With the advent of NVIDIA’s SLI technology in 2004, gaming performance on the desktop was dramatically increased which allowed users to run games at higher resolutions with more image quality enhancements. Unfortunately for mobile users, the notebook platform was left behind with no immediate solution made available beyond a single flagship GPU. Fast forward two years and we find ourselves looking at a brand new mobile platform that features NVIDIA’s proven nForce4 SLI chipset as well as two discrete graphics cards. The Alienware Aurora m9700 is the world’s first 17″ SLI capable notebook to hit the market and it promises to provide unrivaled levels of performance in the latest and greatest games.

Alienware has been building gaming notebooks longer than any other company here, and its experience shows in the 9.5-pound Aurora m9700. The Aurora is encased in a solid chassis adorned with Alienware’s trademark glowing AlienEyes and rubberized grips. Notable features include a 1.3-MP tilting camera above the display, a touch-sensitive, quick-launch pad, and a front-mounted optical drive. Positioning the optical drive away from the sides allows for better port distribution and makes room for the RAID configuration that is fast becoming a company standard.

Armed with a glossy 17″ UWUXGA LCD with a native resolution of 1920×1200, the Aurora m9700 is able to fully take advantage of the ability to run higher resolutions in today’s latest games. Although still managing to weigh less than 10lbs in the most standard configurations, the system is far from being considered compact or easily portable. Then again, when one considers the fact that this desktop replacement houses and effectively cools two graphics cards as well as two hard drives the weight and size seem surprisingly small.

Review By Laptopmag

The Aurora m9700’s performance numbers are just as high as its build quality. The notebook is saddled with a mere Turion ML44 processor, but the SLI GPU array enabled 3DMark03 scores above 21,000 and a F.E.A.R. frame rate of 67 fps with the settings maxed out, good enough for a third-place finish. With the display’s subtle color depth and crisp brightness, gaming was a total pleasure.F.E.A.R. has never looked this good on a machine with this price.

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Review By Reviews.Cnet

Ports and slots abound on the Aurora m9700. USB 2.0 ports are conveniently located on the left and right sides of the system, letting gamers connect their mouse on the side of their preferred trigger finger. There are four USB 2.0 ports in total along with one four-pin FireWire port. In addition to the standard headphone and mic jacks, there are three audio ports for front, center, and rear surround-sound channels. Video ports include VGA, DVI, S-Video (in and out), and coax, courtesy of the TV tuner. Next to the ExpressCard slot, a 4-in-1 media card reader supports SD, MMC, Memory Stick, and Memory Stick Pro formats. For networking, there are modem and Gigabit Ethernet jacks and integrated Wi-Fi (b/g) and Bluetooth.

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