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Alienware has added a 45nm Core Duo 2 Extreme X900 "Penryn" CPU to its Area-51 m15x notebook, making it the only 15.4-inch notebook featuring the processor.

Boutique computer maker Alienware—now a subsidiary of Dell—has always had a penchant for choosing raw horsepower over things like battery life and affordability. The company is sticking to its guns with a new edition of its Alienware Area-51 m15x notebook, adding a 2.8 Ghz Intel Core 2 Extreme X9000 "Penryn" CPU as an option to the 15.4-inch notebook. The move makes the x15x the only 15.4-inch system on the market today to sport the 45nm processor.

"When we launched the Area-51 m15x in January with the original CPUs and the NVIDIA GeForce 8800M GTX GPU, we knew we had crammed in more power than anyone had ever seen in this size system," said Alienware marketing director Bryan de Zayas, in a statement. "Now, with the addition of an Intel Core 2 Extreme X9000, we've made the world's most powerful 15.4-inch notebook even more powerful."

The m15x with an X9000 processor sports 6 MB of L2 cache and an 800 MHz front site bus so users can wring even more performance from the system. The systems are available with Nvidia GeForce 8600M GT, 8700M GT, and 8800M GTX graphics controllers, up to 4 GB of memory, Windows Vista Ultimate or Home Premium, a 200 or 320 GB hard drive (or a 64 GB SSD), a variety of optical drives (including a 2× dual layer Blu-ray burner), and (of course) Alienware's trademark lighting schemes and illuminated keyboard. Pricing for a Penryn-equipped m15x starts at $2,799; the systems should start shipping March 7.