Alienware 17 Gaming Laptop Review

1. Introduction2. Alienware 17: Packaging and Bundle3. Alienware 17: Design4. Alienware 17: Connectivity and Hardware5. Testing Methodology and Configuration6. Synthetic: PCMark 87. Synthetic: 3DMark8. Synthetic: 3DMark 119. Synthetic: 3DMark Vantage10. Synthetic: Unigine Heaven11. Synthetic: SiSoft Sandra 201312. Synthetic: Cinebench R11.513. Synthetic: Cinebench R1514. Synthetic: Super Pi15. Real World: WinRAR16. Real World: MKV Playback17. Real World: Media Encoding18. Gaming: Battlefield 319. Gaming: Call of Duty Black Ops 220. Gaming: DiRT Showdown21. Technical: Acoustics22. Technical: Thermal Dynamics23. Technical: Battery Life24. Technical: Power Consumption25. Closing Thoughts26. View All Pages

Today we are analysing the Alienware 17 – a powerful  gaming machine which fits into the Alienware range between the 18 that we looked at a few weeks ago and the 14 which has yet to pass through our labs. Is it worth a shortlist?

We were recently very impressed by the Alienware 18 which offered excellent performance alongside a very unique and attractive aesthetic design.  The Alienware 17 is a slightly smaller machine with a similar specification, although it's not currently available in a dual graphics configuration.

The Alienware 17 can be fully configured on the Alienware website, starting at a rather hefty £1,299. While expensive, this is significantly cheaper than the Alienware 18 which demands an eye popping £1,999 for the most basic model.

Alienware supplied an enhanced 17 to KitGuru for review today, increasing the price by around £800 to £2,099 inc. VAT.  These upgrades include a powerful quad core Intel Core i7-4800MQ processor and an upgrade to a dedicated Solid State Drive alongside a flagship nVidia GeForce GTX 780M graphics card.

Specification

• Display: 17.3″ (439.42 mm) WLED FHD Anti-Glare Display (1920 x 1080).
• Graphics Card: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 780M with 4GB GDDR5 (SLI).
• Processor: Intel Core i7-4800MQ Processor (6MB Cache, up to 3.7GHz w/ Turbo Boost).
• Memory: 16GB Dual Channel DDR3 at 1600MHz.
• Hard Drive: 750GB 7200RPM SATA 6Gb/s.
• mSATA Storage: 256GB mSata SSD Boot.
• Optical Drive: Slot-Loading Dual Layer Blu-ray Reader (BD-ROM, DVDRW, CD-RW).
• WIFI Card: 5G WiFi Broadcom 4352 802.11n/ac and Bluetooth 4.0.
• Keyboard: Backlit Keyboard UK.
• Warranty: 1 Year NBD with Premium Phone Support.
• Operating System: Microsoft Windows 8 64-bit.

Like the Alienware 18, the Alienware 17 is supplied in a fairly substantial box featuring a black livery and a large Alienware logo in the center.  This includes a large amount of internal padding to ensure that the laptop arrives in perfect condition.  This box is covered in a more subtle brown cardboard sleeve for shipping, increasing protection.

There isn't a particularly generous bundle included with the laptop.  All we find in the box alongside the laptop are the power supply and a pouch containing ` driver / software CDs and manuals.

While local manufacturers such as XMG and PCSPECIALIST use reference Clevo chassis for their gaming machines, Alienware use custom designs which are created by their own engineers.  This means they are much more exciting to look at and can offer a higher level of build quality.

The lid of the notebook is finished in aluminium, giving it an attractive finish.  While the base of the notebook feels very durable indeed, it is constructed mainly from plastic.  Like the Alienware 18, the design seems to have taken inspiration from a stealth fighter, giving it a very striking visage.

Despite there only being 1.1″ difference between the screen sizes of the Alienware 17 and 18, the 17 feels significantly more compact.  It's still massive as far as laptops go, but it is a slightly more portable option.  We certainly wouldn't recommend it for those who plan to do a lot of traveling however.

Alienware have decorated the palm rest of the machine in soft-touch black paint which looks and feels lovely.  It should prove practical too as this type of finish usually stands the test of time better than gloss plastic.

There is plenty of room to spare around the keyboard despite it being a full size model.  The keyboard also features LED backlighting which can be set to almost any colour you like using the pre-installed software utility.

Alienware have chosen to use an almost identical touchpad to the one on the Alienware 18 which is recessed slightly into the palmrest to prevent accidental touches.  Perhaps the most interesting feature of the touchpad is the LED lighting which illuminates it completely whenever you touch it.  The surface texture is perfectly judged and provides some tactility while allowing unrestricted movement of your fingers across the pad.

Many laptops these days have speakers located on the underside, meaning that their sound can be muffled. Alienware have chosen to locate their high quality Klipsch speakers right on the front of the laptop to combat this. These speakers are very impressive and produce a very loud and clear sound.

There is a fairly thick bezel surrounding the screen which features a high definition webcam for video calling.

The screen has a matte coating which is less prone to reflection than a glossy finish.  It boasts a 1920 x 1080 resolution which is perfect for watching high-definition content online or via the inbuilt Blu-Ray drive.  The screen offers impressive brightness levels, however the viewing angles aren't the best we have seen on a high-end laptop.

The Alienware 17 offers all the connections we could possible ask for.  On the left hand side of the machine we find a Kensington lock slot, a DC-in jack, an HDMI in/out jack, a Mini DisplayPort, two USB3.0 connectors, two headphone jacks and a microphone jack.

Moving round to the right hand side of the machine we find the Blu-Ray drive alongside two further USB3.0 ports and a RJ-45 ethernet jack.  The rear side of the machine is reserved for two large exhaust vents.

Alienware are using a Killer Networks Gigabit Ethernet NIC and a Broadcom 4352 5G WiFi card which also supports Bluetooth 4.0 in this model.

Opening up the bottom of the Alienware 17 reveals a fairly similar layout to other Alienware notebooks we have reviewed, although this particular model includes an integrated battery which cannot easily be removed by the user.

There are two cooling modules located within the notebook, one for the CPU and one of the single graphics card.

The hard drive and memory are easily accessible under the main cover, as these are the only components that most users are likely to change, although the mSATA SSD is nowhere to be seen so we assume it's located somewhere under the keyboard or palmrest.

The integrated battery is located at the front of the system which helps to even out the weight distribution of the laptop.

Configuration

Our sample of the Alienware 17 is based around one of the most powerful mobile processors currently on the market, the Intel Core i7-4800MQ.  This boasts a 2.7 GHz clock speed, increasing to 3.7 GHz in turbo mode.  It is a quad core model which supports Hyper Threading, so there are 8 logical cores available.  Our machine also features 16 GB (4x 4GB) of DDR3 RAM clocked at 1600 MHz.

Alienware has chosen to configure this particular machine with a single nVidia GeForce GTX 780M which is the most powerful mobile discrete solution currently available.  This features 4 GB of GDDR5 memory and is clocked at 771 MHz.  The Alienware 17 is also available with the nVidia GTX 770M or 765M if you elect for one of the more basic models.  The system also features Intel HD 4600 integrated graphics which you can switch to to maximise battery life.  This will require a reboot, though, so isn't particularly convenient.

Our review sample of the Alienware 17 is configured with a 256 GB solid state drive for the operating system and an additional 750 GB hard drive for storage.  This gives a total capacity of approximately 1 TB which should be enough for most users.  If not, there is a spare hard drive bay in the system which you could install a further hard drive in.

Alienware supplies the notebook with some programs pre-installed, however they are mostly useful utilities used to control things like the onboard LED lighting.

Testing Methodology

Today we are going to use a combination of synthetic and real world benchmarks to showcase the performance of the Alienware 17.

Specification

• Display: 17.3″ (439.42 mm) WLED FHD Anti-Glare Display (1920 x 1080).
• Graphics Card: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 780M with 4GB GDDR5 (SLI).
• Processor: Intel Core i7-4800MQ Processor (6MB Cache, up to 3.7GHz w/ Turbo Boost).
• Memory: 16GB Dual Channel DDR3 at 1600MHz.
• Hard Drive: 750GB 7200RPM SATA 6Gb/s.
• mSATA Storage: 256GB mSata SSD Boot.
• Optical Drive: Slot-Loading Dual Layer Blu-ray Reader (BD-ROM, DVDRW, CD-RW).
• WIFI Card: 5G WiFi Broadcom 4352 802.11n/ac and Bluetooth 4.0.
• Keyboard: Backlit Keyboard UK.
• Warranty: 1 Year NBD with Premium Phone Support.
• Operating System: Microsoft Windows 8 64-bit.

Software:

• PCMark 7
• 3DMark
• 3DMark 11
• 3DMark Vantage
• SiSoft Sandra 2013
• Cinebench R11.5
• CrystalDiskMark
• Cyberlink MediaEspresso 6.7
• VLC Media Player
• Performance Monitor
• Unigine Heaven Benchmark
• Super Pi 1.5 Mod
• CPUID Hardware Monitor
• CPU-Z
• GPU-Z
• WinRAR
• DiRT Showdown
• Battlefield 3
• Call of Duty: Black Ops 2

PCMark 8 is the latest version in the popular series of PC benchmarking tools. Improving on previous releases, PCMark 8 includes battery life measurement tools and new tests using popular applications from Adobe and Microsoft. Whether you are looking for long battery life, or maximum power, PCMark 8 helps you find the devices that offer the perfect combination of efficiency and performance for your needs.

An impressive score for this system, showcasing it's worth as an all-round workhorse.

3DMark is Futuremark’s latest benchmark. It can be used to benchmark and compare everything from mobile devices, such as smart phones, tablets and laptops, to high-end gaming systems. The benchmark is available for Windows, Windows RT Android and iOS.

With 3 separate tests, each of which is intended to be used alongside a specific classification of hardware, 3DMark is a very versatile benchmark. Ice Storm is intended to be used with mobile devices, Cloud Gate is good for use with laptops and home PCs, and Fire Strike can be used to push the performance of gaming PCs.

We used the ‘Fire Strike’ benchmark which is designed to be used on gaming PCs. We opted for the Normal setting, NOT the Extreme mode.

This test showcases the stellar gaming performance of this system.

3DMark 11 is designed for testing DirectX 11 hardware running on Windows 7 and Windows Vista. The benchmark includes six all new benchmark tests that make extensive use of all the new features in DirectX 11 including tessellation, compute shaders and multi-threading.

After running the tests 3DMark gives your system a score with larger numbers indicating better performance. Trusted by gamers worldwide to give accurate and unbiased results, 3DMark 11 is the best way to test DirectX 11 under game-like loads.

If you want to learn more about this benchmark, or to buy it yourself, head over to this page.

Again, we see excellent gaming performance from this notebook.

Futuremark released 3DMark Vantage, on April 28, 2008. It is a benchmark based upon DirectX 10, and therefore will only run under Windows Vista (Service Pack 1 is stated as a requirement) and Windows 7. This is the first edition where the feature-restricted, free of charge version could not be used any number of times. 1280×1024 resolution was used with performance settings.

As we would expect, overclocking significantly boosts the CPU score of the system.

This slightly older version of 3DMark also shows great performance from the Alienware machine.

Unigine provides an interesting way to test hardware. It can be easily adapted to various projects due to its elaborated software design and flexible toolset. A lot of their customers claim that they have never seen such extremely-effective code, which is so easy to understand.

Heaven Benchmark is a DirectX 11 GPU benchmark based on advanced Unigine engine from Unigine Corp. It reveals the enchanting magic of floating islands with a tiny village hidden in the cloudy skies. Interactive mode provides emerging experience of exploring the intricate world of steampunk.

Efficient and well-architected framework makes Unigine highly scalable:

• Multiple API (DirectX 9 / DirectX 10 / DirectX 11 / OpenGL) render
• Cross-platform: MS Windows (XP, Vista, Windows 7) / Linux
• Full support of 32bit and 64bit systems
• Multicore CPU support
• Little / big endian support (ready for game consoles)
• Powerful C++ API
• Comprehensive performance profiling system
• Flexible XML-based data structures

This test showcases the excellent graphical performance of the notebook.

SiSoftware Sandra (the System ANalyser, Diagnostic and Reporting Assistant) is an information & diagnostic utility. It should provide most of the information (including undocumented) you need to know about your hardware, software and other devices whether hardware or software.

Sandra is a (girl’s) name of Greek origin that means “defender”, “helper of mankind”. We think that’s quite fitting.

It works along the lines of other Windows utilities, however it tries to go beyond them and show you more of what’s really going on. Giving the user the ability to draw comparisons at both a high and low-level. You can get information about the CPU, chipset, video adapter, ports, printers, sound card, memory, network, Windows internals, AGP, PCI, PCI-X, PCIe (PCI Express), database, USB, USB2, 1394/Firewire, etc.

Native ports for all major operating systems are available:

• Windows XP, 2003/R2, Vista, 7, 2008/R2 (x86)
• Windows XP, 2003/R2, Vista, 7, 2008/R2 (x64)
• Windows 2003/R2, 2008/R2* (IA64)
• Windows Mobile 5.x (ARM CE 5.01)
• Windows Mobile 6.x (ARM CE 5.02)

All major technologies are supported and taken advantage of:

• SMP – Multi-Processor
• MC – Multi-Core
• SMT/HT – Hyper-Threading
• MMX, SSE, SSE2, SSE3, SSSE3, SSE 4.1, SSE 4.2, AVX, FMA – Multi-Media instructions
• GPGPU, DirectX, OpenGL – Graphics
• NUMA – Non-Uniform Memory Access
• AMD64/EM64T/x64 – 64-bit extensions to x86
• IA64 – Intel* Itanium 64-bit

Here we can see just how well the i7-4800MQ performs in these raw CPU power tests.

Cinebench R11.5 is the newest revision of the popular benchmark from Maxon. The test scenario uses all of your system’s processing power to render a photorealistic 3D scene (from the viral “No Keyframes” animation by AixSponza). This scene makes use of various different algorithms to stress all available processor cores.

In fact, CINEBENCH can measure systems with up to 64 processor threads. The test scene contains approximately 2,000 objects containing more than 300,000 total polygons and uses sharp and blurred reflections, area lights and shadows, procedural shaders, antialiasing, and much more. The result is given in points (pts). The higher the number, the faster your processor.

This test shows us the performance advantages available from having hyperthreading in addition to four cores as performance is increased by more than four times when the program is allowed to use multiple threads.

CINEBENCH is a real-world cross platform test suite that evaluates your computer's performance capabilities. CINEBENCH is based on MAXON's award-winning animation software CINEMA 4D, which is used extensively by studios and production houses worldwide for 3D content creation. MAXON software has been used in blockbuster movies such as Iron Man 3, Oblivion, Life of Pi or Prometheus and many more.  Cinbench R15 is the latest version of this benchmark.

This benchmark is very new so it's more difficult to judge how these results compare to other systems, however we see a significant boost in performance when the program is allowed to use multiple threads.

Super Pi is used by a huge audience, particularly to check stability when overclocking processors. If a system is able to calculate PI to the 32 millionth place after the decimal without mistake, it is considered to be stable in regards to RAM and CPU.

This test showcases the excellent single threaded processing performance of the system.

WinRAR is one of the most popular archive manager programs available. It can backup your data and reduce the size of email attachments, decompress RAR, ZIP and other files downloaded from Internet and create new archives in RAR and ZIP file format. You can try WinRAR before buy, its trial version is available in downloads.  We measured the performance using the inbuilt benchmark.

This is a very impressive scores from the system, processing a massive amount of data during the two minute test.

The Matroska Media container is a very popular, open standard Multimedia container which is usually found as .MKV files. It is a very popular format in enthusiast circles and can be played directly in VLC or Windows Media Player with suitable codecs installed.

We played our 1080P MKV movie using the latest version of VLC Media Player and measured the CPU usage with the Performance Monitor built into Windows.

These results are very good indeed, with the MKV playback barely stressing the CPU at all.

CyberLink MediaEspresso 6 is the successor to CyberLink MediaShow Espresso 5.5. With its further optimized CPU/GPU-acceleration, MediaEspresso is an even faster way to convert not only your video but also your music and image files between a wide range of popular formats.

Now you can easily playback and display your favourite movies, songs and photos not just on your mobile phone, iPad, PSP, Xbox, or Youtube and Facebook channels but also on the newly launched iPhone 4. Compile, convert and enjoy images and songs on any of your computing devices and enhance your videos with CyberLink’s built-in TrueTheater Technology.

New and Improved Features

• Ultra Fast Media Conversion – With support from the Intel Core i-Series processor family, ATI Stream & NVIDIA CUDA, MediaEspresso’s Batch-Conversion function enables multiple files to be transcoded simultaneously.
• Smart Detect Technology – MediaEspresso 6 automatically detects the type of portable device connected to the PC and selects the best multimedia profile to begin the conversion without the need for user’s intervention.
• Direct Sync to Portable Devices – Video, audio and image files can be transferred in a few easy steps to mobile phones including those from Acer, BlackBerry, HTC, Samsung, LG, Nokia, Motorola, Sony Ericsson, and Palm, as well as Sony Walkman and PSP devices.
• Enhanced Video Quality – CyberLink TrueTheater Denoise and Lighting enables the enhancement of video quality through optical noise filters and automatic brightness adjustment.
• Video, Music and Image File Conversion – Convert not only videos to popular formats such as AVI, MPEG, MKV, H.264/AVC, and FLV at the click of a button, but also images such as JPEG and PNG and music files like WMA, MP3 and M4A.
• Online Sharing – Conversion to video formats used by popular social networking websites and a direct upload feature means posting videos to Facebook and YouTube has never been easier.

For our testing today we are converting a 1.43 GB 720p MKV file to Apple Mp4 format for playback on a portable device using the Apple preset. This is a common procedure for many people and will give a good indication of system power.  Hardware acceleration was enabled to give you a good idea of system wide real world performance.

In this test we see a massive reduction in the time taken to convert the files when hardware acceleration is enabled.

Battlefield 4 (also known as BF4) is a first-person shooter video game developed by EA Digital Illusions CE (DICE) and published by Electronic Arts. The game is a sequel to 2011′s Battlefield 3. Battlefield 4 is built on the new Frostbite 3 engine. The new Frostbite engine enables more realistic environments with higher resolution textures and particle effects. A new “networked water” system is also being introduced, allowing all players in the game to see the same wave at the same time.Tessellation has also been overhauled.

We used the settings illustrated in the screenshot above for testing.

These framerates are very impressive for such a new game run at the highest possible settings on a laptop.

Black Ops 2 is the latest episode in the Call of Duty franchise and is one of the most popular games of the moment.  It uses an updated version of the IW engine, used in previous Call of Duty games, which isn't particularly demanding.  This makes it ideal for testing mid-range gaming systems like this.

We used the settings illustrated in the screenshot above for testing.

In this test we see very impressive performance indeed, with very high average and minimum framerates recorded at maximum settings.

Dirt Showdown is the latest title in the franchise from Codemasters, based around the famous Colin McRae racing game series, although it no longer uses his name, since he passed away in 2007.

We used the settings illustrated in the screenshot above for testing with all other settings set to the ‘Ultra' presets.

Again, we tested at maximum settings and observed very impressive performance indeed.

We measured the noise level of the system while loading the Intel CPU using Prime95 and GTX780M using FurMark. We also recorded the noise level with the system idling at the desktop.

Under general use the laptop remains very quiet, however when you start stressing the processor or graphics card it becomes louder.  It's not obnoxiously loud like some gaming laptops, however it's certainly noticeable.

We measured the temperatures of the system while loading the Intel CPU using Prime95 and GTX780M using FurMark. We also recorded the temperatures with the system idling at the desktop.  The ambient temperature was maintained at 20 degrees C for the duration of our tests.

These results are about what we would expect from the laptop.  Both of the load temperatures are quite high but they shouldn't cause any longevity issues.

To test the battery life we put the machine through two real world situations.  Firstly we tested the machine while browsing the internet with WLAN enabled (General).  Secondly we tested the machine while gaming with SLI and full brightness active.

The battery life under general duties is quite impressive for a gaming laptop, although this is significantly reduced when you do try and game on in it.

We measured the power consumption of the system at the wall while loading the CPU using Prime95 and GPU using FurMark. We also recorded the power consumption with the system idling at the desktop..

In this test we can see the Alienware 17 consumes very little power when idling, however under load this ramps up considerably.  It is still less than a fully loaded desktop PC, though.

Overall we are very impressed with the Alienware 17.  It offers almost all of the performance of the Alienware 18 in a more convenient, portable package.

The aesthetic design remains very similar, despite the difference in size.  The Alienware 17 is very eye catching and is sure to attract gamers who are looking to buy a desktop replacement.

Even though the Alienware 17 isn't currently available with the same range-topping Intel Core i7-4930MX processor as the Alienware 18, the performance of the i7-4800MQ will be more than enough for the vast majority of users.

As this particular machine is only available with a single graphics card, the GPU is likely to be the restricting factor for better gaming performance anyway, so a more expensive processor seems slightly excessive.

The quality of the keyboard and touchpad are exemplary and they help to enhance the quality feel of the notebook.  In fact, the keyboard is so good that we doubt that many gamers will choose to use an external gaming keyboard with the machine.

At a price of around £2,099 as configured in our review, we feel that the Alienware 17 offers quite good value for money, especially when we compare it to the Alienware 18 configuration we reviewed.

The only slightly lacking factor is the short 1-year standard warranty, which we would recommend upgrading if you want to protect your investment.  It is an ‘on-site warranty', though, so you shouldn't have to wait long to get back up and running if anything did go wrong.

Pros:

• Unique styling.
• Solid build quality.
• Incredible performance.

Cons:

• Short warranty.

KitGuru says: An excellent laptop that offers everything a gamer would want.

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