Since 1996 laptops that allowed users to play newly released graphic intensive games all had two things in common. One was that they cost about the same as a late model used car. The other was that each carried the Alienware logo.Over the years and with the advent of smaller and more efficient technology, there have been few manufacturers who have made inroads into this very specialized market. Notably in 2006 after Dell acquired the Alienware company and released the XPS Renegade which gave gamers somewhat of a choice. The XPS in no way out performed the Alienware models and they still cost an arm and a leg.
In the last few years there have been a smattering of high performance laptops targeted at gaming enthusiasts but for the most part Alienware and their now parent company Dell have been the leading manufacturers of gaming laptops.
That is beginning to change. At this years CES we saw the new the official unveiling of the Intel's Sandy Bridge architecture which included several Core i7 mobile processors. These new tech advances have really opened the door to a whole new generation of high performance laptops suitable for gaming and several of the big name manufacturers have stepped into territory which once sovereign soil to Alienware.
MSI teamed up with Steelseries to design the GT780. With the afore mentioned architecture and Core i7 CPU, the GT780 is a 17.3 inch desktop replacement with plenty of graphics power provided by NVIDIA GeForce GTX 560M. Dual HD's with up to 1 Terabyte of storage accessed by up to 16 GB ram, give this puppy plenty of storage and speed. With the GT780 MSI has set its sites on the market for high end gaming laptops.
Acer not to be outdone stirs it up with AMD's new Mobility Radeon HD6850 on its latest offering the 8950G-9839. The 8950G features the Sandy Bridge and the Core i7 2630QM 750GB HDD and 8GB of ram on its 18.4 inch powerhouse.
Toshiba gets into the Gamer-Laptop party with it's Qosmio x505. The Qosmio offers customers a choice between the i7-2630QM and the slightly more affordable i5-2410M and then packs in the NVIDIA GeForce GTX460, 500 GB HDD and up to 8GB ram. Toshiba goes on to add built in CUDA technology that helps speed up performance and NVIDIA 3D vision technology for amazing visuals.
HP is also coming to the party with their own Core i7- Intel inside Envy line. The HP Envy 17 3D offers the ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5850 graphics with DX11 HD and 3D technologies. 6GB of RAM, Slot loading DVD Blu-Ray and Dual Hard drives up to 2TB with optional solid state flash drive module to speed up systems.
Asus is releasing its “Republic of Gamers” notebook next month and is much like the others in the way of processing and architecture. The Asus G73SW-A includes the NVIDIA GTX-460M 8GB of RAM and dual 500GB drives with 4GB flash memory to speed up boot times.
Each of these laptops represents a big step forward in portable powerhouses designed specifically for the high end graphics market. They all average between $1500 and $1800 entry pricing and are upgradeable to even higher performance standards. The competition is intense and the winners of course are the consumers.
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