Dell Alienware Area-51 Core i7-980 X Infused Gaming PC

by Dave Altavilla — Tuesday, March 23, 2010, 11:06 AM EDT

Page 9:
Dirt 2, Batman: Arkham Asylum

Next we fired up a couple of the latest generation of game titles to step the Area-51 through its paces a bit more. In all cases, the highest image quality settings were chosen since a machine like this is more than capable of rendering best of class visuals in virtually any game title on the market today.

Dirt 2

DirectX 11 Gaming Performance

Dirt 2

Dirt 2 is a racing game released in September 2009, and is the sequel to Colin McRae: Dirt. Codemasters delayed the PC version of Dirt 2 so that they could enhance their Ego engine with DirectX 11 effects. The engine displays certain bleeding-edge rendering technologies like hardware-driven tessellation, which is used for a more detailed audience, tessellated clot as well as a more realistic water that has lifelike ripples, waves and splash effects. DX11 also affords the game more impressive post-rendering motion blur, filtered soft shadows and lighting effects. Dirt 2 is also a solid benchmark for multi-core processors since DX11 is designed to take advantage of multi-threaded system architectures.

First, we should note that, for optimal performance, we had to update the graphics drivers of the Area-51 to the latest available Catalyst 10.3 series drivers available at the time from AMD. Regardless, though we didn't have the rest of the field of test systems to compare to, the Alienware Area-51 blew through Dirt 2 like a nitrous-infused Baja racer on a Jolt cola binge. Even at 30" panel resolutions of 2560X1600 with 4X AA, the system punched out well over 100 fps in the standard benchmark utility that Dirt 2 has built into the game. In short, if you're looking for top notch DX11 performance, the Area-51 and its CrossFire X, Radeon HD 5970 graphics setup will deliver the goods and rip a few donuts on your lawn before it blows the doors off your domicile.

Batman - Arkham Asylum

DirectX Gaming Performance

Batmat:Arkham Asylum

Batman: Arkham Asylum is a third-person action game developed by Rocksteady and is arguably the best comic book videogame of all time. Cast as the Dark Knight, you track down the Joker and bring him back to Arkham Asylum, Gotham's home for the criminally insane. However, the Joker escapes and takes over the asylum filled with hundreds of villains, which you must battle in this dark and creepy world. Gameplay consists of fist fighting, attacking from the shadows, and exploration. We tested the game using the built in benchmark at 1900x1200 with no anti-aliasing, PhysX off, and every graphical options set to their maximum values.

In the top chart above, we decided we'd show you how the Area-51 peforms versus a group of its peers and at HD resolutions of 1920X1200 with no anti-aliasing enabled, it performed well but only marginally better. In the second series of tests we ran, silky smooth frame rates were maintained even with AA turned up to 4X and 8X levels at super high resolutions.