Originally posted by jeffdsmith
Ok.

Originally posted by al_bundy
why can't a home builder achieve their performance? They use standard enthusiast parts from companies like Asus that are known to home builders and that you can get anywhere. Looking at their prices it looks like you are paying more than the normal retail prices than at a retailer like Newegg.

MaximumPC July 2004

Alienware ALX
Alienware's Bold Experiment Could Double Your Gaming Performance

Alienware's technology is completely card-agnostics, it will work with ATI or nVidia cards (or a combination of both), and doesn't even require videocard vendors to write special drivers. Instead, Alienware has written custom software that sits between the Direct3D layer and the actual videocard drivers. This software splits the image it needs to render into two halves - top and bottom - and sends one half to each card. Each outputs its half to a custom piece of Alienware hardware called the Alienware Video Array, which combines the two halves and outputs them as a single frame.

In previous attempts at using one card to render the top half of a scene and another to draw the bottom half, an unsightly seam always ran horizontally across the middle of the monitor. Alienware claims to have solved the problem by dynamically shifting the load between the two cards. We saw a prototype of the ALX rig in action and can happily verify that there were no seam or sync problems.

Two videocards and possibly two CPUs will generate a considerable amount of heat. To compensate and cool what will likely be a red-hot rig, Alienware's ALX systems will feature a proprietary liquid cooling system. Early prototypes of the system's case will allow owners to check the temperature via an LCD display on top of the enclosure.

Originally posted by jeffdsmith
Besides having a much greater access to all hardware vendors then the average home builder, Alienware also works with the software, bios, and prop. hardware to achieve results you can simply not obtain from putting off the shelf components together. Some home builders are capable of this level of building, most are not.

Originally posted by fumanstan
Actually, that's the ONLY significant advance that i've ever seen a system builder come out with. And while it looks intriguing, i'll hold judgement until its actually benchmarked and demonstrated.

Hark, the quest is over: The Holy Grail of mobile computing—user upgradeable graphics—has been unearthed in Alienware’s Area-51m notebook! This isn’t a matter of adding RAM or tricking a vendor into sending a replacement graphics card that requires a dissection to install. Alienware lets you flip over the Area-51m, grab your screwdriver, and voila, you’ve gone from a GeForce FX 5700 to a Radeon 9700 before the commercial break in the Simpsons is over.

"c|net news.com is reporting that Alienware is going to ship a 4GHz desktop. The new Area-51 ALX, introduced on Friday, uses overclocking, or the practice of pushing a processor past its factory speed setting, to elevate a standard Intel Pentium 4 chip to 4GHz. Because overclocking a processor can cause it to overheat, the desktop also includes a special liquid-cooling system devised by Alienware. Purchasing the 4GHz Area-51 ALX desktop is an expensive proposition for most consumers, as the machine starts at about $4,200, according to pricing on Alienware's ALX Web site."

Games system specialist Alienware has hot-rodded one of its desktop PCs with a homegrown version of Intel's Pentium 4 processor that runs at 4GHz.

The new Area-51 ALX, introduced on Friday, uses overclocking, or the practice of pushing a processor past its factory speed setting, to elevate a standard Intel Pentium 4 chip to 4GHz. Because overclocking a processor can cause it to overheat, the desktop also includes a special liquid-cooling system devised by Alienware.

Purchasing the 4GHz Area-51 ALX desktop is an expensive proposition for most consumers, as the machine starts at about $4,200, according to pricing on Alienware's ALX Web site. But PC enthusiasts, such as game players, have traditionally been willing to pay more to get the latest, fastest hardware they can find. This has helped give rise to a number of high-end PC makers, including Alienware and Falcon Northwest.

The launch lets fans get a jump on getting a machine with a 4GHz chip. Intel recently pushed back introduction of a 4GHz Pentium 4 to the first quarter of 2005, having earlier announced plans to introduce it this year. The fastest current Pentium 4 runs at 3.6GHz.

Alienware says that thanks to its chip speed, the new ALX desktop is particularly well suited to multimedia applications such as 3D games, 3D content creation and digital video. The machine also incorporates PCI Express architecture, which boosts bandwidth to the graphics card and can be configured with up to 4GB of dual-channel memory.

In addition to the 4GHz Pentium 4 and a liquid-cooling system, the most basic Area-51 ALX desktop comes with 1GB of RAM, a CD-burner, ATI Technology's Radeon X800 graphics card, a 74GB Western Digital Raptor 10,000 rpm hard drive and a Creative Sound Blaster Audigy 2 ZS High Definition sound card.

Pumping up the machine with 4GB of RAM, Nvidia's GeForce 6800 Ultra graphics card, twin 74GB Raptor hard drives and a DVD-burner increases the price to about $5,700.

Customers can easily pile on hundreds of dollars to the price of an ALX-Area 51 by deciding to add multiple, larger-capacity hard drives or by moving up to a Pentium 4 Extreme Edition processor. Alienware offers its own version of that chip as well, overclocked to 3.8GHz. Right now, Intel's fastest Extreme Edition runs at 3.4GHz.

However, not all PC enthusiasts want to buy Intel. To please those customers who prefer Advanced Micro Devices' processors, Alienware sells the Aurora ALX, a desktop that includes AMD's Athlon 64 FX 53 and starts at about $4,500.

Originally posted by FuzzyBallz
Alienware, it's the PC equivalent of an Apple, but even more expensive. That's whack. It uses an Antec/Chieftec case w/ extra plastic panels, so it must be the BOMB!