The Dell Alienware M11x is the first gaming netbook, if we can call it that. It’s an 11″ netbook with a ULV (ultra low voltage) processor, with a discrete graphics cards, in this case, an nVidia GeForce GT 335M Discrete Graphics (1GB GDDR3) video memory, with an option to switch over to the Intel integrated graphics to conserve battery power when video performance is not required.
We’ve seen some early reports and reviews, and here’s another one. The reviewer says that the processor can be overclocked from 1.3GHz to 1.73GHz (!) although this would come at the expense of a much shorter battery life, and one does run the risk of burning the processor early. However, overclocking has some big benefits, notably when running graphically demanding games. There are quite a few benchmarking statistics in the article, so click through if you’re interested to know more. Generally, the experience is positive, and the author of the article says that the experience should get even better if one were to substitute a fast solid state disk (SSD) for the slower (spinning) hard disk. On a more modest setting, the review could get close to 4 hours of running time on batteries watching movies – not too shabby, considering the power of this machine.
I must say that I am very very tempted already with all these positive reviews. If it was selling for RM 2,999, I would have pulled the (purchase) trigger a long time ago, but at RM 3,499 I’d have to think twice…maybe thrice! :P
