If you've ever found yourself annoyed at having to crawl under your desk just to adjust your line in/out connections, then an Area-51 with the ZS Platinum Pro is definitely the package for you.
Simply put, this machine possesses enough power to maximize the performance of any current game or application on the market without the slightest bit of delay - whether it be access time on the hard drive, graphic lag, or any other deficiency. In fact, I don't see any software coming close to taxing this machine for a good year or two. With virtually every other computer company striving to produce the cheapest low-end computer on the market, it's good to see that Alienware continues to stick to their original concept - to build only the highest performance computers available. The Area-51 is proof that Alienware's devotion to performance combined with state-of-the-art computer hardware is a wicked formula.
|
|
|
 |
|
| Article Details |
| Reviewed Alienware Area-51 Extreme
Reviewer Jon "Buck" Birnbaum
Published 02/23/04
Pros Tweaked and optimized before being shipped, state-of-the-art hardware, stylish and attractive case, insane performance overall
Cons Somewhat steep price, large case dimensions |
|
|
