Of course, it's difficult to talk about an Alienware's performance without referring to frame rates -- in this realm, the Area-51 m5550 did not excel. It posted a mediocre 37.1 frames per second on our Doom 3 test and a meagre 23fps on F.E.A.R. While that matches the gaming performance of some similarly configured laptops, it won't be enough for serious gamers.
(Shorter bars indicate better performance)
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Multitasking suite (in seconds) |
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iTunes 6.0.4.2 AAC-to-MP3 conversion (in seconds) |
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Photoshop CS2 performance (in seconds) |
(Longer bars indicate better performance)
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BAPCo MobileMark 2005 performance |
(Longer bars indicate better battery life)
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BAPCo MobileMark 2005 battery life in minutes |
(Longer bars indicate better performance)
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Id Software/Activision's Doom 3 |
(Longer bars indicate better performance)
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Monolith's/VU Games' F.E.A.R. |
System configurations:
Alienware Area-51 m5550
Windows XP Media Center; 2.33GHz Intel Core 2 Duo T7600; 2GB DDR2 SDRAM PC2-5300 666MHz; Nvidia GeForce GO 7600 256MB; Seagate Momentus 7200.1 100GB 7,200rpm
Dell XPS M1710
Windows XP Media Center; 2.33GHz Intel Core 2 Duo T7600; 2GB DDR2 SDRAM PC5300 666MHz; Nvidia GeForce Go 7900 GTX 512MB; Hitachi Travelstar 7K100 100GB 7,200rpm
HP Pavilion dv6000
Windows XP Pro; 2.16GHz Core 2 Duo T7400; 1GB PC2-5300 DDR2 SDRAM 666MHz; Nvidia GeForce Go 7400 256MB; Fujitsu MHV2100BH PL 100GB 5,400rpm
PC Club Enpower ENP680
Windows XP Home; 2GHz Intel Core 2 Duo T7200; 2GB DDR2 SDRAM PC2-5300 666MHz; Nvidia GeForce GO 7600 GS 256MB; Seagate Momentus 7200.1 80GB 7,200rpm
Toshiba Satellite P105-S921
Windows XP Pro; 1.83GHz Intel Core Duo T2400; 1GB DDR2 SDRAM PC5300 666MHz; Nvidia GeForce Go 7900 GS 256MB; Fujitsu MHV2160BT 160GB 4,200rpm
Edited by Katy Sullivan
Additional editing by Nick Hide
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