Alienware Aurora with 7900 GTX

Benchmarks

We lined the Alienware up against some recent competitors that we've tested in the bit-tech labs over the past couple of months. The Scan Isotope has an overclocked 3800+ processor, 2GB of fast Corsair memory in dual channel and a pair of 7900 GTs. The Mesh Xtreme FX-60 has 2GB of generic memory and a pair of 7800 GTs. The bit-tech reference system has a stock 3800+ processor and 2GB of OCZ dual channel memory, along with a single 7800 GT.

The Corsair in the Scan system is configured well and has low latencies, which adds to the memory bandwidth here. The Alienware suffers (relatively) from having four sticks rather than two.

As you'd expect, the two FX-60 systems perform almost exactly the same.

The systems get bunched up here as disc access performance becomes an issue.

Unsurprisingly, the system with the fastest graphics setup wins the extremely intensive FEAR benchmark.