Alienware M17x R3 (Sandy Bridge + HD 6970M) Available Again!

UPDATE: The M17x R3 was initially affected by the Sandy Bridge glitch and taken off Dell’s website, but now it’s back! Dell is also sweetening the deal by adding the Mobility Radeon HD 6970M as an optional upgrade–a considerably faster GPU than both the Radeon HD 6870M and GeForce GTX 460M, which were the only ones offered previously.

UPDATE 2: Save $50 off any Alienware laptop $999 or greater! with Coupon Code BHW1L0MX0D?MCX

The Alienware/Dell website is now updated (again) with the latest, 3rd revision of the 17-inch Alienware M17x with Intel’s Sandy Bridge CPUs (all with four cores and  eight threads) and AMDs Mobility Radeon HD 6870M, Mobility Radeon HD 6970M or an Nvidia GeForce GTX 460M coupled with a 3D Vision kit (but still no SLI/CrossFireX dual GPU option). The base configuration ($1,499) is pretty generous for a change and includes a Core i7 2630QM running at 2GHz (up to 2.8GHz with Turbo Boost), the aforementioned Radeon HD 6870M graphics card, and 4GB or 1333MHz DDR3 RAM. For $1,499, this is actually quite a bargain.

The big news is the optional ($250 upgrade) AMD Radeon HD 6970M with 2GB of GDDR5, which is second only to the Nvidia GTX 485M in terms of single-GPU performance. Compared to the HD 6870M, the 6970M has 960 shaders/stream processors instead of 800, higher clocks and a 256-bit memory bus.

As usual there are lots of optional upgrades to be had as  well, including a RAID 0 setup with dual 256GB solid state drives. This is no doubt the single most powerful upgrade for overall system performance, and also the most expensive (+ $1,200). A more moderately priced upgrade is to dual 750GB 7,200rpm hard drives in RAID 0, which also adds a considerable performance boost, lots of storage space and only $350 to the price tag. In addition, the M17x R3 can be configured with up to 16GB of RAM and the processor can be upgraded to a Core i7 2820QM (2.3GHz/3.4GHz Turbo Boost).

Another upgrade that is likely to be popular is the 120Hz 1920×1080 WLED display and Nvidia 3D Vision bundle. It is somewhat unfortunate is that the 3D kit requires the Nvidia GTX 460M GPU, which is less powerful than the Radeon HD 6970M. Also note that 3D Vision requires a 120Hz panel. The starting price for a 3D-capable M17x is $1,799.