Rumor: Dell Prepares Alienware M14X R2, M17X R4, and M18X R2

On dell-lab.posterous.com, you can often find rumors about Dell’s future products and from our past experience, info provided there is pretty accurate. This time, software engineer Eric G. says the Dell Alienware 2012 gaming laptop lineup will include (starting from the smallest) the M14X R2, M17X R4, and M18X R2.

There’s no a lot of details in his blog post, but here they are:

- The Alienware M14X R2 will feature something unusual for classic gaming notebooks. The graphics processor with 1GB or 2GB of dedicated video memory will be a part of the motherboard, so it wont be a classic discrete laptop video card. The M14x R2 will come with red or black chassis.

- Video card options in the M17X R4 will be the currently unreleased AMD Radeon 7970M, Nvidia GeForce GTX 660M, and the GeForce GTX 675M.

- There are no details for the M18X R2 other than its color options: red or black.

Eric doesn’t say anything about the next-gen Alienware M11x (R4?).

The previous generation models – the M14x, M17X R3, and M18x – have 14″, 17.3″ and 18.4″ displays respectively, as well as Intel’s “Sandy Bridge” dual- and quad-core processors and GPUs by AMD and Nvidia. Assuming that the new Alienware laptops will come with the Intel Ivy Bridge processors, we don’t believe that these mobile rigs will arrive before Ivy, hopefully in the Q2 2012.