{These notebooks have stellar performance and push close to the fastest desktop systems. Even though portable video cards lag by a few generations behind desktop cards, the notebooks in our roundup managed all the games we threw at them. In our LAN party no one complained of sluggishness or poor graphics quality.

If performance were the only thing to consider, Dell's Inspiron XPS takes the cake across the board. It's also a relative value if you consider what you get for $3,300.

But we're not just about performance, so Alienware's Area-51m Extreme gets our pick. User-upgradeable graphics is too valuable a feature to overlook. Plus, the Alienware's stylish exterior makes other gamers green with envy. It's also far more comfortable to type on than Dell's XPS.

The perfect notebook has yet to come forth, but if there were one that had Voodoo's styling and battery life, Dell's performance, Hypersonic's dual hard-drive design (without sacrificing the optical), and Alienware's user-upgradeable graphics, we'd retire from doing these roundups.
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