Alienware Unveils m17x Gaming Notebook

Alienware today introduced its most powerful notebook to date, the Area-51 m17x. The m17x is the much-anticipated stablemate of the current m15x, which was announced several months ago.

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The Area-51 m17x has the following specifications:

• Intel Core2 Duo Processors (6MB Cache, 800MHz FSB)
• Intel Core2 Duo Extreme Processors (6MB Cache, 800MHz FSB)
• 17" Wide Screen WUXGA 1920 x 1200 with Clearview (1200p HDTV resolution support)
• Up to 4GB Dual Channel DDR2 at 667MHz
• Dual graphics cards:
  • 512MB NVIDIA GeForce 8800M GTX
  • 512MB NVIDIA GeForce 8700M GT
  • 256MB NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GT
• Up to two hard drives in RAID 0
• Smart Bay accepts third modular hard drive or modular DVD burner
• Two speakers with SubWoofer
• 12-Cell Lithium-ION Battery
• Full Size Keyboard with Separate Numeric Keypad - optional AlienFX backlighting
• Height: 2.1"
• Width: 16.1"
• Depth: 11.5"
• Weight: 10.5 lbs
• Rear-Exhaust Cooling

Frank Azor, VP of Alienware's product group, said regarding the m15x and m17x, "With both systems, Alienware has once again revolutionized mobile performance. The Area-51 m15x is ideally suited for road warriors or students who are constantly on the move but still want that boost of power Alienware delivers. The Area-51 m17x is for professionals and hardcore enthusiasts who want pure, unbridled performance with the added benefit of portability."

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Like the m15x, the m17x is available with a backlit keyboard courtesy of AlienFX system lighting.

The Alienware Area-51 m17x currently starts at $2,199 with a Core 2 Duo T8100 (2.1GHz) processor and dual 8600M-GT graphics cards.

Alienware Product Page
NotebookReview.com review of the Area-51 m15x

 

I wonder if this was a smart move. I mean, with Clevo coming out with their super systems in June, I would have thought Alienware would have held out til the next Intel chip came out to announce this one.

 

About time they come out with the m17x!

 

This probably wont create the stir the 15x did, but it is a logical entry into the 17 inch market. The Alienware brand is strong enough that many people won't ever consider a Clevo or Sager because they will have heard of neither. Yep, there will be customers that go straight for this system, which actually looks fairly decent. I love smart bays, so that is a good selling point for someone like me who is crazy enough to game on a system like that using battery. Best of all, I expect this system to run much cooler than a 15x considering the added room for a more effective vent system.

And finally, no clamshell design. YAY! I can't stand clamshell. I mean, I get it, but why does it have to look so ugly?

 

I love how an added perk is "Rear exhaust cooling"

 

8800M GTX SLI Woot!

 

It might be too little too late with the m17x... since its Santa Rosa platform is about to be phased out for Montevina.

 

I love the AW stealthmode and lighted keyboard, but I hope they can get all of their issues and backlog resolved. If only they were in reach of my wallet

 

Wow this sucker is huge!!!

 

100% agree.if they decide to stick with Santa Rosa like with m9750...

 

Chaz,when will you "review" it?

 

m9750 is Napa platform.... fell behind when it it was released

now m17x is Santa Rosa... and Montevina is out in Summer

 

yeap,i know that it is NAPA,i meant that AW didnt passed to Santa Rosa after its release...

 

m17x looks good

 

Yeah well they wouldn't have been able to have "passed to Santa Rosa after its release" unless they rebuilt it. So it really makes sense... But the m17x looks awesome and I'm glad that AW has pulled out all the stops again in terms of performance.

 

BLACK IS NICE as usual. but 8800 SLI and they are next to each other?

Could this mean more heat from both, wouldn't it be better to leave them away from each other.

I believe this not a good design.

also it's way thick

 

Alienware has a tendency to be late on mobile platforms. And consumers have a tendency to assume Alienware systems must be the best and most current technology available due to brand recognition.

Heck, they were still selling 15 inchers with 7600m GT cards right up until the 15x came out. They were behind the curve by about half a year in that case and I'm sure they still made a killing on that model. They've been selling the m9750 in the same way. Many people assume that because it is the highest model number available from ALIENWARE it must be the best laptop EVAR. People are still buying them. People will buy the m17x. Only NBR readers and people uncommonly versed in mobile technology will think twice about the chipset age.

Even sites like Extreme Tech and magazines like Maximum PC barely understand mobile gaming, and they are 'hardware experts'. Mobile hardware is such a niche understanding, nobody outside of these forums even believes laptops can run games.

 

Price comparision:

AW m17x - 5.9K

X9000
Dual 8800m
4GB Ram
1TB HDD
2yrs warranty

Sager 9262 - 3.7K

C2D 3.0 Ghz
4GB RAM
1.024TB HDD
SLi 8800
3yrs labor/1yr warranty

I could understand the hype with the m9750, cus it was 9 lbs, but this one is 10.5, and with batter the 9262 itself is 11.5. You can get a superior 9262 for 1.5K less. I dont think this will sell as well as the m9750 or the m15x....

 

Alienware somehow got themselves a pretty decent fanbase, so even if it is not a good deal and defies common sense it will sell. Still the user base for the 17" is going to be smaller than the 15" I think and since it is indeed pretty late in coming we will have to see how it fairs.

It does look rather thick in the pictures, definitely not my kind of machine. If you insist on high resolution high visual setting mobile gaming tho, this is definitely a solution.

The Sager is still way to rich for my blood even tho its 1.5K less, I personally look forward to the c90p with the 8700GT 3ghz C2D option. It wont have the dual HDD or the 8800 (sli) of the sager but it will be less than half the price of the Sager so I think its worth it. Plus supposedly it will be hosting some 9000 series options but thats just rumor right now.

 

Remember Alienware is not in direct competition with the Sager with the m17x (sounds stupid I know but hear me out).

The Sager is MUCH heavier, and MUCH bulkier almost eliminating it from extreme gamers who want to carry it around to LAN's or whatever, the styling is also not the best meaning again for most professional gamers it's stricken off. The sager is only really aimed at a desktop replacement that's going to be moved no further then a few rooms away, or small car journeys.

And let us not forget smart bay, the Alienware can have up to 1.5Tb of hard drive space, and much more then that because the Smart Bay HDD's are hot swap meaning no rebooting, so a person if so inclined could easily carry around 3TB+ making it fantastic for industry professionals who need to tote around a lot of data. And if the m17x performs as well as the m15x did in power saving features I wouldn't be surprised to see a 3 hour+ battery life with a smartbay battery included (so binaryGFX, stealthmode on) which doesn't make it oh so bad at short journeys and such (though fitting it on your lap may be a squeeze ^^)

 

See what I mean? J/K

Well I dont even know what the sager looks like but I dont see how it can be MUCH heaver if it has nearly the same components in it, also I dont think any extreme lan gamer will mind since many of them carry full fledged desktops around with water cooling in them.

Smartbay sounds cool, but for 1.5K you can buy some pretty nice external hard drives or build yourself a file server for that matter

 

I just don't get it. Why do they keep selling 'gaming' rigs with 667MHz ram? Sounds like an oxymoron to me, in a day and age where 800MHz is readily available.

...admittedly though, when choosing my notebook, the backlit keyboard was a MAJOR attraction for me in the m15x! (thankfully, 15" just doesn't cut it for me)

 

Because 800Mhz RAM is not supported, is just a marketing trick currently.

 

Interesting, does that also apply to Clevos?

 

The Clevo D90x has a desktop CPU (quad supported too) so all DDR3 class RAM, 800Mhz included works, so yes, it applies to that Clevo particularly.

 

It does not apply to the Clevo D901C, because it supports 800Mhz RAM, but it applies to the rest of the Clevos, as they don't support it.

On the other hand, when will people be able to buy the M17x with a single card?

 

Wouldn't that apply to the Dell XPS M1730 as well ?

 

Dell sells the M1730 with a single card, but not for the 8800M configuration.

 

Hmm.... I was talking about single 8800M GTX in the Dell XPS M1730

 

I'm dissappointed in Alienware.

The m15x is great, once the issues were fixed, in fact it's awesomely mindblowing.

The m17x, would have been as mindblowing, if it was a thin and light as the m9750, now, there's not much that seperates it from the Clevo, apart from price and design.

Good to know that Alienware scrapped the glossy black, and chose to go with the matte black.

Now... it just seems the m17x is coming too late, for no apparent reason, the m9750 was supposed to be released April/May, but ended up shipping in July, because of a bad batch of chassis...

I dunno, but the m17x, just doesn't do it like the m9750 did...

 

TBVH.... m17x = fail as I see it.... not being skeptical, but let's get some things straight here... as many people already know and understand..... AW is great for its 8800M GTX 15" laptop, the m15x..... which won't be the only one soon The m17x is probably the costliest of the lot in the 17" range when well specced.... and definitely NOTHING close to the best when it comes to specs and performance as offered by the Clevo D900C/Sager NP9262.... also, as we know Montevina comes soon, and brands like Clevo will immediately update to it.... Therefore, m17x is launched at the wrong time, is uber-expensive when not worth it, and isn't even the best at all!! That's why it's an epic fail as I see it.... it's not like the m15x.... the m17x has nothing worth crowning as great... the market has much better options available.. Simply put, it's not a laptop worth having waited for..... when there were already more powerful and cheaper laptops available before it...

 

I believe in the correct time (part 2 air trans is around June) AW will provide Monteniva with SkullCap as well,so to say its a failure i dont believe is correct,time will tell..

Yes it became bulkier than the photos we saw in Nov 2007 but imo i prefer it 2-3lbrs heavier instead having a $5k lemon with downclocking/heat problems, seems that with this chassis they must have solved several problems m15x was having..

 

"i prefer it 2-3lbrs heavier instead having a $5k lemon with downclocking/heat problems" You're talking as if AW is the only company in the world that makes laptops....
Anyway, yes, time will tell! And as the M9750, they didn't update it to the then modern processors and as of right now it's totally obsolete! Already AW has been very late with the m17x release.... at this rate, I doubt they'd update it when Montevina is out.. and even if they do, it'd be by the time the NEXT big thing is out....

 

Well they update m15x with Penryn and as for ''You're talking as if AW is the only company in the world that makes laptops'' comment i dont get it....

 

Too bad alienwares m17x is already not the fastest 17" in the world.

And too bad it's flagship m15x is about to be destroyed too.

 

Penryn is a processor update, not a chipset update like Montevina
Anyway, what I meant was.... you seem to like the m17x as the m15x has the downclocking issue.... when there are better laptops in the market (non alienware) that could serve your needs better, cheaper.... If it's just a powerful laptop you want, then you should go for the Clevos.... 5793 is much lighter than m17x for single GPU, while the 9262 is much more powerful..... the only reason to buy an AW now is to have a 8800M GTX in a 15.4" notebook... but even that will be challenged by Clevo's M860TU.....
If you're okay with a 17" in the first place, why go for the m17x ? The m15x however is something worth...

 

M15X downclocking issues seem to be largely removed thanks to the new bios update (again). I'm just glad not having to see a ton of threads screaming about "MY M15X IS FRYING!!! OMGOMGOMGOMG!!!!!"

Fairly certain the 9262 still lags behind the 1730 in 3dmark06 scores. Combination of locked bios, driver issues and quad core (for those using quads) issues. Takes a fair bit to get it going, as dexgo would be glad to tell you. It does have better hardware, but can be difficult to put together properly. But as we all know, 3dmark06 is merely a benchmarking tool, an artificial gauge. The 9262 certainly can do a number of things faster than the mobile duo processors the 1730 and M17X have, but I wouldn't call it MUCH MORE faster. But yea, faster definitely. Oh and with the smart bay, the M17X can have 3 hard drives too. Or a longer battery life. That's a pretty nice addition. Horribly expensive though. I'm rather curious how good it's sound output will be. Anyone else find the "Rear-Exhaust Cooling" hilarious? Reminds me of the Asus C90S.

Why go for the M17X or M1730? Looks, Brandname, fancy lights, fanboyism. M1730 also gets next day on site service + a 4 year warranty if you are willing to pay for it. There are always reasons.

If you look at the AW forums, some guy apparently shelled out 7k for the first M17X order. He just called and told them to load it up fully. That's horribly expensive, but it's not my cash. http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?p=3299742

I love how the Clevo fans are drooling over the M860TU when there hasn't been any clue on how good it'll actually be. It might very well face the same overheating issues that plagued the M15X. I think Clevo's great, and I have high hopes for the M860TU, but I'll wait till it's out before making my judgment. As of now, the only clear advantage over the M15X would be price. Well, unless Clevo decides to try something different and make the M860TU horribly expensive.

 

I was in the market for an 8800 based gaming machine. I originally considered the aw m15x, but a little too pricey. Next I considered size (17 inch vs 15 inch), weight, gaming performance.

Code:

                 cheapest
                 8800                3dmark06
                 config              found on
                 price     weight    web

alienware m17x  $3198(sli) 10.5 lbs  ??? (I am guessing 12700 with SLI)
alienware m15x  $1999      7 lbs     9241
dell xps1730    $3399(sli) 10.6 lbs  12717
sager 9262      $3028(sli) 11 lbs    13003
                $2333      11 lbs    10171
sager 5793      $2057      7.7 lbs   10200
gateway fx6860  $1249      9.2 lbs   6882

Maybe when sager comes out with their 15incher, this will cause a pricewar with aw (fingers-crossed).

For now, I got the gateway. Just seemed the best deal for the money.

Some points I considered:
Alienware charges sales tax now. This added $200 to the total. This made the Sagers more attractive.
I got the added benefit of being able to bring the gateway straight back to best buy in case of dead pixels.
Smart bay? eSata is hot-swap. Gateways have eSata. Why would I want something proprietary? Does Alienware have an eSata port?

 

Are there batteries for eSata?

SLi was worth it in the m9750, but now that Alienware has delivered us another superbrick, it's just not worth it to sacrifice the portability and cash for an SLi rig. Especially since you're not getting the gains you pay for, and I speak out of experience, not all games benefit from SLi, and definately not the up to 100% nVidia (and ATi with XFire). Speaking from experience, you're looking at around a 60% gain, tops, average gain of 30% most likely.

And with these superbricks, it'd be much better to get a desktop + laptop combo, because realistically speaking, you're not going to be gaming on the go, off battery power.

Get a 15incher like the m15x or the future M860TU, the pricing of the m15x isn't atrocious, and the pricing of the M860TU shouldn't be half-bad either lol

The Gateway has an 8800M GTS, not GTX and you neglected that it has a pitiful processor at that. But still a great deal haha.

One bonus point for Alienware though, is the Roswell support crew. Huge improvement in support service.

 

Just look back into AW's previous laptops, they are always one generation behind in terms of the chipset, and I doubt AW will bother updating these notebooks to Montevina once it comes out. Also, the clevo uses a desktop processor right? So of course the clevo/sager is gonna be more powerful than the AW laptop.

It's ironic how in the OP the m15x is described as perfect for students...except that most students cannot swallow the price tag.

 

Well, the Sager is ~ 11lbs, this thing is 10.5 lbs, not that much of a difference. Plus, sager is heavy because of its the cooling system that works really well.

Well, the Sager doesn't have smartbay, but it can hold up to 3 HDDs
And Alienware is not they only that has smartbay, business notebooks like Dell latitude and Thinkpad have it long long ago.

 

No, but there are modified USB cables that do the trick. I power my 2.5" esata this way. It is essentially mini-usb on one end and on the other is a regular USB, then they have another wire spliced in which had a USB passthru on the other end -- this supplies power only.

I actually just zoned on the "8800". But your point is actually why I used what I could find for 3dmark06 scores as a loose measuring stick. What I am curious about is if there are other makes/models (pehaps based on nvidia 9X00 cards) that rank within these 3dmarks.

 

wow 4K+ for a fully loaded one
power does command respect and a fat wallet too.!!!
i sure like the backlit keyboard
this is something that will surely turn heads at the cofee shop around the corner
that is if the battery lasts that long
carrying this beast would be another task in itself though

 

What I meant, is that with smartbay, you can have a battery, instead of an optical drive or HDD

That's what gives the m15x up to 5 hours of battery life with the IGPU activated

 

Most probably based on drivers and the apps users have running in the back ground

 

New here! Just was wondering if I was the only one that wishes he never knew Alienware exsisted. I haven't explored this site just yet so I'm not sure if there are complaining and whinnig threads.

I bought my m17x about 5mths ago and only have used it about 2wks (going on 3wks). Three and half months after ordering and many "backorders" I finally recieved my long awaited machine. I was threatening to ask for a refund if my system didn't arrive by a certain date, they over-nighted the package but still arrived a day late. I left town but managed to swing back through to pick it up. Well the lighted keyboard was plugged in BACKWARDS, and then only worked for two days. I wasn't able to send it back right away, so I had it for 2wks. After sending it back they tell me they had to put a new mother board and then the Video cards had to replaced. It took 5 days to ship my m17x (error in communication) then about 2wks to repair and another 1wk for return shipping (again,error in communication)!
I could be happy, instead they they sent me a machine that is worse than what I sent them. Keyboard lighting went out while on the phone with tech support, the graphics card was having errors (not loading), when I try to go to my hotmail I get a message the "There is a problem with this website's security certificate", even though I hadn't done anything different from the first time I got this thing. Needless to say the tech wasn't able to anything.
So I told them I wanted a new system, not going to go through this for a year. So instead of calling me back when I missed a call on Friday, I got a email. I didn't read this until a few hours ago, so I called. They will build me a new system but will not work with me.
I asked them to build this new one now, test it, test it, test it. When I got home in 6wks then I would put this one in the mail, after the tracking number was varified then they could send the new one. I only get a week off every 7wks I work. They tell it will take 2wks to build lol, which doesn't matter, and for planning I can't afford to try intercept my unit earlier. They build the new one until the old one returned, when I told them I might just ask for a refund if they can't work with me, he said I can't get a refund, it's been over 30days LOL. I haven't owned this **** thing more than 3wk, and that has been with problems from day one.

Anyone considering buying a Alienware, reconsider!! I always wondered why BestBuy stop doing buisness with Alienware, too many customers returning and complaining. Nearly 5mths since I made my purchase and I still have no computer!
Custmer service is everything, and Alienware doesn't know the first thing about it, they just stick to sript. Maybe if they didn't outsource custmer service, they would truly be the best company.

 

all those who bought the m17x should have waited. The ocz whitebook is ere!

Backlit keyboard with 3 difderent colors as well

 

Whats the whitebook?

 

So I got a call just to inform me that my email to obtain further assistance was pointless, as "he" was the last and only person to deal with. My option is to take the deal of having them build a new one or keep the PS that's in front of me. I have sent a few emails to there company but as of yet no response. Imagine you went to buy a car, and the next day you find that engine locked up, then by the time you got it back your three days to change your mind where up. Then for nearly a year your in and out of the dealer due to transmission issues, rust, and who knows what else, then they tell you there going to do you a favor by replacing the car, well whoopty doo. Doctor say's you have a choice, to be blind or deaf niether is good without the other. All I want know is my money back, sadly I have no clue how to go about that.