Alienware M11x Ultra-Light Gaming Notebook Review

Name: Alienware M11x Ultra-Light Gaming Notebook Review - Page 3
Brand: Alienware

by Marco Chiappetta — Tuesday, April 13, 2010, 01:00 PM EDT

First up, we ran a Futuremark’s latest system performance metric, PCMark Vantage. PCMark Vantage runs through a host of different usage scenarios to simulate different types of workloads including High Definition TV and movie playback and manipulation, gaming, image editing and manipulation, music compression, communications, and productivity. Most of the tests are multi-threaded as well, so the tests can exploit the additional resources offered by a multi-core CPU.

Futuremark PCMark Vantage

Simulated Application Performance

The Alienware M11x performed very well in 3DMark Vantage, relatively speaking of course. Its performance falls somewhere in between the Core i3 based Asus U30Jc and UL80vt, but the M11x has a marked advantage in the gaming test due to its GeForce GT 335M discrete GPU.

Futuremark 3DMark06 and Vantage

Simulated Gaming Performance

The Futuremark 3DMark06 CPU benchmark consists of tests that use the CPU to render 3D scenes, rather than the GPU. It runs several threads simultaneously and is designed to utilize multiple processor cores.

Despite its factory overclock, 3DMark06's CPU performance module had the Alienware M11x performing just behind the Asus UL80Vt. The Alienware M11x's full 3DMark06 score, along with a 3DMark Vantage score using the "Performance" preset are avaialble below.

Please note, these 3DMark runs were performed using an external monitor. The Alienware M11'x built-in 11.6" LCD doesn't support the 1280x1024 resolution necessary to complete these tests.

Tags: Dell, Notebook, GeForce, Gaming, Alienware, portable, M11x

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