UPDATED May 2012: Dell’s latest deal on the brand new M17x R4 / M17x R4 3D is an extra $50 off plus free shipping!

• Visit Dell to configure Yours!
• Use the following for $50 off and free shipping: BHW1L0MX0D?MCX

The base configuration consists of a quad-core Intel Core i7 3610QM 2.3 GHz (3.3 GHz w/ Turbo boost active) with Hyperthreading enabled, which effectively makes it an 8-core processor for practical purposes). Furthermore it comes with a minimum of 6GB of 1600 MHz DDR3 RAM (upgradeable to 32 GB) and up to dual 7200rpm hard drives or solid state drives in RAID 0 for almost twice the performance over a single drive. A blazing fast SSD RAID 0 option is also available (512 GB + 5 12 GB for 1 full terabyte of flash-based storage). A new feature in the M17x R4 is that it now has an option for installing an mSATA cache drive that speeds up startup and load times without the cost associated with 100% SSD storage.

It is equipped with a 1600 x 900 panel that can be upgraded to 1920 x 1080 panels–either a regular 60Hz variety or a 3D capable 120Hz panel that includes a 3D Vision bundle. The WirelessHD streaming technology is no longer available with the M17x R4, but there is still an option for a faster wireless card if you need some extra range and bandwidth, or lower latency for online games.

The most important part for gamers is as always the graphics card. In this case, the base model includes an Nvidia GTX 660M, which is one of Nvidia’s latest GPUs utilizing the 28nm Kepler architecture, but it is still not as fast as the alternatives. You can alse get it with GTX 675M, which is a great deal faster, or the Radeon HD 7970M from AMD’s latest Graphics Core Next batch of 28nm graphics cards that should be the fastest mobile GPU on the market. Oddly enough, this upgrade is considerably cheaper than NVIDIA’s fastest GTX 675M.

However, there’s a catch if you want the 3D version. In this case you are limited to the Nvidia options including the GTX 660M or a GTX  675M, since Alienware has opted for Nvidia’s 3D solution 3D Vision. This is a tried and tested 3D kit that works great, but it’s too bad that you can’t combine it with the fastest graphics card (although the difference is marginal).

Black or red versions are available and you also get the laser-etched name plate, multi-colored backlghting and all the other Alienware extras.

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