Specifications

Reviews
W
hen we put out the request
to system manufacturers
for an SLI machine that
consumers can actually pur-
chase, Alienware was the sole
PC maker to respond. The
company submitted its water-
cooled, dual-GeForce 6800
Ultra-equipped ALX box to our
Lab for review.
Alienware beat other system
makers by using a motherboard
part it had built for its Video
Array system—proprietary
technology that uses a “Video
Merger Hub” to let users build
an SLI rig with any PCI Express
graphics cards. As it turns out,
Alienware wasn’t quite ready
to show off this exclusive
technology, but did manage
to get us the
first production
machine with SLI
capabilities. Most
of the SLI dem-
onstration sys-
tems we’ve seen
have required
huge cases to
accommodate
the worksta-
tion/server Xeon
motherboards.
Alienware’s
proprietary X2
motherboard, on
the other hand,
is about the size
of a typical ATX
mobo.
The ALX itself is
an impressive feat of
water cooling, effec-
tively quelling the heat
generated by both of
the GeForce 6800 Ultra
GPUs as well as the
chipset’s north bridge
and two CPU sockets.
Although the X2 mobo
can house two Socket
604 Xeons, ours came
with just one installed.
Alienware’s rationale
is that few games are
capable of taking advantage of the
second processor, so why incur the
added cost? For what it’s worth, the
cost of a second CPU would have
added about $800 to the price of
this rig.
The X2 board uses Intel’s E7525
which is only certified for DDR2/400
speeds. Between the registered RAM,
low clocks, and increased latency,
the ALX SLI takes a massive hit in
memory performance.
Fortunately, graphics performance
makes up for the laggy RAM. The
water-cooled GeForce 6800 Ultra
cards outperform everything we’ve
seen to date. Of course, there’s a
caveat: A single GeForce 6800 Ultra
card is already overkill for this genera-
tion of games, so two cards are doubly
overkill. In fact, it’s difficult to see any
performance gains in today’s games
unless you’re running at super-high
resolutions like 1600x1200.
With this said, the SLI rig blazed
through our synthetic benchmarks.
In 3DMark05, the system pulled down
about 7,300—that’s almost 44 percent
higher than with a single card. In
3DMark03, we saw a whopping 65
percent increase in performance.
Unfortunately, the ALX system
didn’t shatter any speed records in
our application tests.
In SYSmark2004, Premiere Pro,
Photoshop, and MusicMatch we actu-
ally saw better performance from ZT
Group’s Pro Gaming PC X6514 with
its 3.46GHz P4 EE. In Alienware’s
defense, this can be remedied by
changing the CPU configuration.
You could, say, run two 3.2GHz
Xeons for the same price as the
3.6GHz and gain performance. And
unlike P4-based boxes, the Xeon-
equipped ALX will work with the 64-
bit version of Windows.
So where does that leave the Area-
51 ALX? If you absolutely, positively
must have SLI before anyone else, it’s
pretty much your only option—for
now. And if you want a dual-pro-
cessor-ready box with SLI, this system
also makes sense. But with nForce4-
based Athlon FX-55 boxes right
around the corner (meaning within
30-45 days) this is a tough sell.
We give Alienware points for being
the first with an SLI rig, and the water
cooling is nice—but the Xeon/E7527
combo is a hard pill to swallow.
—GORDON MAH UNG
Alienware Area-51 ALX SLI
SLI delivers on high-resolution gaming, but…
MAXIMUMPC JANUARY 200576
SLI, fast double-layer DVD burner, and tricked-out
water cooling.
VOODOO2
VOODOO3
DDR2/400 registered RAM is a major bummer.
$6,200, www.alienware.com
8
MAXIMUMPC
VERDICT
0 20% 40% 60% 80%
P E R C E N T F A S T E R
ZERO
POINT
SCORES
SYSmark2004
Premiere Pro
Photoshop 7.0
MusicMatch 8.1
Jedi Academy
Halo
172
720 sec
289 sec
281 sec
54.4 fps
38.8 fps
100%
174
578
sec
303 sec
246 sec
83.8 fps
80.2 fps +
(-4.62%)
Alienware Area-51 ALX SLI SCORES
Our zero-point system includes: a 2.2GHz Athlon 64 FX-51, an Asus SK8N mother-
board, 1GB of Corsair Registered TwinX DDR400 RAM, an ATI Radeon 9800 XT, a
250GB Western Digital WD2500JB hard drive, Plextor PX-708A DVD burner and a PC
Power and Cooling TurboCool 510 Deluxe power supply.
UNDER THE HOOD
DISPLAY
Videocard Two nVidia GeForce 6800 Ultras
(425 / 550 DDR) in SLI mode
STORAGE
Hard drives Seagate 7200.7 with NCQ sup-
port running in RAID 0 off Intel
ICH6R southbridge
Optical NEC ND-3500A 16x DVD+R/-R,
4x DVD+RW DL, 4x DVD+RW/-
RW, 48x CD-R
BUNDLE
Windows XP Pro, CyberLink PowerDVD,
Ahead Nero Express
THE BRAINS
CPU Intel 3.6GHz Xeon (1MB L2
90nm)
Mobo Intel RoadRunner
RAM 2GB Registered DDR2/400
Corsair (two 1GB sticks)
I/O ports Eight High Speed USB 2.0 (four
front, four rear), two FireWire A,
PS/2 mouse and keyboard,
parallel, serial
LAN Intel Pro/1000
AUDIO
Soundcard Sound Blaster Audigy 2ZS
Case Alienware ALX full-tower case
Saucer Silver, PC Power and
Cooling 510 Deluxe power supply
Fans/extras Water cooling for two CPUs and
north bridge and 120mm rear fan
Mouse/
Keyboard
FINE DETAILS
BOOT: 43 sec. DOWN: 14 sec.
Microsoft Wireless Desktop Elite
Alienware’s ALX SLI lets you game at ultra-
high resolutions with AA maxed out.