Alienware 17 Gaming Notebook Review
by Dustin Sklavos on September 6, 2013 12:00 PM ESTTo say I went into this review of the Alienware 17 optimistic is accurate; surely Alienware would be able to tame Haswell and the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 780M, wouldn't they? If not them, then who? Yet the truth is unfortunately far more complicated, which has led to this review taking much longer than I had hoped. Testing, then retesting, then sanity check testing, then retesting again, then sanity check retesting...and even then being left without as clear a conclusion as I'd like?
I'm getting ahead of myself, though. First things first: the Alienware 17 represents the first major design change for Alienware in years. On the strength of the matte display, it's a net victory. The subtantial ridge at the edge of the chassis actually winds up being easier on the wrists for typing than the old design, the lighting rim is slick, and nobody complains about an aluminum lid. Alienware also smartly includes 802.11ac connectivity standard.
Yet there's still so much room for improvement. The new aesthetic, like the old one, takes some warming up to, but I can't help but feel like Alienware could've come up with something cleaner. When you open the bottom of the notebook you don't get the sense that space has been wasted, yet when you look at it you just wonder if it had to be this bulky. Backlighting the touchpad was arguably a waste of time and effort, and the revised keyboard layout is a modest step back.
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Once you update the BIOS in the Alienware 17, performance is brought in line with other Haswell/780M notebooks, but it's still a bit behind the curve. The 780M in our review unit wasn't hitting the high peaks that competing Clevo notebooks saw, and more and more I'm feeling like this is going to be a bit of a lottery. The performance difference is measurable but ultimately negligible. What we're really dealing with is twofold, I think: Haswell's turbo capacity could very well vary from chip to chip even among the same model, and that could also be true of the GeForce GTX 780M. We're already dealing with binned GK104 chips as it is. What we're looking at, as far as I'm concerned, is variation in "bonus performance" coupled with basic performance that needed to be eked out of the driver. The hardware is working fine, and it's stable, and it's a pleasure to game on.
While I'm more than happy to take Alienware to task for shipping with a performance crippling BIOS, once the A04 is in place the notebook is essentially golden. The Alienware 17 turned out not to be the flagship "this is how it's done" gaming notebook I'd expected, but it at least serves as a reality check in and of itself for what we can expect from Haswell and the 780M. It's also incredibly expensive, but that shouldn't surprise anyone. Ultimately, if you can afford it, I still think the Alienware 17 is the gaming notebook you want. It's not the homerun the Alienware M17x R3 was when it launched, but it's a worthy descendant.
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kogunniyi - Friday, September 6, 2013 - link
Oh, and Dell's NBD warranty.nerd1 - Friday, September 6, 2013 - link
Personally I think it should be more sensible to just get last gen model with 680M and save $1000. I prefer the old design and keyboard, and 680M is still no slotch even compared to 780M.xenol - Friday, September 6, 2013 - link
No temps, noise, or the like?Drumsticks - Friday, September 6, 2013 - link
It's amazing how you can write "the progress is palpable" for the exact same thing! Haswell) in an ultra book review and an alien ware review and have it mean the same thing.Drumsticks - Friday, September 6, 2013 - link
Different things* no edit :(inighthawki - Friday, September 6, 2013 - link
Anyone else ever wish there were baselines of desktop models to compare against? I've never purchased a gaming laptop before, so it'd be really cool if I could see the difference between the two. Like, how much slower is a 780M than a GTX780, or a 7970GE. I know they're significantly less powerful, but it'd be nice at some points to see by how much rather than just comparing to a bunch of similar classed laptops.JarredWalton - Friday, September 6, 2013 - link
780M is going to be more like a GTX 680 with lower clocks, and performance will also be a bit more variable thanks to the thermal constraints. If you're after bang for the buck, gaming notebooks have never been a good choice; we figure anyone looking for a new gaming notebook is looking for a new gaming notebook -- they don't need to see how much faster a desktop that costs less will be. Or if they do, they can do a bit of research on their own -- our system benchmarks and desktop benchmarks are using the same core tests (other than battery life, of course), though the lack of higher resolution tests on notebooks makes it a bit trickier.If you want a couple links, though:
http://www.anandtech.com/bench/product/984
http://www.anandtech.com/show/7098/2
I've taken the Enthusiast gaming scores and compiled them into a single image, showing performance differences between the Alienware 17 and an overclocked GTX 680 and stock GTX 780 (with overclocked CPUs on both as well). Here's that image (hopefully the link works):
http://images.anandtech.com/doci/7284/Alienware%20...
Short summary: the desktop 680 OC is 12% to 60% faster than the AW17, with an average increase of 33%. The desktop 780 is 32% to 77% faster, with an average increase of 53%. StarCraft II is the game that shows the smallest improvement, being largely CPU limited even with OC'ed desktop CPUs. Metro Last Light shows the greatest improvement, followed by Tomb Raider and then Bioshock.
nerd1 - Friday, September 6, 2013 - link
Recent laptops are quite good up to 1080p. 680M or 7970M can run pretty much anything on 1080p, and cheaper one like 765M can run most games on 1080p, except for metro or crysis series maybe.waldojim42 - Sunday, September 8, 2013 - link
I actually play Crysis 2 on my AW 14 just fine. Have to use the "Extreme" preset rather than "Ultra", but 1080P is no problem.brucek2 - Friday, September 6, 2013 - link
Actually Jared I'm not sure at all that the difference between desktop and mobile parts is well understood by the mass of computer purchasers. Certainly the manufacturers are not helping by reusing the same product names, a practice I feel is dishonestly misleading. Its something I have to explain to my less technical friends frequently, the last time being not three days ago.Anyway, that's a long way of saying I actually think it would be a great service if reviews could attempt to assign a dollar premium for mobility so potential purchasers understand how much they are paying for the privilege and/or how far down the performance curve they are limiting themselves. In the case of the talk from three days ago, the upshot was the friend realized a desktop would be the better choice after all.