CES 2008

Laptop gamers have always had plenty of high-end 17-inch desktop replacement systems to choose from, so we were excited to see that one of Alienware's pushed this year at CES was the Area-51 m15x, a rare 15-inch gaming laptop.

Watch the Alienware Area-51 m15x video on CNET TV.

With this new model, initially announced in December but available starting later in January, Alienware has updated its iconic look, keeping the classic alien-head motif on the back of the lid, but cleaning up the design with a simple, flat look called "Ripley," which removes not only the ridges found on the lids of previous Alienware laptops, but also the indent at the edge of the touchpad, working the control surface seamlessly right into the wrist rest, where it's outlined by a backlit rectangle.

While the most exciting component in the m15x is Nvidia's GeForce 8800 video card--the first 15-inch laptop to offer that new part--we're equally enamored of the Alienware Control Center, which lets us control the system's many lighting zones. You can set different lighting colors for the backlit keyboard, the touchpad outline, the light pipes on the side of the monitor, and the quick-launch buttons.

The m15x should be available later in January, running from around $1,500 to more than $5,000, depending on configuration. Alienware is also working on a 17-inch version, but there's no availability date on that yet.

Toshiba's Qosmio G45-AV690

With Intel's new Penryn series of laptop CPUs, PC makers, including Toshiba, are revamping their lines to offer the new parts. You'll be able to find the new chips in the Toshiba Qosmio line, the Satellite X205, and select Satellite U305 laptops.

One of the more impressive new Toshibas is the Qosmio G45-AV690, which the company calls the "world's first notebook to feature an HD DVD-R/RW optical drive." Although we admit, that might have been more impressive news before last week's Warner/Blu-ray smackdown.

Toshiba's Qosmio systems are still among our favorite multimedia desktop replacements, featuring 1080p-compatible screen resolution, an HDMI output for sending those HD DVD movies to your big-screen plasma or LCD TV, and most exciting, an external OCCUR TV tuner -- also known as CableCard. Setting up CableCard, for recording hi-def TV signals with your computer, is still a major pain, but it's a vast improvement over old-fashioned TV tuners. You also get Intel's new Penryn T9300 Core 2 Duo processor, and a decent Nvidia GeForce 8300 video card.

The tricked-out Qosmio G45-AV690 is available now for $3,199.

HP announced a CES revamp of its ubersize desktop replacement late last week. Now that Intel has unveiled its new line of laptop chips, we bring you more details and hands-on observations of this high-end laptop.

While some PC makers endeavor to make ever smaller and lighter machines, HP gets credit for going the other way, creating one of the largest laptops ever seen--the massive HDX. With a huge 20-inch display and weighing more than 15 pounds, the HDX is a glorious example of conspicuous consumption. Even better, unlike Dell's similar XPS M2010, HP continues to update the system regularly--the latest version (still just called the HDX) is the third model we've seen since last spring.

The new HDX debuting at CES offers 512 MB Nvidia GeForce 8800M GTS graphics and the latest Intel Penryn processors, and offers a choice of either HD DVD or Blu-ray drives--although the recent Warner/Blu-ray deal makes that less exciting than it was a week or so ago.

Getting a chance to run some benchmarks on a Penryn HDX with the Nvidia GeForce 8800 just before CES, we didn't really see more than a modest performance boost from the new parts--but as with any prerelease hardware, new drivers are often required to unlock the real potential, so it may be a few days or weeks before useful updates are available.

The HDX may be so big that it's a laptop in name only, but the original model from last year was a constant conversation piece around the CNET office. Look for the revamped HDX to be available online sometime in January, starting at $1,999.

Nvidia's three announcements today are perhaps not that surprising if you follow the PC tech rumor mill, but it's nice to finally have confirmation.

(Credit: Nvidia)

First, is the introduction of Nvidia's next-generation chipset, the NForce 700-series. The 780a, 750a, and 730a are AMD-only designs based on the AM2+ CPU interface. They allow for Phenom quad-core chips in SLI systems on the 780a and 750a, and the 780a also supports Nvidia's three-way SLI platform, which lets you use three supporting graphics cards in the same PC. Nvidia made no Intel-based announcements today, which leaves high-end gamers with no means of pairing Nvidia's performance leading graphics cards with Intel's Core 2 Quad 9000-series chips. Until that union becomes possible (or until AMD's higher-end Phenom chips emerge and surprise us with better performance), you should stay away from the $5,000-plus gaming PC. [[Update: Nvidia reminded us that its NForce 780i chipset, which shipped in mid-December, supports both Intel's new CPUs as well as SLI.]]

(Credit: Nvidia)

But more than matching AMD's CPUs with Nvidia's SLI technology, the new chipsets also bring about Hybrid SLI, an overarching term for two new technologies, Hybrid Power and GeForce Boost.

Hybrid Power is aimed mostly at laptop gamers. If you have a Hybrid Power-enabled laptop with both a discrete graphics chip and an integrated graphics chip (which we expect to see this quarter), you will be able to shut off the power-hungry discrete chip and divert basic Windows desktop rendering to the integrated chip. Hybrid Power is exclusive to 780a and 750a chipsets, and will also require as yet unannounced discrete graphics chips to work.

GeForce Boost, alternatively, should interest mainstream desktop gamers, and will have an impact as soon as you get an NForce 700-series chipset. Here you can pair your 700-series graphics chip (which we'll get to) with a GeForce 8400 GT or a 8500 GS (as well as budget cards going forward) and enjoy a boost to overall 3D graphics processing. Nvidia demonstrated a GeForce Boost-enabled system at least running Crysis with a semismooth frame rate in DirectX 10 mode at 800x600. Both this concept and Hybrid Power are similar to ATI's Hybrid Crossfire, announced last month.

Finally, Nvidia also introduced its nominally DirectX 10-capable GeForce 8200 integrated graphics chip. You'll find a version of this chip on all of the new NForce 700-series chipsets. In addition to basic gaming, Nvidia says the new chip also offers full PureVideo HD support (Nvidia's video decoding software, which also received an update, mostly by way of automated color and contrast tweaking). With that capability, chipsets that include the GeForce 8200 will also support Blu-ray and HD DVD playback without a discrete graphics card. That opens the door to more HD-capable small-chassis desktops.