Alienware's Area-51 ALX systems change as fast as the component manufacturers can release new graphics cards. The Area-51 ALX (Radeon HD 4870 X2) ($7,866 direct) is the latest insane gaming PC from this high-end system builder. It looks like its predecessor, but it has a new heart: dual ATI Radeon HD 4870 X2 graphics cards. These cards are fresh off the AMD/ATI production floor, and they are screaming (at least on World in Conflict). So why, with all its new guts and bling, couldn't the Alienware retain the Editors' Choice? Read on.

The Alienware Area-51 ALX isn't subtle. Its in-your-face glossy-black case makes its presence known by clashing with any interior decoration you have, short of H.R. Giger's den. The same changeable colored LED lights are here, making the system look unique and menacing. Inside, the case is padded to deaden the sound of the twin Radeon cards and the four SATA hard drives. You can hear the graphics cards spool up when you start the system, but they quickly quiet down. You won't hear them again until you really get gaming, and by then you won't care because you'll be too busy dodging rocket blasts and tracer rounds.

As with other Alienware boxes, the interior of the case is free of extraneous wiring, and the internal airflow feeds the radiator for the sealed liquid cooling system. There's a pair of extra DIMM slots for additional DDR3 RAM, but for them to be useful you'd need to upgrade to 64-bit Vista to support 8GB, and the extra RAM probably wouldn't help performance of 32-bit apps much. Since 64-bit optimized games are still a rarity out there, I applaud Alienware's decision to keep 32-bit Vista on this box. There's a free PCI card slot for a TV tuner or a wireless networking card, but considering this system's purpose in life, it's probably best left free, as extra drivers could impact gaming performance.

The system has a robust 1,200-watt power supply, so it will be able to handle future upgrades—not that this system will need hardware upgrades anytime soon. The ALX comes with a Blu-ray burner, but this is gravy, since Blu-ray still isn't a game distribution method and the system is sheer overkill for use as a Blu-ray player connected to an HDTV.

As befits a gaming system, the ALX came bereft of software, aside from the operating system, drivers, software for the Alienware lighting system, PowerDVD for the Blu-ray player, Nero for disc burning, and "AlienReSpawn" (a system-restore program, always a good thing on a gaming PC). Just about the only thing that's preinstalled without your consent is the Adobe Acrobat reader (always welcome), and the Windows Live Toolbar for Internet Explorer (not really welcome, since you can download it yourself if you want it, but at least it's relatively innocuous).

This version of the ALX comes with a pair of 300GB 10,000-rpm WD VelociRaptor hard drives for the C: drive and a pair of Seagate 1TB 7,200-rpm SATA hard drives for the data drive. The VelociRaptors are linked together in a RAID 0 array for speed, so the C: drive is really a 600GB array. The array helped the system achieve an exceptional 28-second result on the Windows Media Encoder test, tying the previous ALX as the best score I've seen. Likewise, the system's 244-point Overall score on BAPCo's SYSmark 2007 Preview test is tops among systems I've reviewed. You can thank the Yorkfield XE–powered QX9770 (overclocked to 4.0 GHz!) processor, the speedy 1,600-MHz DDR3 SDRAM, and the VelociRaptor hard drives (again). This is one speedy multimedia creation system.

If there's any drawback to the choices Alienware made on the system, it's the pair of 1-terabyte drives connected together in a RAID 0 array for the data drive. I'm an advocate for having a separate data drive on gaming PCs. Data drives can keep your downloads safe every time you have to rebuild or "ReSpawn" your C: drive when it gets flaky. The trouble is that RAID 0 arrays, fast as they are, are inherently unstable, and you will lose your data if one of the 1TB drives goes bad. It's better to keep the drives separate so that each is safe in the event of the other's demise. It's not as if you're storing any single file that is itself larger than 1TB. That's just silly. Having two separate 1TB drives for your data (or mirroring them together in a RAID 1 array for safety) is a better idea than having your data/backup drive in a RAID 0 array. Okay, enough preaching.

On the game grid, the ALX does come up with a speedy score on the World in Conflict game benchmark tests. It got a rock-solid 95-frames-per-second score at 1,280-by-1,024 and an equally solid 60-fps score at the more challenging 1,920-by-1,200 resolution. As confirmed before press time, the ATI drivers still need some tweaking, since the system returned unplayable (or barely playable) scores on our Crysis tests: 45 fps at 1,280-by-1,024 and 10 fps at 1,920-by-1,200. Newer drivers, which should be available by the time you read this, will bump the scores higher—check back for a second look when the drivers go public. That said, it looks like I'll have to classify the system as a "wait to buy" instead of a "buy now."

This system certainly outperforms its predecessor on some, though not all, tests. The older system (with nVidia GeForce 9800 GX2 Quad SLI graphics) thumps this ALX on the Crysis benchmark tests, scoring 81 fps at 1,280-by-1,024. (The older ALX is also quite a bit cheaper at under $7,000—if not exactly "cheap." The Falcon NW FragBox QX9650, which also uses the latest ATI Radeon HD 4870 X2 CrossFireX graphics–but just one, not two cards—and a slower QX9650 processor, still manages to come within spitting distance of the ALX. And the FragBox does it for less than half the price!

I expected the Alienware Area-51 ALX to be an obscene performer, and to be priced accordingly. Unfortunately it hits the mark on the latter, but just misses the former. Sure, it's a fast performer, but there are cheaper models that can keep up with and outperform it. The ALX mostly exists as a lust object, and once AMD fixes the Radeon drivers it may be a contender. I'd stay tuned to this space for updates, but for now, I can only recommend the ALX with reservations.

Check out the Alienware Area-51 ALX (Radeon HD 4870 X2 CrossFireX) test scores.

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