Should I Buy An Alienware Notebook Now Or Wait?

[NuclearWinterX]

Get ready for an essay.
I live in rural Pennsylvania. My driveway is too long and rocky for a cable line(I have Satellite TV), DSL isn't in my area, and Satellite internet costs too much for the mediocre speeds you get. I am stuck with dialup. I love playing PC games, especially graphically demanding ones. I was planning on purchasing and building an extremely high-end gaming system, but now I am thinking about purchasing a notebook from Alienware. I thought about it and realized: Without broadband internet, gaming just isn't the same. Sure there is singleplayer, but when it comes to online play(which is the real fun), I'm out of luck. What's the use in getting some super high-end system if I can't even play games online? So, I figured I'd go with a notebook. At least with a notebook, I can transport it to areas where i can pick up a broadband connection such as friends' houses or Wi-Fi hotspots. i am thinking of going with Alienware because they currently offer the most high-end notebook out there. I have narrowed it down to their MALX notebook. This is the only notebook that offers both duel 512mb 7900gtx's in SLI and RAID 0 hard drives. I want the best gaming performance possible out of a laptop and they seem to be the ones to deliver it. They also have an upgrade plan, so when it starts to get outdated, I can have it upgraded. I am still not 100% sure if I'm going to buy this. I heard that manufacturers will start coupling the Core 2 Duo CPU's with SLI GPU's in their notebooks. I would definantly rather have a duel-core CPU than a single-core which Alienware currently offers in the MALX. I'd appreciate it if you guys could give any suggestions of what you would do if you were in my shoes. Keep in mind money isn't really a problem.

Thanks for reading my essay of a post.

[Soichiro]

Although Alienware should already offer Core Duo processors (unless they're really stupid), I would wait until Merom (aka Core 2 Duo for notebooks) is released later this month.

[jivetrky]

yep, I'd also recommend waiting a coupld weeks for Merom. But as far as Alienware and dualcore/SLI ...that should be coming soon too. I don't know for sure if it will be core 2 Duo based or Turion based (the Turion dual cores shoudl start showing in laptops pretty soon).

I would have a hard time droping so much in a laptop without dualcore. I'm planning on going for a midrange gamer laptop in a few weeks (when merom is availble), but as far as dualcore and SLI, it could happen with C2D and it could not. Might have to wait for Turion duals to show up (and I don't know when that will be)

[Xtreme Barton]

whats the cost of it ?? :D

[meionm]

whats the cost of it ?? :D
Inbetween 4k and 5k

[meionm]

I would not buy alienware period. What I would pick would be a laptop with single high end card and core duo. There is plenty of the them out there. That laptop is serious investments, current single gfx laptops will play any game for some time. Few more months from now and DX10 will be out. SLi and crossfire have tendancy to be outperformed by the next single generation of cards.
Alienware up rade program will probably produce fractional return benefit over time as laptop start to loose value.

[Xtreme Barton]

yeah right !!! LOL


never spend that on a lappy ...

would definetly build a rig and game on it.. then come to ocforums and brag/share about it...

[jivetrky]

yeah i suppose that's true....I'd say if I had that budget again...I'd go desktop. For the price of an SLI Alienware...you can build pretty much THE BEST desktop.

I built my old rig (3ghz opty, 2GB Gskill, SLI 7900GTX, Dell 2405FPW, etc etc etc...) while I was still on dialup and I enjoyed it quite a bit. I had friends come over and had mini-lan parties...and single player-ed the heck out of it. Of course i did end up moving a couple months later and now have DSL....but even then I still played single player games more often than multi.

You could build an AWESOME water cooled, highly overclocked x6800 system with Crossfire x1900xtx's (or better if they come soon) with a 2407WFP ....get some logitech z5500's .....you could have a SWEET ssytem for the price of that laptop (which, don't get me wrong, would be NICE...but wouldn't match what you could build with a desktop)

[crfracer290]

I was considering a XPS Dell for awhile, and ended up going with my desktop. It cost me about 2500 less, and my rig is alot better then what I would have got from dell (well it will be in a month or so when I add x2 and 7900) for 4K you could build a killer desktop. And think about it, do you really think that you will wont to go to a coffee shop to get a hotspot and play online? But then again, your right, nothing beats online play, but it isnt worth 4 grand for an OK, limited upgrade-able system.
I had the same choice as you and I am glad I went with a less expensive, but fairly decent desktop.


**EDIT** PLUS!!!...Laptops kill your sperm, lol....just ignore me.

[ryanmartini]

Look at the pros and cons of this. Yes a kick ass lappy will be able to be easily moed to wifi spots or friends houses. But honestly, that monster would be lucky to have ANY battery life at all. There goes the portability to wifi spots.

For that kind of money, you could build a desktop with a nice widescreen monitor, raid array, SLI or crossfire. The better performance and value in that price bracket is in a desktoop machine.

[penguin463]

Also, to make transporting the Computer a brieze, you could build it in a small for factor case. I have seen some micro ATX boards with SLI

But either way, that much money in a laptop is not worth it

You could build a much better desktop at that pricetag *drool*