Alienware today tipped its hand early and showed its reworked version of its flagship M17x gaming notebook. The 17-inch system has the brand's typical array of customizable lighting but is modernized, particularly in its graphics: in addition to supporting up to two GeForce GTX 280M chipsets in SLI for desktop-level performance, it has a GeForce 9400M chipset that it can switch to for conserving power when the notebook is on battery. Processors are also updated and scale up to quad-core Intel Core 2 Extreme chips.

A base model starts at $1,799 and still has relatively high specifications for the price, with a 2.4GHz Core 2 Duo, 4GB of RAM, a 250GB 7,200RPM hard drive and a single GeForce GTX 260M for its faster video. Besides the graphics and processor upgrades, it can scale up to 8GB of memory, a Blu-ray drive and either 512GB of solid-state storage or 1TB of rotating hard drives in a two-disk RAID stripe.

Alienware formally begins sales next week. [via PC World]