Load up is pretty much instant, just like with Ultrabooks, only this is no Ultrabook, and Intel’s six- and eight-core i7 processors are ready to do your bidding for more than just office work, writing, web surfing, and the sort, with games pretty much the object of affections for this thing.
We threw Steam on the rig with our default graphics testing game “Portal 2”, as well as with “Bioshock Infinite” which we figured would work the machine hard particularly during the benchmark, and Dell provided a 34 inch curved monitor for us to play with to show this machine working its hardest.
Just as a heads up, we do have a review coming for that 34 inch screen, but for the sake of this review, all you really need to know is that it shows the resolution of 3440×1440 when you’re running it through Mini-DisplayPort.
Why is that important?
Because games can run on the Area 51 at this resolution complete with the 21:9 aspect ratio in tact, and they will run with clarity and sharpness, with virtually no slowdown.
Case in point, Portal 2 was remarkably smooth, and so quick that we felt spoiled. We didn’t have to think about fiddling with settings and could just turn everything up, up, up. Detail was there, sharpness was there, and all in all, it was like our machine had just turned into the most powerful gaming system we could have ever imagined having.
Bioshock Infinite puts the machine to a little more of a test, likely because it’s a newer title and even comes packing its own benchmark facility, which we ran with the computer on its highest settings, resulting in a frame rate that doesn’t drop below 43 frames per second, and an average of closer to 60-70 frames per second, and that’s with every setting turned on at the 3440×1440 resolution, depth of field settings, and some anti-aliasing.
Not too shabby at all.
We should say, we’re not surprised, especially since the review unit featured a $3500 video card capable of delivering a totally awesome-sauce 12K gaming feed delivered over three 4K monitors, of which we didn’t have to test.
That said, if you do happen to have no problem spending on three 4K monitors — which given the price of this computer isn’t too hard to imagine — you’ll find sheer delight can be offered from this computer, because the monitor support with some of the heavy graphics cards is really, really there.
And Alienware is promising a version of the Area 51 that will soon have quad GPU graphics setups. Our review unit relied on the card with two GPUs on board. Just imagine that this means, or try to, because your brain may actually melt at the thought.
The fans also seem to do their job, and the inclusion of water-cooling with the over-clocked CPU seems to help, as we didn’t hear the system beyond its basic hum.
We’ve built louder systems than this one that didn’t perform this well, so whatever Alienware is doing from its end to minimise noise and maximise performance is really, really working. Credit there.
Upgradeability is strong too, with several PCI-Express slots on the motherboard unused. On our review unit, only one of the Express x16 slots was taken, and there were two more ready for action, alongside a single x4 and x1.
Perhaps if you’re grabbing video from something like an input card, you’d be using what is provided and installing a capture card. Gamers who also spend their time as video editors would likely do just that, and given the performance available here, you’d probably find some pretty solid render times, too.
Honestly, we’re not sure how much you’d need to upgrade here, especially since the need for a sound card is reduced with the on-board audio solution, which in this computer is handled by Creative Labs and appears quite strong, but the ports are ready if you do decide to throw some new hardware inside.
Memory is set to four slots, however, all of which are used up if you grab the 16GB version, so if you want to move to 32GB, you’ll need to buy new RAM.
