Test System:

Alienware m7700 featuring:

AMD FX-60 dual core CPU
Nvidia Geforce Go 7800 GTX 256mb
2gb PC3200 DDR
100GB Hitachi Hard Drive
NEC 6550A Dual format, dual layer DVD Writer
17” Widescreen Display

Windows XP Pro +SP2
DirectX 9.0c (Feb 2006)
Forceware 84.21

PCmark 2005
Sisoft Sandra
Sonic MyDVD v6.1
FEAR
Photoshop CS2
ATI Avivo Converter
Windows Media Player 10
Quake 4
PowerDVD 6

A format of the hard drive was performed (NTFS) and then Windows XP was installed. Following the completion of the installation, the Nvidia drivers were installed. The only updates applied were SP2 and .NET Framework 1.1(latest service pack) and the latest Media Player version and Patches. Next, the latest builds of the benchmarking tools were installed and finally, the hard drive was de-fragmented. For each test, the Nvidia drivers were set to default quality/optimizations (unless otherwise stated).

Good Benchmarking Practice:
Where possible, each benchmark was performed 3 times and the median result for each resolution/setting is shown in the tables that will follow. All applications had their latest patches applied.

NOTE:
For many of the game benchmarks we have used an external 19” CRT monitor as the inbuilt screen on this model was limited to a lower resolution (1440x900). Should you choose to buy the m7700 you can opt to include a screen which is capable of 1920x1200. The results at this resolution would be reasonably close to those in our 1600x1200 tests.

In our system based benchmarks we have included some comparison results from a desktop based system featuring an Abit AN8 motherboard, 2gb of DDR400, a FX-60, 7800GTX 256mb and a 60gb 7200rpm drive to give an indication of how the Alienware holds up against a normal high spec system.