I am about to purchase the Alienware Area-51 m5790 as it is the best and most flexible notebook for gaming and multimedia. However, I have heard good things about the Dell XPS m1710.

For a person attending college next year using their laptop more for multimedia use than gaming which laptop would be better?

When configuring the Alienware, I have a choice of either of 2 configurations
Core 2 Duo T7400 (2.13 Ghz) Core 2 Duo T7600 Overclocked (2.66 Ghz)
2 Gb RAM 2 Gb RAM
ATI Radeon X1900 ATI Radeon X1800

I will be using the laptop more for multimedia purposes such as listening to music, downloading stuff, watching videos, video editing and photoshopping. I rarely game and when I do the games usually do not demand high graphics software. The last game I've played on a laptop was Hitman Blood Money and GTA San Andreas.

Which configuration would be more useful for me? The faster processor or the better graphics card?

I'd definitely go with the T7400 and the x1900. The difference in clock speeds won't make that much of a difference, as the T7400 is already pretty damn fast. The difference between the x1800 and x1900 is bigger, and even though you may not game alot now you may want to later. Not that the x1800 is a bad car at all, but the x1900 is really a great card.

Plus, I would think the T7400/x1900 would be a little cheaper, I remember the overclocked T7600 being a pretty expensive upgrade.

how much faster is the 7600 overclocked than the 7400 or the 7600?

Is it worth the 400 increase in price?

What he said.

The T7400 is 2.16Ghz, the overclocked T7600G is 2.6Ghz I believe. It is a decent clock difference, but you won't notice in much of anything buch benchmarks since the Core 2 Duo's are already damn fast. If you really need all out cpu power then go for it, but it's really not worth it IMO unless you're going to be doing alot of decoding/encoding and other cpu intensive applications where the time it takes to complete a task is very important.

Save your money and stick with the T7400(or even the T7200 if it's an option, as it's only 160Mhz slower at 2Ghz).

I dont think I will be doing cpu intensive gaming. I prefer to use the laptop more for multimedia purposes like watching videos, downloading songs, and doing some graphic design on Adobe Photoshop. No online gaming, since I suck. I think the most CPU intensive game I have played in a while is Hitman Blood Money. But I still want to make a good investment.

Would you recommend getting the Dell Inspiron E1705, with almost the exact configiurations? (T7400, 2gb ram, 120gb hdd, vista ultimate, geforce 7900 gs) If the two laptops have almost the same hardware wouldnt they have the same speed?

thanks for the help.

not too many games these days really tax the cpu, your video card will be the bottle neck before the cpu does, although supreme commander is pretty cpu intensive

you should probably go for the dell, since you're not playing the latest and greatest games, the 7900gs should be fine for you unless you want to pay a nice premium for the x1900

If you don't game, stick with the x1800. I'm pretty much in the same boat as you. I needed a laptop that could handle some heavy multitasking, with the occasional bit of gaming. So I got the 2.16ghz Core 2 Duo, 2gb ram, 80gb HDD, and the X1800.

It's been a fantastic machine so far. It can multitask very well. It's a breeze in Photoshop and 3d modeling applications. I'm sure it'll be a great machine for your needs.

Whichever machine you decide on, I suggest getting a 7200 RPM HDD. My 80gb 5400 RPM seems to be the slowest component in my laptop. I plan on upgrading to a 7200 RPM within a month.

What have you found out about the specs on the various drives? I looked at that too, and Alienware website was saying each of their drives was good for 1.5GB/s. That's what made me go for the big ones, just figured that the bottleneck was somewhere else. Be interesting to find out. . .AW-Isaac?