Alienware Alpha Intel-Powered SFF Gaming PC: Consoles Beware

Name: Alienware Alpha Intel-Powered SFF Gaming PC: Consoles Beware
Brand: Alienware

by Marco Chiappetta, Joshua Gulick — Monday, January 26, 2015, 01:05 PM EDT

Based on the Unigine game engine, the Unigine Heaven and Valley benchmarks take users through dramatic 3D tours of exotic environments, complete with dynamic skies, tessellation, and SSAO (screen-space ambient occlusion).

Unigine Heaven and Valley Benchmarks

DX11 Gaming

Unigine Heaven provides heavy tessellation use and a dynamic sky to stress modern graphics cards. The Valley benchmark, on the other hand, is loaded with vegetation. The benchmark tours a forest thick with flowers, boulders, and rivers. We ran the test at 1920 x 1080, on Ultra Quality and with the Extreme Tessellation option.

Here, the Alpha's scores about as you'd expect. Being able to handle punishing benchmarks like Heaven and Valley bode well for the system's ability to handle games, if not at the highest settings. Next, we'll see how the Alpha actually performs in those games.

Tags: Dell, SFF, Gaming, PC, Alpha, Alienware

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