Alienware M18x Gaming Notebook: A Tale of Two GPUs

by Marco Chiappetta — Tuesday, October 04, 2011, 11:37 AM EDT

Big, bad and unapologetic. These three words accurately describe the Alienware M18x. Unapologetic about its size, this is a desktop replacement notebook that almost defies the entire category of portable machines. Sure, it's portable, in the sense that you can move it from room to room or perhaps pack it up for a LAN, but you're not tossing this bad boy into a dainty backpack or laptop tote. No, the Alienware M18x steps into the ring weighing in at nearly 12lbs (11.935) and thumbs its nose at would-be competitors.

In our efforts to evaluate Alienware's new gaming Goliath, the company decided to send us two machines with identical base builds, an Intel Core i7-2630QM quad-core at the helm, but with different graphics subsystems. One M18x came strapped with a pair of NVIDIA GeForce GTX 580M GPUs in SLI. The other came packing heat with dual AMD Radeon HD 6990M GPUs in CrossFire...

Alienware M18x Gaming Notebook: A Tale of Two GPUs

Tags: Radeon, GeForce, laptop, DTR, gaming notebook, Alienware, Sandy Bridge, M18x

Marco Chiappetta

Marco's interest in computing and technology dates all the way back to his early childhood. Even before being exposed to the Commodore P.E.T. and later the Commodore 64 in the early ‘80s, he was interested in electricity and electronics, and he still has the modded AFX cars and shop-worn soldering irons to prove it. Once he got his hands on his own Commodore 64, however, computing became Marco's passion. Throughout his academic and professional lives, Marco has worked with virtually every major platform from the TRS-80 and Amiga, to today's high end, multi-core servers. Over the years, he has worked in many fields related to technology and computing, including system design, assembly and sales, professional quality assurance testing, and technical writing. In addition to being the Managing Editor here at HotHardware for close to 15 years, Marco is also a freelance writer whose work has been published in a number of PC and technology related print publications and he is a regular fixture on HotHardware’s own Two and a Half Geeks webcast. - Contact: marco(at)hothardware(dot)com