The 17-inch laptop is a unicorn these days. But in the
gaming world, the arguably huge form factor is alive and well. Alienware
has doubled down on its colossal clamshell, simply known as the
Alienware 17, with an AMD-powered variant.
With an AMD
Radeon HD R9 M290X pushing the pixels behind its 1920 x 1080 anti-glare
screen, this version of Dell-owned Alienware's notebook comes in $350
(about £207, AU$373) cheaper than its Nvidia-toting counterpart. Given
that AMD's latest mobile GPU houses twice as much video RAM – 4GB to the
GeForce GTX 860M's 2GB – that's not a bad deal at all.
Aside from that, nothing about the Alienware 17 has changed, including its gigantic frame. Both the MSI GS70 Stealth and Asus G750JX are thinner and cheaper, but fall on different ends of the spectrum in terms of hardware, design and overall focus.
[Editor's
note: Since I have yet to test the latest Nvidia GeForce GTX 800M
series versions of either of these Asus and MSI machines, I will
continue to compare the Alienware 17 to the 700M series editions of
these products. This review may be updated after testing MSI, Asus and
even Alienware's most current Nvidia-equipped products.]
More subdued, but still a sore thumb at the coffee shop
Design
If you're familiar with Alienware's latest design ID, then none of this will be a shock. But for those coming from the Alienware M17x 2012 perhaps, plenty has changed. The pronounced curvature of the old has given in to a more angular silhouette throughout.
Not
only did that make more custom lighting zones a possibility, but it
allowed for an all-aluminum lid and magnesium alloy base. This grants
the Alienware 17 an even more premium look and feel than before, one
that's slightly more subdued – a much welcome change, frankly.
Alienware
says that these and other revisions have increased the system's weight
in metal materials considerably, while overall the unit comes in nearly
0.25 pounds lighter. Regardless, this is still a notebook that warrants
its own line of custom-made backpacks and shoulder bags.
It looks as if it could take off at a moment's notice
The
keyboard and its lighting received a welcome change as well, moving on
from chiclet keys to a more mechanical, switch-based board sitting on an
aluminum plate. And in place of the garish, front-facing speaker
lights, the entire base is now wrapped in slim, sleek strips of light.
Plus, the entire touchpad now illuminates – not just its border.
Flaunting it with AlienFX
Unique
to Alienware's laptops is the wide variety of lights that line their
chassis and illuminate their keyboards. The company calls this AlienFX,
and it returns in full form on the Alienware 17 with incredibly deep
customization, thanks to an app of the same name.
AlienFX
allows for specific color profiles for each zone of lighting. For
instance, if you wanted the Alienware logo and strips of light on the
lid in a crimson red, with the lights lining the base shining a cool
blue, there's nothing stopping you. Furthermore, four zones of the
keyboard can be illuminated in different hues. (And that's not even
close to all.)
See? Those cooling vents could easily double as thrusters
Digging
even deeper, the Alienware 17's lighting scheme can cycle through
multiple themes at a certain tempo. And, through the AlienAdrenaline
tool, you can create special themes for different games and apps.
The
options are nigh limitless, and aesthetically set the Alienware apart
from the lot of boutique gaming laptops. More importantly, AlienFX
brings a bit of the custom flair of gaming PCs to laptops. Now, let's
see what else about the PC gaming experience Alienware manages to
emulate.
Spesifications
Save for the latest and greatest mobile GPU from AMD, there
is nothing different between this version of the Alienware 17 and its
Nvidia-toting counterparts. So, its bag-bulging dimensions and weight
should surprise exactly no one.
You're looking at one
beast of a mobile gaming rig here, measuring 16.3 x 11.8 x 1.8 1.9
inches (W x D x H) and weighing a hefty 9.15 pounds. The Asus G750JX comes in at an equally wide (but thinner) 16.15 x 12.5 x 0.66 1.9 inches, but tips the scale at 10.5 pounds. Naturally, the MSI GS70 Stealth is the slimmest of the bunch, at 16.5 x 11.3 x 0.85 inches and 5.7 pounds.
Keep
in mind that the MSI model lacks the Blu-ray drive found in both the
Alienware and Asus units. But lets see what Alienware manages to squeeze
into such a bulky 17.3-inch laptop, compared with the slightly slimmer
competition. This is the Alienware 17 configuration sent to TechRadar:
Spec sheet
CPU: 2.4GHz Intel Core i7-4700MQ (quad-core, 6MB cache, up to 3.4GHz with Turbo Boost)
Graphics: AMD Radeon HD R9 M290X (4GB GDDR5 RAM); Intel HD Graphics 4600
RAM: 16GB DDR3L (2x 8GB at 1600MHz)
Screen: 17.3-inch, 1920 x 1080 WLED, Anti-Glare Display
Storage: 256GB mSATA SSD; 1TB HDD at 5400 rpm
Optical drive: Slot-loading, Blu-ray reader (9.5mm, dual layer)
Ports:
4 USB 3.0 ports (one with PowerShare), HDMI 1.4 (1.3 input), RJ-45
Ethernet, mini-Display Port, 2 ⅛-inch audio out ports (one compatible
with inline mic headset), ⅛-inch line-in Microphone port (available for
5.1 analog audio output), Kensington security lock slot
Connectivity: Broadcom 4352 802.11ac Wi-Fi; Bluetooth 4.0
Camera: FHD, 2-MP webcam
Weight: 9.15 pounds
Size: 16.3 x 11.8 x 1.8 1.9 inches (W x D x H)
This
is just about the base configuration available for the AMD variant of
the Alienware 17, and it calls for a steep $2,449 (about £1,457,
AU$2,644). That might seem like a borderline insane amount of cash to
drop even on a product this jam-packed with high-end hardware, but
consider what else you're paying for. (You can swap in a 500GB, 5400 rpm
hard drive with an 8GB solid-state cache to knock the price down to a
base $2,149, or about £1,279, AU$2,320.)
Alienware crafts
one of the most premium builds in the gaming laptop world, and offers
one year of phone support – plus in-home servicing – for its machines.
Asus supplies a year of 24/7 phone support, whereas MSI provides neither
(though, it does throw you a 2-year warranty).
The most photogenic laptop ever? It's damn close, at least
Both
the GS70 Stealth and G750JX are Nvidia-based systems, but since AMD
isn't terribly common in the mobile PC gaming world, I'll have to make
due. (Plus, it makes for an interesting comparison.) First up is Asus,
which can sport comparable components for $2,274 (about £1,353,
AU$2,455) – or $175 less than this Alienware 17 – on Amazon.
That
gets you a near-identical 2.4GHz Intel Core i7-4700HQ chip, a whopping
24GB of RAM and a similar 128GB SSD coupled with a 1TB mechanical drive
alongside an Nvidia GeForce GTX 780M with 4GB of video memory behind an
FHD panel. This setup also nets you a Blu-ray drive for parity with the
Alienware at hand, but you're also stuck with Windows 8.1. (Alienware offers the choice of either Windows 7 or 8.1; this unit came running the former.)
As
for MSI, a similarly configured GS70 Stealth – also available on Amazon
– goes for even less at $1,805 (around £1,074, AU$1,948). That price
nets the exact CPU found in this Alienware, 16GB of RAM, a lower-power
GeForce GTX 765M with 2GB of video RAM, and a similar 256GB SSD (two
128GB units in RAID) and 1TB, 7200 rpm HDD combo. This is all behind an
FHD screen as well, but again, no Windows 7 option. What
the Alienware 17 has above both of these systems is 802.11ac
networking, which could prove vital in the coming years, especially in
online gaming. But let's see how well this Alienware fares pushing the
present's pixels first.
Performance
One reason folks buy Alienware is guaranteed premium
performance, and this AMD variant generally delivers on the pedigree
(but not without a few hurdles). The synthetic tests we run on gaming
laptops say as much, and so do the games. Here's how it fared:
Benchmarks
3DMark: Ice Storm: 89,348; Cloud Gate: 17,444; Fire Strike: 4,727
As
you can see, the AMD R9 M290X in this rig just about destroys 3DMark
Fire Strike, not to mention its rival gaming laptops. The Asus G750JX scored a meager 3,123 points in comparison, while the MSI GS70 Stealth fared even worse at 2,211.
Like a suit of Awesome +1 armor
As
for the games, the machine trounced the best of Bioshock Infinite at a
smooth 47 frames per second on average, while the GS70's GTX 760M
clocked a still-playable 42 fps. However, Metro: Last Light brought this
Alienware to its knees – a reality check for those hoping for top- tier
performance from a mobile GPU. (The Asus model was not tested on either
game.)
Don't bother bemoaning the battery
Discussing
the battery in a 17-inch gaming rig is almost moot, but the
power-friendly Haswell chip inside did all it could to keep this monster
alive. In my own test, the Alienware lasted a bit longer than on PCMark
8: 3 hours and 6 minutes. That was on the "Balanced" Windows power
setting with the AlienFX lighting turned on, the volume at 10% and
screen brightness at 50%. That also included streaming high bitrate
audio via Spotify, running Google Chrome with 10 to 15 tabs, a
heavyweight chat app and TweetDeck.
Cutting the lights
and dimming the screen even further could eke out another 30 minutes or
so, maybe, but that's not the point. The Alienware 17 wasn't designed to
follow you from outlet to outlet, but rather for raw performance. (The
included power brick weighs a pound or two on its own for a reason.)
The power light changes color to indicate charge level
Don't
even bother trying to game on this laptop while on its battery. AMD's
Enduro graphics switching technology will instantly turn the graphics
chip off in favor the integrated Intel GPU, anyway. Speaking of which,
how does AMD's latest handle, say, the Call of Duty makers' latest?
Driving me up a wall
There
is one area in which Nvidia is clearly far ahead of AMD: drivers.
Updating drivers on an Nvidia GPU, whether it's a mobile or desktop
chip, happens with a single button press through the company's GeForce
Experience app.
Given that Alienware equipped this laptop
with AMD's best yet, naturally I fired up the latest major PC shooter,
Titanfall. It was immediately noticeable that performance wasn't nearly
where it should be for a graphics chip this powerful, even for mobile. So,
I attempted to update the driver through AMD's Driver Autodetect tool,
which mistook the Radeon HD R9 M290X for the Radeon HD 8970M and
overwrote the driver with an incorrect version. This led to a host of
performance and detection issues that eventually forced me to reinstall
the graphics adapter entirely.
The confusion is somewhat
understandable, considering the only difference between these two GPUs
is that the M290X packs double the video RAM. Nevertheless, AMD has
plenty of work to do in simplifying this process for players.
Performance to match the panache?
After
the dust settled on the driver debacle, the R9 M290X more than lived up
to its $2,000-plus asking price as I stomped through the war torn
streets of Titanfall. However, this was only after settling some nasty
switchable graphics issues. I've
found that AMD's Enduro graphics switching requires some serious
massaging, from flagging games in AMD's Catalyst Control Center (to
guarantee that the GPU is active during play) to restarting to system.
You know, just to make sure things are really in order – and it works.
While
using FRAPS to read frame rates, I locked Titanfall's texture settings
to "high" at 1920 x 1080 resolution, with vertical sync and 2x
anti-aliasing enabled. The result was me staring down the boots of
various robots at a buttery smooth 60 frames per second. Only in
particularly chaotic scenes did the frame rate drop to 45 fps, but I'll
take it.
As for MMOs with vast vistas and deep draw
distances, World of Warcraft and Final Fantasy XIV ran at a silky 60 fps
at high to maxed detail settings. With marquee shooters like Destiny on
the horizon, this Alienware 17 should be able to keep up, so long as
AMD gets Enduro in order.
BYOK (Bring Your Own Keyboard … and mouse)
The
Alienware 17 keyboard, closer to the mechanical gaming keyboards of old
than the membrane keys found on most laptops, offers near-perfect
travel and spacing. However, typing on a surface raised nearly an inch
off the desk was a struggle, especially in games that rely heavily on
the WASD keys.
Come for the mechanical feel, leave for the cramp-inducing height
My
fingers and wrist quickly cramped while conquering the dungeons of
Azeroth, if only due to the extra height I had to lift my arm to reach
the number keys. If your desk is tailored to typing at a certain height,
put the Alienware 17 on a stand and pick up a gaming keyboard.
And
while the backlit touchpad offers smooth scrolling and tracking
throughout Windows 7, it's nothing to game on. That said, with
comfortable, soft-touch palm rests, this keyboard should serve you well
in a pinch. Plus, the lighting is simply brilliant.
Bundled software
Alienware
is visibly aware of the stigma against bloatware, and as result only
includes its own proprietary software. Collectively known as the
Alienware Command Center, this suite of apps controls all of the
system's unique features:
AlienFX: Control
all of the lighting zones on the unit, giving each a unique hue and
intensity. It's all done through intuitive color wheels for simplicity.
AlienTouch:
Tweak the Alienware 17 touchpad's sensitivity and other features. You
can disable the touchpad automatically upon using a mouse too, though I
had trouble getting the touchpad to turn back on after resuming from
sleep.
AlienFusion: Here, you can adjust how
certain components, like the GPU and Wi-Fi adapter, behave under certain
conditions or when running certain apps.
AlienAdrenaline:
Temporarily get rid of extraneous Windows processes in one step upon
launching a game with this tool, though the effect on performance is
minimal.
Alienware TactX: Here is where users
can program the four dedicated macro keys on the Alienware 17 keyboard.
Users can also share profiles tailored to specific games.
/alienware17-hero2-900-80.jpg)
No comments:
Post a Comment