Alienware, a subsidiary of Dell Inc. and a leading supplier of high-performance personal computers, on Friday unveiled its new Area-51-series laptop for performance and feature-conscious customers with pre-overclocked Intel Core 2 Duo processor, latest mobile graphics chip from ATI as well as new-generation optical drive.

“The Alienware Area-51 m5790 Special Edition offers knockout multimedia performance for users who routinely perform a multitude of power-hungry applications like gaming and digital content management,” said Mark Vena, vice president of marketing for Alienware.

The Area-51 m5790 Special Edition is a rather powerful notebook with decent 17” measurements and relatively low weight (8lbs, 3.6kg), which is remarkable, as the vast majority of laptops for gamers are very bulky and heavy. It is unknown how much the system works on battery, but, at least, this one is relatively easy to carry, even though customers who require laptop for business needs will hardly accept the m5790’s sizes and weight.

But the system is rather powerful to say at least: based on Intel 945PM core-logic, it features Intel Core 2 Duo T7600G processor overclocked to 2.66GHz, up to 2GB of dual-channel PC2-6400, Mobility Radeon X1800 or X1900 (the latter delays delivery timeframe), 7.1 audio,  one or two 400GB Serial ATA hard drives, dual-layer Blu-ray disc optical drive, 802.11a/b/g Wi-Fi, Gigabit Ethernet and so on. Most importantly, Alienware can install 17” display with 1920x1200 resolution (the default monitor features 1440x900 resolution).

The price of the Alienware Area-51 m5790 Special Edition notebook in maximum configuration with additional battery and car power adapter, with three years warranty and some extra software is as high as $4578.

“This mobile system represents an industry first as one of the only 17” overclocked notebooks on the market and it easily exploits the performance and productivity benefits of Microsoft’s forthcoming Windows Vista release,” Mr. Vena said.