Alienware Aurora m9700: Performance and Display Characteristics

Some vendors are sending their high powered gaming notebooks to us with Windows XP Media Center Edition (MCE) installed instead of XP Professional. They're doing this because the notebooks--with their super video and audio systems, graphics processors, CP

Some vendors are sending their high powered gaming notebooks to us with Windows XP Media Center Edition (MCE) installed instead of XP Professional. They’re doing this because the notebooks—with their super video and audio systems, graphics processors, CP

At 1600x1200 MCE did a little better at all settings than XP. Nothing to write home about, but interesting, especially given our findings with other tests that showed little difference.We're concentrating here on performance differences under XP and MCE.

At 1600x1200 MCE did a little better at all settings than XP. Nothing to write home about, but interesting, especially given our findings with other tests that showed little difference.We’re concentrating here on performance differences under XP and MCE.

No real difference between PCMark05 CPU scores running under MCE or XP.

No real difference between PCMark05 CPU scores running under MCE or XP.

No difference between MCE and XP result for the PCMark05 Memory score.

No difference between MCE and XP result for the PCMark05 Memory score.

Though things went a bit better for the Alienware m9700's hard disk array under XP, the difference is not great enough to worry about.

Though things went a bit better for the Alienware m9700’s hard disk array under XP, the difference is not great enough to worry about.

Here the difference between MCE and XP is of no significance.We are rerunning our MobileMark 2005 battery life tests. We failed to take into account a bug in Windows XP SP2 (and XP MCE) that can cause a battery to run down faster if a USB 2.0 device is co

Here the difference between MCE and XP is of no significance.We are rerunning our MobileMark 2005 battery life tests. We failed to take into account a bug in Windows XP SP2 (and XP MCE) that can cause a battery to run down faster if a USB 2.0 device is co

At 1024x768 there is no performance difference between the two operating systems when F.E.A.R. is run on the m9700.

At 1024x768 there is no performance difference between the two operating systems when F.E.A.R. is run on the m9700.

And, there's no difference with F.E.A.R. at 1600x1200.

And, there’s no difference with F.E.A.R. at 1600x1200.

With Doom 4 we found no difference between operating systems at 1024x768.

With Doom 4 we found no difference between operating systems at 1024x768.

And, there's no difference at 1600x1200.

And, there’s no difference at 1600x1200.

Whether it's Windows XP Professional or MCE the results are the same with Black & White 2 at 1024x768.

Whether it’s Windows XP Professional or MCE the results are the same with Black & White 2 at 1024x768.