Howdy Folks,
A few months ago I posted a question about how folks thought an Alieware Alpha would compare against the Alienware M17xR4 with a Radeon HD 7970M. There was some speculation both here and elsewhere that the Alpha contained a derivative of the NVidia 860M, which is a weaker GPU (overall) than the 7970M, and would indicate that my 2 year old M17xR4 would play games "better" than the brand new Alpha console. Well, I was offered a fantastic deal on an Alpha and took it. It arrived on Tuesday, and I have been testing it out for the past 24 hours or so, and ran 3DMark (Steam version) to compare. So, the specs of the Alpha as mine is configured are:
Intel Core i7 4765T (2.0 GHz with Turbo up to 3.0 GHz)
NVidia GTX GPU (as reported by the system, driver name is N15P-GX which is the 860M BTW)
8 GBs DDR3 @ 1600 MHz
2 TB 5400 RPM 2.5" HDD
And you can see a comparison against my M17xR4 Here:
Result
Without revealing the scores (have to click the link to see them :-) ), my observations thus far are:
Gameplay on the Alpha thus far is pretty smooth. The games tend to launch with low settings by default, but I have been able to tweak them up to at least medium, and keep the framerate around 60 fps. Games I have tested (so far)
Shadow of Mordor
Portal 2
DukeTails Remastered
3D Mark (duh!)
I am in the (loooonngggg) process of installing games via Steam. Since there is no optical drive everything has to be downloaded using either the built in Wi-Fi or Gigabit Ethernet. Speeds for installing both seem to be limited by the speed of your Internet connection so neither is faster than the other in that regards. I am hovering right around 6 MBps install so it is slow going....
As this is sort of off-topic, I'll post more observations later on if there is any interest.
So, for you Americans out there Happy Turkey Day!
Rich S.
A few months ago I posted a question about how folks thought an Alieware Alpha would compare against the Alienware M17xR4 with a Radeon HD 7970M. There was some speculation both here and elsewhere that the Alpha contained a derivative of the NVidia 860M, which is a weaker GPU (overall) than the 7970M, and would indicate that my 2 year old M17xR4 would play games "better" than the brand new Alpha console. Well, I was offered a fantastic deal on an Alpha and took it. It arrived on Tuesday, and I have been testing it out for the past 24 hours or so, and ran 3DMark (Steam version) to compare. So, the specs of the Alpha as mine is configured are:
Intel Core i7 4765T (2.0 GHz with Turbo up to 3.0 GHz)
NVidia GTX GPU (as reported by the system, driver name is N15P-GX which is the 860M BTW)
8 GBs DDR3 @ 1600 MHz
2 TB 5400 RPM 2.5" HDD
And you can see a comparison against my M17xR4 Here:
Result
Without revealing the scores (have to click the link to see them :-) ), my observations thus far are:
Gameplay on the Alpha thus far is pretty smooth. The games tend to launch with low settings by default, but I have been able to tweak them up to at least medium, and keep the framerate around 60 fps. Games I have tested (so far)
Shadow of Mordor
Portal 2
DukeTails Remastered
3D Mark (duh!)
I am in the (loooonngggg) process of installing games via Steam. Since there is no optical drive everything has to be downloaded using either the built in Wi-Fi or Gigabit Ethernet. Speeds for installing both seem to be limited by the speed of your Internet connection so neither is faster than the other in that regards. I am hovering right around 6 MBps install so it is slow going....
As this is sort of off-topic, I'll post more observations later on if there is any interest.
So, for you Americans out there Happy Turkey Day!
Rich S.