NVIDIA holds the lion's share of the market in mobile graphics hardware, but it's not the only competitor. When Alienware asked if we'd be interested in looking at a notebook based on AMD's top-end R9 M290X in a single-GPU configuration, we agreed. This system is based on exactly the same hardware and chassis as the Alienware 18-inch model that we reviewed last fall, but it's somewhat more modest hardware whacks a full $2000 off the price.

Unlike the massive system we reviewed last time around, this rig's performance aims at what, on a desktop, would be considered a midrange GPU with a moderately high-end CPU core..