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The Alienware X17’s outfitted with a pair of front-firing speakers, clearly nestled along the bottom lip of the laptop. The 4-way speakers did a great job of filling my downstairs office with loud, relatively clean audio. Not only did it fill the office, it managed to float up to the top floor to my kitchen thanks to my spiral staircase. Out of the six presets (Alienware, Com, Movie, Racing, Role Play and Shooter), I prefer Alienware as it gives the most balanced performance. These graphics cards are able to play the latest and most demanding games in high resolutions and full detail settings with enabled Anti-Aliasing.
There are, of course, a few pieces of bloatware, including TikTok, Roblox, Dolby Access, Hidden City: Hidden Object Adventure and Adobe Photoshop Express. Taut strings and delicate cymbals were a constant companion as I made my way through Deathloop. Colt, the protagonist’s voice, was like a spiked hot chocolate on a cold winter day –– warm and inviting with just a little bit of bite. Gunfire had a nice weighty sound to it as did explosions. However, hearing the meaty thunk of the machete being buried in an unsuspecting enemy gave me a visceral satisfaction every single time. Alienware X17 keyboard and touchpad After letting the system cool, we ran a 15-minute, fullscreen video and remeasured. The touchpad, center keyboard and bottom registered 79, 87 and 92 degrees, respectively. Alienware X17 webcamAdvanced Optimus: Only available on the x17's FHD 360Hz (Coming Soon) panel option, Advanced Optimus enables the long battery life of Optimus, along with the immersive, tear-free, stutter-free gameplay of NVIDIA ® G-SYNC ®. Plus, it reduces system overhead to deliver optimal performance and reduced latency in your favorite game. NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Laptop GPU: High-End laptop graphics card based on the Ampere GA104 chip. Available in different versions with a TDP from 80 to 125 Watt.
Dell has improved the power consumption of the system during low loads when compared to the m17 R4 which may explain the overall longer battery life in our next section. Our system would draw as little as 10 W when idling on desktop at the minimum brightness setting to be 4x more efficient than what we recorded on last year's m17 R4.
ALIENWARE’S COMMITMENT TO MARATHON GAMING
We also ran a gaming test, which involved running a PCMark10 script until the laptop died. The X17 had a time of 1:19, edging out the Eon17-X’s 1:16. Alienware X17 heat While this is no place to rehash the endless debate about resolution vs refresh rate on gaming laptops, I was surprised that Alienware only offers the x17 with either a 1,920 x 1,080 or 3,840 x 2,160 display, the former in either 165Hz or 360Hz flavours. Considering the price, a 2,560 x 1,440 165Hz panel would be a better entry-level offering. This display size is a standard format for desktop replacements (DTR). The DTR laptops are heavier to carry, need more power, but texts are easy to read and high resolutions are no problem. DTR are mainly intended for stationary desk use, where weight and energy hunger don't matter. In return, you enjoy the advantages of high resolutions (more details, better legibility).» To find out how fine a display is, see our DPI List.
Overall performance was excellent across the board in benchmarks and it was able to deftly handle 1080p gaming in an ultra smooth fashion with no issues though it’s easily able to handle 4K gaming too albeit with the occasional dips in framerate. Video editing in 4K is not a problem as well though the display is not considered as 100% colour calibrated which may irk more demanding content creators. When we ran the Assassin’s Creed Odyssey (1080p) benchmark, the Alienware dominated out the box with 83 fps. The laptop matched the Eon17-X (RTX 3080 GPU), trounced the 65 fps premium gaming laptop average as well as the Raider (73 fps, RTX 3080 GPU) and the Blade Pro (68 fps, RTX 3070 GPU). Switching over to 4K, the X17’s frame rate dropped to 50 fps. So how did the X17 hold up? Well, it still managed to surpass our 95-degree Fahrenheit comfort threshold in certain spots on our 15-minute gaming test. Particularly, in the middle of the keyboard (110 degrees) and the undercarriage (120 degrees). Still, I used the X17 pretty comfortably on my lap for over an hour with no ill effects. The colorful touchpad managed to stay under the threshold at 90 degrees.We saw the X17 achieve 94 fps on the Far Cry New Dawn benchmark. That was enough to surpass the average, Blade Pro and Raider, which got 88, 89, 90 fps, respectively. The Eon17-X continued to rule the roost with an impressive 126 fps. Transitioning to 4K, saw the X17’s frame rate fall to 60 fps. Power consumption when gaming remains higher than usual much like what we discovered on the m17 series. Running Witcher 3 would consume an average of 249 W compared to only 195 W or 156 W on theAsus ROG Zephyrus S17 or MSI GS76, respectively. The higher CPU TDP and GPU TGP targets of the Alienware system are likely responsible for its higher power demands. When we measured for brightness, the X17 averaged 438 nits, outshining the 330-nit average as well as the Blade Pro (277 nits), Raider (276 nits) and Eon17-X (251 nits). Alienware X17 audio
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