Alienware adopts AMD for high-end laptops

Gaming PC manufacturer Alienware today announced that it was expanding its laptop line with a new Aurora m7700 mobile system that can support AMD Athlon 64 FX or dual-core Athlon 64 X2 desktop processors.

The AMD Athlon 64 FX is AMD's top desktop processor, targeted specifically for power users and avid PC gamers, and the Athlon 64 X2 offers dual-core Athlon 64 performance for multithreaded applications.

Alienware already offers an upscale Area-51 m7700 laptop that uses high-end Intel desktop processors, but Aurora m7700 fills a hole in Alienware's line since the AMD Athlon 64 processor has become a favorite among gaming enthusiasts as AMD's latest processors have overtaken Intel's in gaming performance.

The Aurora ships with a 17-inch widescreen LCD and can be configured with Nvidia GeForce Go 7800 GTX graphics. The laptop chassis can also support two hard drives in RAID 0 or 1 configurations.

Systems start at $2,159, but a fully loaded model with an Athlon 64 FX-57 processor and GeForce Go 7800 GTX graphics will cost about $4,000.