In keeping with its black-ops naming convention, Alienware has created the Alienware Aurora DDR, which presumably takes its name from the rumored ultrafast spy plane being developed by the AMD desktop CPU, the AMD Athlon 64 FX-51. Two 160GB Serial ATA hard drives in a RAID 0 configuration let you read and write simultaneously to two different hard drives, improving performance.

In our testing, the Aurora was on a par with most of the nVidia GeForce FX 5950–equipped PCs (except the Voodoo F1 Liquid) and is fast enough for the newest games out there; though less expensive, simpler-looking boxes with similar—if not better—performance are available.

MULTIMEDIA

Music:
The Aurora ships with Klipsch ProMedia Ultra 5.1 speakers, which sound crisp for music and gaming. Four USB 2.0 ports in front make hooking up MP3 players easy, but users are limited to ripping and burning WMA files.

Photos:
Photo editing could be handled easily by the Aurora given its expansive storage and 1GB of memory. Too bad it ships with only Microsoft Paint. Hey, it's a gaming machine!

Video:
The Aurora has all the necessary video hardware, including 320GB of hard drive space, three FireWire ports (one on front) for plugging in your digital camcorder, and a DVD burner. But it has only CyberLink's PowerDVD 5 for viewing but not editing video. Say it with me again: It's a gaming machine!

Gaming:
The list of included hardware would make any gamer drool, and the Aurora did not disappoint on our tests. Running your favorite games at the highest-quality settings with little impact on performance is what this machine is all about.

PERFORMANCE

SUPPORT

The standard warranty for parts and labor is one year, including on-site service. Toll-free technical support is 24/7.