The m15x may surprise you. It’s basically a top of the line gaming PC crammed into a notebook. The system boasts an Intel Core 2 Extreme X9000 processor and Nvidia GeForce 8800 GTX graphics, and it’s equipped with a nice, sharp, fifteen and a half inch screen. It’s ultra light for portability, and… it looks really, really cool, with six lighting zones. This is why they call themselves “Alienware”; with the LED lit keyboard and touchpad, it looks more like the controls of an alien spacecraft than a gaming laptop.

The downside is the stiff price tag. Take a deep breath and sit down before we tell you:

$5000

Even if the m15x is basically the best laptop rig out there, and it’s not going obsolete anytime soon, the price tag really seems to limit its audience to the super rich, or people willing to take a second job just to play video games. Kind of a shame, really, but if you’re willing to spend that much on a gaming rig, you really can’t do much better. This is for the most discerning (and financially comfortable) gamers out there, but it is worth the price if you can afford it.

Best Performance… on a Budget

Gateway P-6831FX

Now this is more like it. At just over $1300, the Gateway P-6831FX is a solid rig for any gamer without a trust fund. The P-6831FX looks like the similar and somewhat more powerful P-171XL FX Edition, but costs about half as much, and still offers high powered graphics. The monitor is large and crisp, and it comes with plenty of ports for multimedia connectivity.

The rig features an Intel Core 2 Duo 5450 CPU 1.67 GHz processor, 3GB DDR2 RAM, 250 GB HDD 5400 rpm, and a 17” screen. Really, this is the kind of performance you might expect of a machine costing three times this much.