Alienware M17x Reviewed: Sandy Bridge + Samsung SSD + AMD GPU + WirelessHD = Perfection

It's not often we give a notebook 5 out of 5 stars; the last time was about six years ago. However, after testing the newest Alienware M17x, we felt it deserved this rare honor.

It wouldn't surprise us if Alienware were to ship the new M17x with a kitchen sink. After all, this awesome 17-inch gaming system has everything else. We're talking the latest Intel second-gen "Sandy Bridge" Core processor, a 256GB Samsung SSD, 8GB of RAM, and an AMD Radeon 6970 GPU with 2GB of DDR5 memory. As if that's not enough, this notebook comes with a Vizio wirelessHD transmitter built in, so if the M17x' 17-inch, 1920 x 1080 screen isn't big enough for you, you can output it wirelessly to an HDTV.

There was nothing this beast couldn't handle: we saw double and triple the performance on just about every test we threw at it. Of course, the M17x also comes with Alienware's cool customizable backlighting, a soft-touch lid and deck, and a spacious keyboard and touchpad.

This config of the M17x will go on sale in early March for $3,300. To see what torture tests we ran on the notebook, and why we gave it a perfect score, check out our full review.