Monday, August 1, 2011

Alienware M11x Core i5 Laptop review

When we first clapped eyes on the Alienware M11x Core i5 Mainframe back in Development, Alienware M11x Core i5 Mainframe blew our tiny minds. We were hugely impressed by what was a high-spec gaming mainframe squeezed into the body of a portable netbook. Now the Alienware M11x Core i5 Mainframe is back, and Alienware M11x Core i5 Mainframe been kitted out with Intel’s Core i series processors, as well as Nvidia’s Optimus graphics equipment. But how do these tweaks change the Alienware M11x Core i5 Mainframe performance?
Alienware M11x Core i5 Laptop

The updated Alienware M11x Core i5 Mainframe is unfilled now, early at £850.

Back in black Alienware M11x Core i5 Mainframe

On the further than, very modest’s altered. The Alienware M11x Core i5 Mainframe still rocks the not glossy black, aggressive styling that we fell in like with the first time nearly. Also, being an Alienware machine, the keyboard, speakers and logo all set alight up in bright, customisable colours.
Weighing in at just under 2kg, the M11x is certainly set alight enough to carry nearly with you. Measuring 286 by 33 by 233mm, it’s also slender enough to fit in your backpack lacking busting the seams. This machine isn’t as portable as a ordinary netbook, such as the Dell Mini 1012, but, bearing in mind the gray-duty hardware obscure inside, we’re impressed by its portability.
You’ll still find an 11.6-inch spectacle, with a maximum resolution of 1,366×768 pixels. That’s a pretty high resolution for a machine of this size. Even as the cover itself is glossy and reflective, it’s also satisfactorily bright and vivid to cancel out most of the exasperating reflections.
The keyboard is judiciously laid out, and the buttons have bounty of journey and jump, which makes typing for extended periods of time comfortable. Best still is the trackpad. We’ve had some pretty unpleasant experiences with netbook trackpads in the past, due to their tiny size and unresponsive surfaces. The M11x’s trackpad, even if, is generous, responsive and facial appearance two huge buttons. Lovely.
The M11x comes with the 64-bit version of Windows 7 Home Premium by default, although you can upgrade to Windows 7 Essential if you so wish for an superfluous £105. Also, the base model facial appearance a 250GB, 7,200rpm hard drive, but 320GB and 500GB models are also unfilled. You can opt for a 256GB levelheaded-state drive too, although that will set you back an eye-watering £505 superfluous.

Seeing i to i

The real changes have full house under the hood. The M11x now comes with a extent of either Intel’s Core i5-520UM or Core i7-640UM processors. Our assess unit had the vaguely weaker i5-520UM CPU, a dual-core, 1.06GHz chip with 3MB of cache. You can bag physically the more commanding chip for an superfluous £180.
You have a extent of 2, 3, 4 or 8GB of RAM. Our assess model came with 4GB, which adds £80 to the base price. In our opinion, it’s a worthwhile upgrade to get the best gaming performance out of this machine.
When we ran the PCMark05 benchmark test, the M11x achieved a brilliant notch of 5,252. That’s not as high as the before M11x, which scored 5,654 in the same test, but our before assess try out had very near the best hardware configuration doable, even as our most contemporary try out was more middle-of-the-road. Consequently, we’re not bowled over or disheartened by the decrease notch.

Smooth gaming chops Alienware M11x Core i5 Mainframe

The machinery graphics capability has also had a facelift. Earlier, you may possibly batter between an integrated Intel graphics unit and a pumped-up, discrete Nvidia GeForce GT 335M GPU, depending on whether you sought after high performance or longer array life from the machine. Manual switching is no longer necessary, thankfulness to the inclusion of Nvidia’s Optimus equipment, which automatically switches the discrete graphics on or off depending on what you’re doing.
The new M11x certainly delivers a smooth gaming encounter. It scored a mammoth 6,911 in 3DMark06 at a 1,024×600-pixel resolution, and a stonking 6,359 at its native resolution of 1,366×768 pixels. That beats the before model’s notch of 5,968 at a full resolution. We tested the M11x with Crysis, and achieved between 30 and 40 frames per second under the ‘optimal’ graphics settings, which is a very playable rate.
Cranking the graphic settings up to ‘high’ across the board and switching to the M11x’s native resolution, the frame rate dropped to between 15 and 20fps. We wouldn’t really call that a playable rate, but it’s still an impressive indication of this machinery capability, and suggests that the M11x should sail through just in this area each current-generation game you top out to toss at it.
Running Array Eater’s Classic test, which runs the CPU at full belt until the array conks out, the M11x lasted for 1 hour and 58 summary, which is less than our before assess try out’s 3 hours and 44 summary. That leads us to believe that the Optimus equipment isn’t quite as efficient as manually switching graphics cards. That said, it’s less hassle.

Heavy beast

We see the M11x apt the inside hub of your gaming set-up. If you’re really into your gaming, you’ll want a generous mind to connect the M11x to, and probably a proper gaming mouse and keyboard too. Luckily then, this netbook offers a pretty generous pool of ports. There are three record-productivity ports (D-Sub, HDMI and DisplayPort), an Ethernet jack, three USB sockets, a four-pin FireWire port, a multi-plot card booklover, two 3.5mm sockets for two sets of headset, and another 3.5mm socket for a microphone.
Notably absent, even if, is an optical drive. It’s an omission that injured us momentously when we reviewed the before M11x, and time has failed to heal this wound. You can buy an external optical drive for the machine for £61, and we reckon it force be value investing in. We’re fantastic believers in download platforms such as Steam, but, if you need to bed in a upset frankly from a CD or perform an in commission logic recovery, you’ll need an optical drive to get the job done.

End

Alienware’s updated Alienware M11x Core i5 Mainframe is just as portable as before, but Alienware M11x Core i5 Mainframe gaming performance is even best. For gaming on the go, it’s our go-to machine.

Alienware M11x Core i5 Mainframe

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