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Everyone,

Sorry for those who have waited long for this review. I've been awfully busy this weekend (surprisingly) and trying to find time to put this review together.. and now it is finally here! This is a complete review from ordering to setup to having fun with the new toy!

For those who are not familiar with my system specs, I will post them now:

Specs
[1] Alienware Area-51® 7500 - SLI

Processor: Intel® Core™ 2 Extreme QX6700 2.66GHz 8MB Cache 1066MHz FSB - Overclocked to 3.2GHz!

Operating System (Office software not included): Genuine Windows® Vista Ultimate - With no Media Center Remote Control or TV Tuner
Chassis: Alienware® P2 Chassis with AlienIce™ 3.0 Video Cooling - Cyborg Green
Chassis Customization : Alienware® Standard System Lighting - Fusion Red
High-Performance Liquid Cooling: The Intel Core 2 Extreme QX6700 Overclocked Processor already includes High-Performance Liquid Cooling.
Motherboard: Alienware® Approved NVIDIA nForce 680i SLI Motherboard
Memory: 2GB DDR2 Performance SDRAM at 800MHz - 2 x 1024MB
System Drive: Single Drive Configuration - 250GB Serial ATA 3Gb/s 7,200 RPM w/ 8MB Cache
Storage Drive: Additional Storage Drive - 250GB Serial ATA 3Gb/s 7,200 RPM w/ 8MB Cache
Primary CD ROM/DVD ROM: 18X Dual Layer DVD±RW/CD-RW Burner w/ Nero Software
Graphics Processor: Dual 768MB NVIDIA® GeForce™ 8800 GTX - SLI Enabled
Power Supply: Alienware® 1000 Watt Multi-GPU Approved Power Supply
Video Optimizer: AlienAdrenaline: Video Performance Optimizer
Monitor: No Monitor
Sound Card: Creative Sound Blaster® X-Fi™ XtremeGamer High Definition 7.1 Audio
Keyboard: Alienware® USB Full-Size Keyboard
Mouse : Alienware® Optical 3-Button Mouse with Scroll Wheel
Warranty: 3-Year AlienCare Toll-Free 24/7 Phone Support w/ Onsite Service
AlienRespawn: Alienware® Respawn Recovery Kit
Benchmark Software: 3DMark®06
Alienware Extras: Alienware® Mousepad
Alienware Extras: AlienInspection - Exclusive Integration and Inspection - $100 Value - FREE!
Alienware Extras: AlienWiring - Exclusive Internal Wire Management - $100 Value - FREE!
Free Alienware® T-Shirt: Free Alienware® T-Shirt - White

SubTotal: $5,190.00
Shipping: $105.00
Tax: $344.18
Order Total: $5,639.18

Ordering
This time around, I decided to order via the phone to make sure that if I ordered online, my configuration would not be messed up by any means. Ordering over the phone was simple and easy and only took about 10 mins to complete. A+

Order Follow Up
Once I received the tracking numbers for the shipping, I called Alienware to double check on the tracking numbers since they were not pulling up on the FedEx website. Upon calling, the customer service rep who helped me was AWFULLY RUDE to me. I gave her my order number and said that my order number did not exist in the system. Then she said it did, finally. When she asked for my information, (including name, address, and phone number) she said that none of that was correct. Apparently after talking with 3 reps and finally a supervisor/manager, my account information was correctly solved. When I ordered my new system, the order was placed on my OLD ACCOUNT INFORMATION even though I gave them my new address and phone numbers from 3 years ago. This should of not happened. The first customer service rep accused me of trying to scam her out of personal information and thought I was "pre-texting" the company. Oh HELL NO. Customer Service Agent, Rosalyn, extension 6137, you failed. F+

Shipping
My computer was expected to ship on May 7th, but shipped out WAY ahead of schedule on April 30th. My system arrived on May 3rd when FedEx estimated a May 4th date! Good job, Alienware and FedEx! The initial outside packaging was a bit banged up (which is normal to expect from travelling halfway across the country) but the inside box that housed everything else, was in prestine condition. I was very happy! A+

Setup
Setting up the computer for the first time was to be expected as a breeze and it was. I was able to plug in my 5.1 system with no faults and the initial setup of Vista ran excellent... until... I was plagued with two specific errors:

[1] "KERNEL_STACK_INPAGE_ERROR" BSOD's. This happened randomly no matter what I was doing. I suspected it was the hard drive and found it that it had a bad boot sector. I re-imaged the computer using the Alienware Respawn DVD (which originally was FREE with a 3 year warranty back in 2004, now costs $49 extra) and I haven't witnessed any more errors of that sort... YET.

[2] "nvdkllvm failed to respond and was successfully recovered" error. This also happened randomly, but more often when the FLASH web applet was being used on a webpage. Since I reseated the graphics cards, uninstalled the drivers and installed the new BETA 158.24 drivers, I have seen MUCH improved performance with SLI and games. I also haven't received this error... YET.

THE SYSTEM IS SUPER QUIET!! THE MOST QUIET COMPUTER I HAVE EVER HEARD!!

For right now, I will give the setup and the operation of the computer a B+.

3DMark06 Scores
3DMark Score: 13,458.00 3DMarks
SM2.0 Score: 5,547.00
HDR/SM3.0 Score: 5,829.00
CPU Score: 4,129.00
SM2.0 Graphics Tests

GT1 - Return To Proxycon: 47.02 FPS
GT2 - Firefly Forest: 45.43 FPS

CPU Tests
CPU1 - Red Valley: 1.35 FPS
CPU2 - Red Valley: 2.03 FPS

HDR/SM3.0 Graphics Tests
HDR1 - Canyon Flight: 53.42 FPS
HDR2 - Deep Freeze: 63.16 FPS

Even though with comparing other systems that had the same specs as mine, others were getting scores over 16500+. B

Games
Lord of the Rings Online: Shadows of Angmar, Doom 3, Guild Wars, Company of Heroes, and FEAR ran with no problems and obtained very high frame rates. I was able to achieve 191 FPS with DOOM 3. A+

Pictures
Here's all the pictures. Sorry for the quality. They were taken using a 1.3 megapixel camera phone at 1280x960 resolution. I have resized them for the time being. There are a few pictures missing since they haven't showed up in my e-mail yet (I sent them through my cellphone and the network seems to be congested). Once I have the other pictures, I will post them!

























If there's anything else that I left out to review, please respond and I will do my best to add them here! Thank you and I hope you enjoyed the review!

Thanks, Hykster ... I've been waiting all day for your review Your pictures came out very good, better than some that are done with better cameras. The wiring looks very clean ... good to see, as some of the published reviews have said it isn't up to Alienware past standards.

Good job ... the Cyborg green is nice! And, love the fact that you say it's quiet (you knew I was gonna say that).

Hopefully a mod will move this to the Review section (don't want it getting lost, as we get so few desktop reviews).

Anything else you think I should add or go into more detail, Shazza?

Yes, the wiring is very clean. Even with my Alienware system back in 2004, that had very clean wiring. I was like.. HOLY ****. I wish I could do that when I build computers for others.

PS - Glad you like the review.

Thanks for the review... I'm buying a gaming computer within the next two weeks, and Alienware obviously is one of my choices.
I'm a little concern about benchmark score though, it seems they consistently under perform from comparable machines... not only with your review, but with review from other websites.
Also, equally concern is the error messages you got, since I do not plan to get the AlienRespawn... and getting such error messages the first few time you use it isn't very good.
If you care to comment about the first two points I would appreciate it.
Also, are there any crapwares preloaded into your system?

Alienware doesn't pre-load applications on your computer like DELL and Gateway does. They only install the OS and whatever other apps you bought from them to have installed on the computer.

Looking at the memory addresses on the errors, it looks like that I could have some bad RAM. I'm still getting those messages. I haven't tried to swap RAM yet, but I'm still trying to narrow down the culprits until then. Once I do that, then I'll swap RAM and see what it does.

Nice! Thanks for posting the pics!
The benchmarks being lower, is it because of something with Vista? I have been shopping around and seems like I read somewhere that the benchmarks were lots better on XP.

Okay. I have found the culprit after speaking with Nvidia technical staff.

Apparently, enabling SLI is causing my computer to give me the KERNEL_STACK_INPAGE_ERROR BSOD's. Once I disable SLI, then I stop receiving the errors.

I will try to revert to the 158.18 drivers and see what happens there. And if that continues, then I will just disable SLI until a more stable driver will be released.

Otherwise, I'm still happy with my purchase and expect Nvidia to fix the remaining SLI issues with Vista.

The benchmarks are low because of Vista, but that's mainly because of the drivers. Those with the same system specs as me and that are running XP, are getting benchies of anywhere between 22000-24000.

With 158.18, I was getting 10164.
With 158.24, I'm getting 13654.

It's improving.

I also posted the last 2 pics that I were missing that finally came through. One if with the tower in the box, and the other is a left side profile shot.

That's good to know... since I won't be getting SLI I won't have that problem...
What about the second error, the "nvdkllvm failed to respond and was successfully recovered" error? Did you find out anything with that?

I have had no Nvidia errors under Vista Ultimate. I also didn't get SLI because I knew that there were issues with SLI and Vista. Hykster, You will not have anything to worry about with a single 8800GTX. I have not found anything that I have thrown at it that it couldn't handle.

Hmmm. Maybe you should have gotten a camera from their accessories menu at the same time to take great pictures of it at the same time you got your system. :]
[assuming their like dell and offer accessories like cameras]

you know i'm just playing
nice, CLEAN system. I admire the cleanliness

Yeah, I'm currently running on one 8800 GTX card and it handles everything wonderfully. I can sit and be patient until SLI gets hammered out a bit more. I intended to get SLI anyways regardless.

The second error I was getting was that the Nvidia driver stopped responding. Those two errors were working together.. now with SLI disabled, everything runs fine!

I heard that Alienware runs benchmark on every system before it is shipped out and records it in the documentation... are there any differences between your 3DMark scores and theirs.

Alienware does do this, and their 3DMark scores practically were exactly the same when they were testing it. You have to do some tweaking, but it all matched up in the end mostly.