This seller didn’t say, so it’s probably the 1080p screen.
I just bought a Alienware 17 R5 because I’m getting my MM card and so I think I’m going to be out on the patio quite a bit. Seemed like an acceptable deal for President’s day, a tad over $2k for QHD GSync screen, GTX1080, I7… I miss patio gaming tbh, back when I chain smoked cigars…
This is a badass laptop for around $2k.
We had a bunch of Alienware 15’s (r3?) at work from last year, and their failure rate was astronomical. Like maybe over 60% at this point? Constant bluescreen issues, multiple hardware failures necessitating things like replacements of motherboards and hard drives.
Now, dell had great support packages, which is a reason we have went with them in the past, but the failure rate for the alienwares was so high that we’ve abandoned them. Also, the heat sinks on the back of the Alienware 15’s makes them feel to for in any standard 15 inch bag.
Oh, and another terrible thing, the usb c thunderbolt port? It’s not wired to the discrete card. That’s right, if you use the thunderbolt usb c output to drive monitors, it will only put a signal out from the integrated graphics. Someone at dell just fucked the system design.
That Asus is a nicer machine, and much more portable, and about the same price.
I’ve always liked Asus, so we’ll see how this works out. Only downside so far is that it’s battery is kind of a joke, with maybe 2 hours tops, even in “balanced” performance mode.
Where is the price info Timex? The “buy” links are to the existing lower spec machine I think?
I ended up getting the Alienware 17 R5, and I am sorry to say that it is the single greatest disappointment I have ever had in the world of major purchases. From the start, it has been a barrage of significant problems, each one requiring research and inconvenience and calls to tech support. The worst thing is that the internet adapter has never worked right, dropping the connection frequently, and requiring a reboot to re-connect. (I found quite a few references to this problem involving Killer internet adapters searching Google.) But there was also a blue screen of death, endlessly flashing keyboard, really, the list is rather tedious. Twice I have had to re-install windows, which involved several hours of re-installing all kinds of other apps.
And when I suggested to their tech support (whom I had been in repeated contact with) that I had been very patient, but it was time for them to replace the machine, they would not hear of any such thing, because the 30 days had expired. Advice to self: no more Dell/Alienware, buy from the local shop. Advice to others: if you buy from these people, do not be diverted by tech support into screwing around with fixes past the warranty period.
My Alienware 13 R3 has been flawless, but I got it refurb. I exclusively buy refurb from Dell because they’ve been “fixed” from whatever issue they had yet still have the same warranty (thanks to that OLED screen, it’s unique in a way most laptops aren’t) and they offer same day shipping, where from the factory (ie Asia) it’s often 2 weeks or more ordering “new”.
But all the above are true, I wouldn’t buy Dell now unless you must or have a particularly great deal. The only thing about Asus/Acer/ect is that I’ve heard a very wide spectrum of tech support issues, and I’m not sure about their resale value. Most Dell tech support is outsourced so it’s about as fun as a bag of bricks on your feet. It’s possible Dell’s quality will increase once he goes public again, since (all imo) Dell has sucked for a couple years as he pushed the company into austerity mode to pump up his numbers to make his initial valuation higher.
But mine will be the unicorn yay. Lol Yea I spent some time researching all the options that fit my criteria, I don’t mind repasting the heatsinks and dealing with minor driver ass goblinery if necessary.
OK I checked that out it looks like gtx 1070, 15inch screen, FHD, no gsync runs $1800… Light weight is nice but I just need a desktop replacement for the patio. I’m happy with gtx 1080, gsync, qhd, and 17inch screen for $2k
You can go onto Amazon and buy one, that’s what I did. On there, you can either get one with the RTX 2070 for around $2k.
You can also spend more to get a 2080, but it seems like overkill for the additional cost. You can also get what seems like a very good deal with a 1080, for only like $1600. Three biggest reason i got the 2070 was that i have some machine learning applications I’m doing that may be able to leverage The tensor cores in the RTX, and we wanted to experiment with that card to see what it could do.
You want to look at the newest one (oddly, asus says that it’s coming soon, but it’s actually already out and available for sale)
This is the one i got:
https://www.amazon.com/Zephyrus-i7-8750H-GeForce-Military-Grade-Chassis/dp/B07KS1JF2H/ref=sm_n_au_dka_US_pr_con_0_1?adId=B07G5Z9H8R&creativeASIN=B07G5Z9H8R&linkId=b9262bfd0a741abacb709b2abd1d1026&tag=fatherday00-20&linkCode=w41&ref-refURL=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.ultrabookreview.com%2F21721-asus-zephyrus-s-gx531%2F&slotNum=0&imprToken=FTqejxq.gto88X3jfs0n1Q&adType=smart&adMode=auto&adFormat=grid&impressionTimestamp=1549321656572&th=1&psc=1
(You can flip through the different options)
The specs on this are:
ASUS ROG Zephyrus S Ultra Slim Gaming Laptop, 15.6” 144Hz IPS Type FHD, GeForce RTX 2070, Intel Core i7-8750H, 16GB DDR4, 512GB PCIe NVMe SSD, Aura Sync RGB, Windows 10 64-bit, GX531GW-AS76 .62” Thin
The main advantages over the Alienware machines is portability and better connectivity, along with the aforementioned problem with how Dell hooked up their thunderbolt port.
Also, the aforementioned terrible luck my company had with the Alienware 15’s. My engineers hate them. But that may not be a problem with the 17s. I’ve never had similar problems with anything else from Dell, over decades, so the 15s may just be a weird outlier in terms of reliability.
I’ve been reading a lot of RTX laptop reviews as I look to replace my ageing machine with something gaming capable but light. Seems most chassis throttle them pretty bad, so the 2060 is even more of a value sweet spot than it is for desktops. It actually outperforms the 2070 Max Q in many situations.
I just brought home the MSI GS75 Stealth 17" w/2070 (normal, not max-Q Max Q), 16GB, 512SSD. So far so good: thin, light, very minimal bezel, very fast screen with great color. It was $2299 from Best Buy.
Steam is still downloading, but AMA.
The speakers on this thing are truly terrible, and I was surprised to find that the GPU is a 2070 Max Q (compared with the non-Max-Q 2070 on this nice but currently unavailable Asus, which is the 17" version of the laptop Timex listed above, running $400 more than this MSI).
The trackpad and display are terrific, with the trackpad in particular being one of the device’s strong points.
I’ve decided that my eyes are much happier with 17" these days so that’s what I’m sticking with. I will definitely be checking out the Asus GX701 once I can get my hands on one, though.
Bit the bullet on a 2060 Razer Blade 15. Slightly worried by some comments about battery life, which suggest it may run much shorter than advertised on non-gaming activities, but if so I figure I’ll return it. Some reviews say 6 hours, some 2.5. Hopefully it’s a firmware glitch or a QC issue I won’t encounter.
I’m now in receipt of my Alienware 17 R5… Decrapify, setup color, installed some games, love it! The speakers are surprisingly good… The Tobii thing is creepily awesome, I love how the screen undims when you glance at the screen. So far I love it, everything I was expecting.
Asus really cranked the power on their 2080 Max Q in the GX701 (17" Zephyrus S). This is in Balanced mode (not Turbo) – it’s not too loud, especially compared to my 2018 Blade 15. It ranges from around 1440 - 1600Mhz.
This was during an Aida64 + Unigine Heaven burn in.
For anyone who is interested, regarding those Alienware 15r3’s that I mentioned earlier… we’ve had two more of them need replacement motherboards, THIS WEEK.
I dunno what the deal is with them, but their failure rate is absurd at this point.
There was a time, way back in the day maybe 15 yeas ago, that we had a similar problem with a series of Optiplex machiens from dell. Turned out, they had a shipment of motherboards which used defective capacitors, so basically every machine in a production run had failures (capacitor failures are really great too, since they start as weird crashes that force a reboot, and every reboot puts additional stress on the capacitors, which makes them fail more, so you get this acceleration towards total death).
Luckily, the support plan from dell is good, so they replaced the first failure on tuesday, and they should be here to replace the newest one. Hopefully, the newer motherboards don’t have whatever issue caused so much failure in this batch.
Let’s see, we got them in a few batches, before i got sick of it. I think total, we have 10? We’ve have two hard drives fail and need to be replaced, and 3 motherboards get replaced thus far. One had a memory stick go bad. One had the screen die. And at least 3 of the others have chronic blue screen problems that will likely eventually result in the motherboard getting replaced since the Dell rep seemed to think that was related. They may have some internal knowledge of a defect or something in the boards that went into these.
I’ve never seen anything like this with stuff from Dell before, and at least they are timely in the repairs. The 24hr on site service is the main reason we’ve gone with Dell thus far. Their precision line is what we used to use for workstation replacement laptops, and they were rock solid.
This week was nuts though, with the two full motherboard replacements. Previously, it was like we had problems with them (the chronic bluescreening) but folks were just dealing with it. At this point though, i may just have all those guys call up Dell and see if Dell wants to replace all those boards.
That sounds really annoying.
I’m doing a bake-off of 3 17" laptops:
MSI GS75 (not going to win)
Asus Zephyrus S GX701
Alienware Area 51M
– the first 2 with 2080 MQ, and the Area 51m with the full 2080 (and a desktop 9700K)
Asus pushes the MQ into the desktop realm, at least as far as clocks go. It’ll be an interesting comparison. When I’m not gaming, the Asus is silent. With the superlative build quality and super slim design, it’s growing on me.
I went with the MSI GE75 Raider but I’m not concerned with ultrathin (5.something lbs is light enough for me). Should be getting it soon, whenever Amazon decides to ship the damn thing. It was originally supposed to be here Friday.
The price has gone back up, but when I ordered it on Thursday it was $600 less than the equivalent ASUS and had more SSD storage and twice the RAM, so I jumped on it.