One of my favorite things about Alienware is the company’s relentless confidence in the new product. That is the desktopBenchmark Bruiser (Opens in a new tab)“Or release one of the most sophisticated OLED gaming monitor (Opens in a new tab) to date. So when given the opportunity to check out the new Alienware m17 R5, called the “Most Powerful 17-inch AMD Advantage Gaming Laptop”, how can you miss it?
And does it respond to hype? Yes, yes, no.
Powering the Alienware m17 R5 is a combo of AMD Ryzen 96900HX and Radeon RX6850M XT, which looks like a Team Red slam dunk on paper. It’s also the first gaming laptop I’ve tested on the RX 6850M XT, so I was thrilled to see how it overlaps with laptops with RTX 3070Ti and RTX 3080Ti mobile GPUs.
Alienware has also submitted a specifically supported configuration for Alienware m17R5. Comes with a 4K panel with a refresh rate of 120Hz. It has 32GB of DDR5 RAM and 1TB of NVMe SSD. How much does this cost? You are looking at about $ 2,800.
If you decide to get the most out of memory and storage with 64GB of RAM and 4TB of SSD, that sounds like an overkill, but who do I judge? As with Alienware’s Intel-centric laptops, there are many options to choose from. The minimum amount to pay for AMD configurations is from $ 1,911. This includes cheap 1080p display options at 165Hz or 360Hz.
If you feel crazy, Alienware even has a ridiculous 480Hz 1080p display. This is $ 300 higher than the 4K 120Hz I’m reviewing here. Personally, I’ve never seen a 480Hz screen, so I wasn’t sure if it was worth it.
Alienware m17R5 AMD specifications
CPU: AMD Ryzen 9 6900HX
memory: 32GB (2x 16GB) Dual Channel DDR5-4800
graphic: AMD Radeon RX 6850M
Storage: 1TB NVMe M.2 SSD
screen: 17.3 inch UHD (3850 x 2160) 120Hz
guarantee: 1 year parts / lifetime labor
price: $ 2800
The stunningly bright 500 cd / m² 4K display has had many uses for streaming video. Thank you for seeing the detailed stress lines on Guenther Steiner’s face during the last season of F1. Drive to survive in 4K on Netflix. The game looks pretty good, but this display is suitable for professionals and creatives. Therefore, if you don’t fall into that category, you may want to use a 240Hz 1080p display to save money and extend the required battery life.
I also use this laptop AMD’s Game Boost Technology Suite (Opens in a new tab)SmartAccessGraphics that automatically switches output from Ryzen APU and Radeon GPU, SmartshiftMax automatically, etc. shift It depends on the app or game you are using. The nice thing about these features is that they work without having to mess with them. If you’re trying to bounce between all the great features, especially the game, and video editing, for example, and get extra horsepower.
This is “AMD Advantage”. This is a feature set created by having both a Radeon GPU and a Ryzen CPU on the same machine.
As you can see from the benchmarks below, the multi-core performance of the Mobile Ryzen 9 6900HX is inferior to the similarly priced Asus ROG Strix Scar 17. (Opens in a new tab) And MSIGS66 Stealth (2022) (Opens in a new tab) Both are equipped with Intel Core i9 12900H inside. Here, Ryzen’s 8-core, 16-thread design is an Alder Lake core layout with 14 cores and 20 threads pushed to the front.
Alienware also lags behind the Core i7 12800H on the Razer Blade 17. (Opens in a new tab) As I reviewed a while ago, this is also a 14-core, 20-thread Intel chip. The Razer Blade 17 is the absolute beast of the machine … and even the premium laptop standard is very expensive ($ 4000). Still, if you need serious performance, it’s clear that the new Alienware isn’t the pinnacle.
Thankfully, on the GPU side, the Alienware m17 R5 AMD Advantage model was excellent at 1080p in almost all game benchmarks, with almost the largest settings. Almost every game I played reached a three-digit frame rate, with Hitman 3 averaging just over 200fps.
We struggled with Metro Exodus and Cyberpunk 2077, but it’s not surprising as we focus on ray-tracing performance, which is known to be a problem with AMD’s GPUs. Unfortunately, inside this new mobile GPU, there’s nothing really changing it.
Thankfully, on the GPU side, the Alienware m17 R5 AMD was excellent at 1080p in almost all game benchmarks, with almost the largest settings.
The display is 4K, so it’s rude not to check out ultra-high resolution games. The Radeon RX 6850M XT worked great in 4K and often won against the MSI GS66, another powerful 4K laptop we recently reviewed. Unless late racing is involved, that is. In such a case, the GS66 RTX3070Ti escaped with it. The frame rate at 4K was fine, but nothing ignites the world.
For example, when running Cyberpunk 2077 with the raytracing effect turned on, Alienware often set the graphics setting to Ultra and slowed down until the frame rate reached 17fps. With RT turned off, the game ran in 4K with a slump of 22fps. For fun, I turned on FSR (FidelityFX Super Resolution), AMD’s answer to DLSS, and saw how many bumps I got. I was able to get things to 35fps playable in 4K with the Ultra setting. This is good, but not so much.
If frame rate is more important than resolution, the m17R5 can easily deliver frames above 100fps at 1080p in most games. Even cyberpunk reached about 128 fps (if FSR was turned on). A high 120Hz refresh rate on the display means that there is little or no screen tearing. I played more games at 1080p than 4K due to the significantly higher frame rate. If you’re playing a shooter like Apex Legends or Fortnite, that’s the way to go. This makes 4K displays a bit redundant in most cases.
Game performance
System performance
As a reminder, all benchmarks were run without Alienware’s one-button high-performance mode. Still, I didn’t stop seeing how a handful of games would run with it. When you press F1 to turn on high performance mode, you first notice that the fan starts spinning almost immediately and aggressively. Alienware’s engine seems to be preparing for takeoff.
The reason is that the fan is cranked to 100% in this mode. This resulted in an average GPU and the CPU temperature dropped considerably. This is necessary in the long run. If you’re hoping this is a magical “better frame rate” button, it’s not because you didn’t see a noticeable increase in frame rate in the games you tried.
It’s all about thermal. However, like other Alienware gaming laptops and desktops, it gets louder when the fan operates at a loud volume. Be sure to pick up your wireless headphones. fine.
This is certainly a desktop alternative. Yes, it’s a laptop and technically you can play games on the go, but it may not go long. In the game battery test, it had a battery life of 49 minutes.That makes sense; you have a lot of high-end hardware When The 4K panel does a lot — it’s certainly not battery friendly.
The very expensive Razer Blade 17 didn’t work either. I thought the battery life wasn’t that long, but I wanted the battery to last for at least an hour.
The Alienware m17 R5 may not be the most powerful gaming laptop ever, but it’s not due to a lack of trial. Even if CPU performance lags behind some of its rivals, the m17R5 makes up for the deficit with impressive game results. 4K displays are great for those who watch movies or work, but save hundreds of dollars by shrinking some of the more expensive components to get a really rugged 1080p gaming laptop. I can do it.
