Is Alienware 15' the best laptop to play this game?

[aDOLPHINjoy18]

Also if you live in NZ you'll find retail stores which sell PC's at around $2700 aren't as good as the one alienware is offering. Usually they have like intel i5 6200u or i7 6500U which are really only dual core CPU's with Intel's hyperthreading. Also they only have like AMD R7 A360 or GTX 950M graphics with only like 2GB graphics card capacity. Alienware for this price range in NZ is offering something better which other devices don't have. Better hardware. A 6th gen Intel Core i7 6700. 4GB not 1GB or 2GB or 3GB, of dedicated vRAM GTX 970. Not just a GTX 940. And Alienware has 16GB DDR4 RAM. Lots of PC's in retail stores only sell 8GB or 16GB DDR3L RAM.
Things can be overpriced especially if you live in NZ. That's why many NZ people are moving to Australia. Things are more fairly priced there and they have better wages too. I live in a major NZ city and even a 30 day electronic card bus pass costs $150. An HP administrator on a HP NZ's forum site said a motherboard for a laptop you're looking at $600NZ (the only forum sites I participate on are this site Planet Coaster, and Xbox).

 

[RaynMaykr]

lol stopped as soon as I saw Alienware... it's harsh but true

 

[aDOLPHINjoy18]

kk I don't know why some people are biased to Alienware. ASUS and Acer I think one is Taiwanese and the other is Chinese. I don't want to be reading Taiwanese or Chinese in a manual. I think HP and Dell/Alienware are American.
But aside from the price, if you know what it's like to live in NZ, you'd probably jump at the price. A system with a high end CPU and GPU and a generous 16GB DDR4 2133Mhz RAM not some 8GB DDR3L RAM. Regards to reliability, New Zealand and Australia have consumer protection laws which imply products for what the price you pay for them, are required to be durable and reasonable and perform acceptably. Although Dell may be some American company, they have offices in NZ/Australia and as such are subject to the jurisdiction and consumer rights to which those customers live in. If you lived in NZ and saw what retailers were selling for $2,700 and then see Alienware NZ selling this system, this would be one of the better systems at an affordable price. I know $2,000 $3,000 may seem a lot for Americans oh yeah is Frontier British I think they may be, but believe me, there are far more expensive gaming rigs than what Alienware offer. I've seen lots of good reviews of i7-6700, gtx 970, and the alienware x51 including on YouTube.

 

[TheLighterDark]

kk I don't know why some people are biased to Alienware. ASUS and Acer I think one is Taiwanese and the other is Chinese. I don't want to be reading Taiwanese or Chinese in a manual. I think HP and Dell/Alienware are American.
But aside from the price, if you know what it's like to live in NZ, you'd probably jump at the price. A system with a high end CPU and GPU and a generous 16GB DDR4 2133Mhz RAM not some 8GB DDR3L RAM. Regards to reliability, New Zealand and Australia have consumer protection laws which imply products for what the price you pay for them, are required to be durable and reasonable and perform acceptably. Although Dell may be some American company, they have offices in NZ/Australia and as such are subject to the jurisdiction and consumer rights to which those customers live in. If you lived in NZ and saw what retailers were selling for $2,700 and then see Alienware NZ selling this system, this would be one of the better systems at an affordable price. I know $2,000 $3,000 may seem a lot for Americans oh yeah is Frontier British I think they may be, but believe me, there are far more expensive gaming rigs than what Alienware offer. I've seen lots of good reviews of i7-6700, gtx 970, and the alienware x51 including on YouTube.

Because, as has been mentioned several times already, Alienware releases overpriced and unreliable equipment that's advertised as being years ahead of the curve yet becomes nearly obsolete in less than 24 months.

There may be far more expensive gaming rigs, but there are also far cheaper. Take your eyes off of the flashy advertising for five minutes and you might find something of substantially higher quality that will cost you much less on the front end and in the long run.

 

[aDOLPHINjoy18]

Hi peps! Thanks for your replies.
Yes this thread is now about a DESKTOP alienware, alienware x51. alienware desktops ARE cheaper in NZ than laptops/desktops which on their NZ site sell for $1,000 more.
Regarding price, alienware NZ is selling a customize-able system I want for NZ$2,900 (price went up). Now if you live in New Zealand, that is what we call a good price for a PC with these specs. Use Google Currency Converter to find how much that is in your country:

6th gen Intel Core i7 6700
(4 physical core, 8 threads hyperthreading, base speed 3.4Ghz with turbo boost to 4Ghz, 8MB cache)
Check notebookcheck and gamingdebate. This IS currently a High End CPU. And according to Windows 10 Task Manager, games are CPU intensive.
Nvidia GeForce GTX 970 4GB vRAM dedicated graphics.
Check notebookcheck and gamingdebate. This IS currently a High End GPU. YouTube videos show this GPU can play games well.
16GB DDR4 2133Mhz RAM
Generous. Not just 8GB RAM or 16GB DDR3L RAM. DDR4 RAM as standard memory

So, Why do I want it?
1. Customizable LED desktop PC lightings where you can change the colour of the LED light on it. Younger people including me like this idea. It's not just a green or red colour you have to put up with the manufacturer.
2. The GPU from YouTube videos and sources indicate this GPU can play games in 1920x1080 HIGH settings with generously smooth 40fps+. You can only bottleneck the GPU if you play games high end games in 4k Ultra settings. 1080 will make me happy enough.
3. The CPU. What can I say, it's beautifully powerful and I prefer Intel.
4. It's slim and cute.

In response to "expensive".
I'm talking NZ$2,700. You only have to live in New Zealand to understand. All retailers in New Zealand for the $2,700 price range are only selling laptops/desktops with intel i5-6200u or i7 6500u CPU's which are dual core, but have multi-threading. And have graphics cards options that don't compete with the 4GB GTX 970 alienware offers. I will look into getting it this year. Dell does have frequent sales. They were offering free RAM upgrade from 8-16GB but it finished yesterday. Living in NZ and you can quickly learn that many things are over priced compared to Australia.

In response to reliability.
New Zealand and Australia have Consumer Gaurantees Act law. Products are required to be durable and work as advertised and last a reasonable period. Dell also has extended warranties at extra. Their 2 year warranty is an additional NZ$240 approximately. Dell owns Alienware, and while I think they're a US company, they have offices in NZ/Australia and are subject to the jurisdiction and the customer's legal consumer rights of those countries. The i7 CPU is powerful and quad core. The GTX 970 CAN play Planet Coaster on 1920x1080 HIGH settings with smooth 30,40fps easily. The i7 quad core CPU loads the game map fast so you shouldn't be stuck on the loading screen for more than 2 seconds. And has a generous respectable clock speed of 3.4-4Ghz. If the product overheats within it's warranty and it's not because of customer misuse, despite Dell's terms, the NZ Consumer Guarantee's Act applies. And if it turns Faulty like this or any other circumstance, it can be refunded or replaced or repaired free of charge.

I don't want an overpowered system. I'm seeking a system for the purposes which I've stated in this thread. I'll check out to see if there are any other desktops but with and such specs on the New Zealand Computer Consumer Market, this product does have my attention.

 

[Ling]

I think only middle aged people who work in IT would be more confident in building their own systems than younger less experience people like me would be. I'll consider other desktops if NZ retailers have one. I do not want to order a system from the US/UK.

You cannot possibly be serious. This is such a woefully incorrect statement. PC building is incredibly easy and common. Newegg has a great short series of videos on it. Other tech channels do too. But fine, you don't want to build your own, that's understandable. You're comfortable paying a little more to avoid doing so. That's great. Literally no one has suggested you buy anything from the US or UK. I was merely trying to convert currencies for you. We still need to talk about value here.

The x51 has 6th gen Intel Core i7 6700 CPU which is CURRENTLY a HIGH END CPU. It also has 4GB GDDR5 Nvidia GTX 970 graphics card which is also CURRENTLY a HIGH END GPU. I looked up reports in order to try and bottleneck the 4GB GTX 970 you have to play very demanding 2015/2016 games in 4k ultra settings.
What I want is a system which looks cute and can play The Sims 4, Cities Skylines, and Planet Coaster in 1920x1080p High Settings with 40fps+. And from my research and videos on YouTube, the GTX 970 can handle it. CPU's are not important? If you check Windows 10 Task Manager, you'll find games are CPU intensive. When playing the PC games I mentioned above, I'm only using about 4GB RAM and sometimes 5.2GB RAM with Cities Skylines. And that's not just the game using the RAM. It includes the system and Windows 10 running in the background.

Once again, the i7 is a quad-core processor with hyperthreading. Almost any game you will ever play (every game I can think of) WILL NOT USE HYPERTHREADING. They will more than likely not even use more than a single core. A Pentium is going to be as useful to you as this i7. And then in the same breath you say that the GTX 970 is a high-end GPU; it is not. It is mid-end at best and has well-documented memory issues with the final 0.5GB of VRAM. Will you run into problems with this? No, and this is perfectly serviceable for what you need. But do not fool yourself into thinking you are getting a top-of-the-line rig (which is a weird argument that you're making since you're simultaneously saying that it only needs to be good enough to play a handful of non-intensive games). What's my point here? You DO NOT NEED an i7. The GTX 970 is fine.

Now, the build you have parted out in your previous posts is linked here - WITH New Zealand only dealers -this is effectively the cost of building the machine yourself (+100 NZ or so for mouse+keyboard). Not 2300. Not 2400. 2000. So this is our baseline and the cheapest it can be. You also attribute things like USB ports and fans to extra costs - these are parts of the case and not an extra cost. And DDR4 is not so much better than DDR3 that you will actually see any remotely tangible benefit, so you could easily go with an older architecture like the i5-2500 or i5-4690 and be just as fine for much cheaper. But we'll gloss over that.

So you pay an extra 300~400 to get it made by someone - fine. But these specifications are frankly stupid for what you want. Here is a much better build:
http://nz.pcpartpicker.com/p/9kHwMp

Down to 1800NZ. You have a more reasonable processor, less RAM (you will never, ever need more than 8GB - your own arguments prove this, despite being liberal with their estimates of program usage), and includes a solid state drive which you're not even getting with these pre-builts. Why should you care? Booting from an SSD is way, way faster. Loading any programs you have installed on this hard disk will load much, much faster. Put your regularly used programs on it, keep your pictures, music, documents, etc. on the HDD and enjoy the best of both worlds. Any modern half-way decent desktop should have a SSD, even a small one, just for the OS.

ASUS and Acer I think one is Taiwanese and the other is Chinese. I don't want to be reading Taiwanese or Chinese in a manual. I think HP and Dell/Alienware are American.

You must be joking to think that this is a real argument against well-respected brands like Acer, ASUS, and MSI. Do you REALLY think they only print their manuals in Taiwanese? I cannot emphasize enough how ridiculous this is.

Regards to reliability, New Zealand and Australia have consumer protection laws which imply products for what the price you pay for them, are required to be durable and reasonable and perform acceptably. Although Dell may be some American company, they have offices in NZ/Australia and as such are subject to the jurisdiction and consumer rights to which those customers live in. If you lived in NZ and saw what retailers were selling for $2,700 and then see Alienware NZ selling this system, this would be one of the better systems at an affordable price.

You're paying an extra 1000NZ for LEDs. Literally, that's it. And with regards to reliability, yes of course it is on the manufacturer (or retailer) to take responsibility from warranty issues. ALL companies are going to have to adhere to this, so wouldn't you rather buy something where you don't need to send it to get worked on for weeks or months at a time? Sure they'll fix it or replace it, but meanwhile you're out of the computer you paid thousands for.

I don't want an overpowered system. I'm seeking a system for the purposes which I've stated in this thread. I'll check out to see if there are any other desktops but with and such specs on the New Zealand Computer Consumer Market, this product does have my attention.

Then stop focusing so damn hard on the i7 and the 16GB of RAM. You have admitted repeatedly to not knowing anything about computers, stop arguing with these arbitrary specs you have decided you need.

 

[MrCow]

You cannot possibly be serious. This is such a woefully incorrect statement. PC building is incredibly easy and common. Newegg has a great short series of videos on it. Other tech channels do too. But fine, you don't want to build your own, that's understandable. You're comfortable paying a little more to avoid doing so. That's great. Literally no one has suggested you buy anything from the US or UK. I was merely trying to convert currencies for you. We still need to talk about value here.


Once again, the i7 is a quad-core processor with hyperthreading. Almost any game you will ever play (every game I can think of) WILL NOT USE HYPERTHREADING. They will more than likely not even use more than a single core. A Pentium is going to be as useful to you as this i7. And then in the same breath you say that the GTX 970 is a high-end GPU; it is not. It is mid-end at best and has well-documented memory issues with the final 0.5GB of VRAM. Will you run into problems with this? No, and this is perfectly serviceable for what you need. But do not fool yourself into thinking you are getting a top-of-the-line rig (which is a weird argument that you're making since you're simultaneously saying that it only needs to be good enough to play a handful of non-intensive games). What's my point here? You DO NOT NEED an i7. The GTX 970 is fine.

Now, the build you have parted out in your previous posts is linked here - WITH New Zealand only dealers -this is effectively the cost of building the machine yourself (+100 NZ or so for mouse+keyboard). Not 2300. Not 2400. 2000. So this is our baseline and the cheapest it can be. You also attribute things like USB ports and fans to extra costs - these are parts of the case and not an extra cost. And DDR4 is not so much better than DDR3 that you will actually see any remotely tangible benefit, so you could easily go with an older architecture like the i5-2500 or i5-4690 and be just as fine for much cheaper. But we'll gloss over that.

So you pay an extra 300~400 to get it made by someone - fine. But these specifications are frankly stupid for what you want. Here is a much better build:
http://nz.pcpartpicker.com/p/9kHwMp

Down to 1800NZ. You have a more reasonable processor, less RAM (you will never, ever need more than 8GB - your own arguments prove this, despite being liberal with their estimates of program usage), and includes a solid state drive which you're not even getting with these pre-builts. Why should you care? Booting from an SSD is way, way faster. Loading any programs you have installed on this hard disk will load much, much faster. Put your regularly used programs on it, keep your pictures, music, documents, etc. on the HDD and enjoy the best of both worlds. Any modern half-way decent desktop should have a SSD, even a small one, just for the OS.



You must be joking to think that this is a real argument against well-respected brands like Acer, ASUS, and MSI. Do you REALLY think they only print their manuals in Taiwanese? I cannot emphasize enough how ridiculous this is.


You're paying an extra 1000NZ for LEDs. Literally, that's it. And with regards to reliability, yes of course it is on the manufacturer (or retailer) to take responsibility from warranty issues. ALL companies are going to have to adhere to this, so wouldn't you rather buy something where you don't need to send it to get worked on for weeks or months at a time? Sure they'll fix it or replace it, but meanwhile you're out of the computer you paid thousands for.


Then stop focusing so damn hard on the i7 and the 16GB of RAM. You have admitted repeatedly to not knowing anything about computers, stop arguing with these arbitrary specs you have decided you need.

i have to agree with this guy. the only reason to get a very powerful cpu is when you plan on editting/rendering video's etc. i use a i7 5820k since i do this and it saves me alot of time, but when used just for gaming, cheaper i5 cpu's are the place to be. as with the 970, its powerful enough for current gen games but its not top of the line, it will work fine but if you plan on going 4k in the future, don't get a 970. as for ram, 16gb is a good choice i disagree with valdair. 8gb of ram and 16gb of ram is a huge performance difference which isnt that costly. 8gb of ram is +/- 50 euro's(60ish dollars) and going with 16 will make the pc a little more future proof performance wise. i would NEVER go with alienware. EVER. its the same as apple or beats by dre for example, yes its good. but you pay so much for just the logo on it. building a pc yourself is as easy as building with lego's. just check before you buy that every socket is the same, once you got everything its just placing it in and making sure its secured. thats it. its plug and play, i did it myself with 0 knowledge before i started building, when i wasnt sure i just checked linustechtips on youtube and problem solved. im 19 years old and am not in IT so the argument that only middle aged people with IT background do it is false. just please don't waste your money on an alienware, you'll be so disappointed once you actually see its performance compared to a pc that was about 700-800$ cheaper.

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I WILL BE CONSIDERING GETTING THE ALIENWARE X51 THIS YEAR.
If you live in New Zealand you will know what our retailers are like. The x51 option lets you customize what you want in it and it's branded. I think only middle aged people who work in IT would be more confident in building their own systems than younger less experience people like me would be. I'll consider other desktops if NZ retailers have one. I do not want to order a system from the US/UK.
I was hoping to change the title of this Thread but can't.
The x51 has 6th gen Intel Core i7 6700 CPU which is CURRENTLY a HIGH END CPU. It also has 4GB GDDR5 Nvidia GTX 970 graphics card which is also CURRENTLY a HIGH END GPU. I looked up reports in order to try and bottleneck the 4GB GTX 970 you have to play very demanding 2015/2016 games in 4k ultra settings.
What I want is a system which looks cute and can play The Sims 4, Cities Skylines, and Planet Coaster in 1920x1080p High Settings with 40fps+. And from my research and videos on YouTube, the GTX 970 can handle it. CPU's are not important? If you check Windows 10 Task Manager, you'll find games are CPU intensive. When playing the PC games I mentioned above, I'm only using about 4GB RAM and sometimes 5.2GB RAM with Cities Skylines. And that's not just the game using the RAM. It includes the system and Windows 10 running in the background.
Windows 10 is a great OS it has Direct 12x support. And with games demanding better hardware, Direct 12X Support and a quad core high end CPU helps.
To those who say NZ$2,700 is too steep, check out Noel Leeming NZ, JB Hi Fi NZ and other authorized retailers in NZ. If we were to break down the x51 alienware hardware individual costs approximately, they would be as follows:

GTX 970 GPU: US$329 (Gforce.com site) = NZ477.29 google currency convertor.
alienware lists the GTX 970 option at NZ$780.85.... ok, rip off here.
Intel i7 6700 CPU: US$312 (INTEL's site) = NZ$452.57 google currency convertor.
Standard keyboards in NZ sell easily for NZ$40
Standard mouse in NZ sell easily for NZ$30
Desktop case in NZ sell easily for NZ$50
16GB DDR4 2133Mhz RAM may easily sell for NZ$300
Motherboard may easily sell in NZ for NZ$500.
I read in an HP NZ's site's Forum that replacing a motherboard on a laptop can cost NZ$600.
DVD drive may easily sell in NZ for NZ$90.
Ventilation fan may easily sell in NZ for NZ$60 it has circuitry in it.
Microsoft OS retail versions sell easily in NZ for NZ$129.99 approx.
1TB HDD in NZ definitely sell easily for around NZ$110 (and those are 5400rpm drives. a 7200rpm HDD which alienware has lets say add NZ$130.
All other hardware ports like USB etc which the X51 has, say easily add NZ$100.
Lets add this up after google currency conversion.

CPU: 452.57
GPU: 477.29
1TB HDD: 130
16GB DDR4 2133Mhz RAM: 300
Maybe add 20 for the fancy packaging box the x51 comes in.
Then we have to NZ GST which is 15% those American devices CPU/GPU
GPU NZ tax excess (477.29x15%): 71.59
CPU NZ tax excess (452.57x15%): 67.89
OS: 129.99
Fan: 60
Keyboard: 40
Mouse: 30
Desktop case: 50
Motherboard: 500
___________________________ Grand total in NZ currency: $2,329.33 approximately.
And on alienware's site it's $2700 approximately. But it's best for certain customers especially if they're not well versed on building a PC by themselves, if they get a professional brand to build and offer their products rather than build your own PC from scratch which isn't branded. 5 years ago I damaged my old laptop's 1366x768 screen and HP NZ charged NZ$500 for a replacement screen. It does cost company extra to source hardware materials and the labour that goes into building a product which is why they're selling the product a few more hundred more than 2,329.

Watch this video. It shows how well the Nvidia Geforce GTX 970 can play this game. While watching the video on your browser, change the video quality in the video to 1080p. After watching the video in the link at maximum resolution which the video is playable in, tell me if you think the GTX 970 is a low end GPU or not if it can do this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=77q9tJoSv6w

WARNING:

THIS GAME IS CPU INTENSIVE SO 970 DOES NOT DO ALOT IN THIS GAME. THE CPU IS MORE IMPORTANT WHEN ONLY PLAYING THIS GAME.

 

[Ling]

I'm not trying to argue that OP needs to build himself. Yes he would save money, but he's fine spending some extra to avoid it. I just want him to not get ripped off, which is what he will get by buying an Alienware. If I knew what the reputable retailers were in New Zealand, I would recommend something specific. For now the best I can do is recommend reasonable specs so that he can shop around.

 

[MrCow]

I'm not trying to argue that OP needs to build himself. Yes he would save money, but he's fine spending some extra to avoid it. I just want him to not get ripped off, which is what he will get by buying an Alienware. If I knew what the reputable retailers were in New Zealand, I would recommend something specific. For now the best I can do is recommend reasonable specs so that he can shop around.

agreed. if he wants to spend more on a prebuild im not blaming him, but alienware is just such a ripoff

 

[Ling]

WARNING:

THIS GAME IS CPU INTENSIVE SO 970 DOES NOT DO ALOT IN THIS GAME. THE CPU IS MORE IMPORTANT WHEN ONLY PLAYING THIS GAME.

Out of curiosity, what makes you say this? I have monitored my CPU and GPU usage while playing and I definitely see 70-100% GPU and about 40% CPU with an i7-4790k and MSI GTX 980Ti at 1440p. There are many textures and lots of geometry - I would expect these to be GPU-based tasks, while Something like guest AI would be more CPU-intensive (although still single-threaded). If someone from Frontier could weigh in on this, that would be great.

 

[Jimdaman924]

In response to the OP mentioning ASUS.. I happen to have an ASUS ROG laptop that I bought in July of last year that runs the game just fine.

I purchased it at Best Buy in the U.S. and upgraded it fully in the store and it ended up costing about $1,700 American dollars.

This included:

The laptop itself - ASUS G751JL-BSI7T28 17.3" : $1199.00
16 additional GB's of DDR3 ram (which gives me a total of 32GBs): $160
512GB SSD: $305

So th specs are now:
Intel Core i7-4720 HQ @ 2.60 GHz
32 GB ram
512GB SSD
1 TB HDD
DVD Drive
17.3" display with 1920 x 1080 HD resolution
GTX 965m


So up to you if you really want to buy an Alienware but this laptop runs everything smoothly and is cheaper. Also, it has great fans and has NEVER ran hot with any game i've ever played which include - Ark, Cities Skylines, Scrap Mechanic and XCOM 1 and 2.

Just wanted to give you some info before you count ASUS laptops out.

Also, don't forget that I purchased the laptop and all additional items in the store and had Best Buy install them also, so if you purchase the same laptop and additional items online and install them yourself, you will save a good bit of money.

 

[aDOLPHINjoy18]

Thanks Jim and everyone.
I did check PBtech NZ but their systems are a few hundred dollars cheaper but it seems many people have the x51 or a product with i7 6700 CPU or GTX 970 and the performance it's a system I want and need to enjoy high settings 1080p with more than just 1-15fps. The Sims 4 said GPU's maked with {...} are overpowered.
I still think the alienware deal is best for me. I'm not knowledgable enough to build my own PC from scratch, if I were I'd be working for a computer manufacturer lol. I checked ASUS laptops and their laptops on their NZ site are over NZ$3,000+.

 

[Ling]

If you're going to completely ignore everything everyone has said, why did you bother posting?

 

[MrCow]

Out of curiosity, what makes you say this? I have monitored my CPU and GPU usage while playing and I definitely see 70-100% GPU and about 40% CPU with an i7-4790k and MSI GTX 980Ti at 1440p. There are many textures and lots of geometry - I would expect these to be GPU-based tasks, while Something like guest AI would be more CPU-intensive (although still single-threaded). If someone from Frontier could weigh in on this, that would be great.

its a fact, this game is more cpu instensive than gpu intensive. alot of threads have been posted about this

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If you're going to completely ignore everything everyone has said, why did you bother posting?

agreed... he is blinded by the shiny marketing of a product.. been there myself when i purchased beats headphones a year ago, luckily returned them within a week and bought something way better for same price.

 

[Jimdaman924]

Thanks Jim and everyone.
I did check PBtech NZ but their systems are a few hundred dollars cheaper but it seems many people have the x51 or a product with i7 6700 CPU or GTX 970 and the performance it's a system I want and need to enjoy high settings 1080p with more than just 1-15fps. The Sims 4 said GPU's maked with {...} are overpowered.
I still think the alienware deal is best for me. I'm not knowledgable enough to build my own PC from scratch, if I were I'd be working for a computer manufacturer lol. I checked ASUS laptops and their laptops on their NZ site are over NZ$3,000+.

Did you check out the particular ASUS I posted? It's cheaper than most of them but still has what a gaming laptop really needs. It's the ASUS G751JL-BSI7T28. See if you can look up that exact one. They had like 3 different kinds at Best Buy when I went.

Also, I loaded up the game after I posted that message earlier to see what my FPS were and on High settings with a medium to large park I built, it's running in the mid 20's most of the time to give you an idea.

I'm only giving you this info because I was dead set on an Alienware laptop myself because I wanted something that would keep up with the new games for a while and I wanted something that was mobile. Then I found this laptop at Best Buy and realized it was pretty close for a lot cheaper. I doubt you'll be disappointed with Alienware but if you want close to the same thing for cheaper, I think my laptop may be all you need for what you want out of this game. Good luck tho on whatever you decide.

 

[Sanguis1]

I have an Alienware17R3. PC and other Games (like GTA for example) are running really fine with highest setting. IN PC I have a park full of things and around 40 FPS at night. 5-10 FPS more at day.
It is my first Alienware, so I can't judge the ones in the past. But with this I bought the best Laptop ever. Before I had an Asus, a Schenker and one from Notebookguru. Even Schenker and Notebookguru I will NEVER buy again. There Notebooks are just Clevo Barebones, filled with hardware. THIS I could do myself. Clevo Barebones look cheapy and are not good Quality. All 3 Laptops were getting really hot, what of course hurts the hardware. Wich lived not really long. The Schenker/Notebookguru Support is crap. At Asus it differs. Depending on the support person.

Yes, Alienware is not the cheapest thing on earth. With good reasons. I packed it out last year and was very lucky. The first Notebook wich looked really quality. It's not getting hot, good Alienware Diagnostic Tools, very good support and so on. You can feel that they developed the body of there own, tested and optimized it. It's clear that this costs more mony than taking a simple Clevo low quality Barebone. For me it's worth that.
The Graphic Card is no Desktop Version but has enough Power to play actual games on highest settings. And there is still space. If you put a desktop Graphic card in a Laptop, it must get hot. There is not enough space to cool it properly. That even hurts all hardware. There you must decide: Desktop Grapic Card with risk of overheating components vs. little less power (but actual enough) and longer lifecircle.
Little gimmick are the LED's, wich can be used by several games. Or as Music Equalizer ^^.
But I would not buy the 15 version. The display is to small and I read from some brightness issues (to dark), from the 15 panels.

 

[MrCow]

I have an Alienware17R3. PC and other Games (like GTA for example) are running really fine with highest setting. IN PC I have a park full of things and around 40 FPS at night. 5-10 FPS more at day.
It is my first Alienware, so I can't judge the ones in the past. But with this I bought the best Laptop ever. Before I had an Asus, a Schenker and one from Notebookguru. Even Schenker and Notebookguru I will NEVER buy again. There Notebooks are just Clevo Barebones, filled with hardware. THIS I could do myself. Clevo Barebones look cheapy and are not good Quality. All 3 Laptops were getting really hot, what of course hurts the hardware. Wich lived not really long. The Schenker/Notebookguru Support is crap. At Asus it differs. Depending on the support person.

Yes, Alienware is not the cheapest thing on earth. With good reasons. I packed it out last year and was very lucky. The first Notebook wich looked really quality. It's not getting hot, good Alienware Diagnostic Tools, very good support and so on. You can feel that they developed the body of there own, tested and optimized it. It's clear that this costs more mony than taking a simple Clevo low quality Barebone. For me it's worth that.
The Graphic Card is no Desktop Version but has enough Power to play actual games on highest settings. And there is still space. If you put a desktop Graphic card in a Laptop, it must get hot. There is not enough space to cool it properly. That even hurts all hardware. There you must decide: Desktop Grapic Card with risk of overheating components vs. little less power (but actual enough) and longer lifecircle.
Little gimmick are the LED's, wich can be used by several games. Or as Music Equalizer ^^.
But I would not buy the 15 version. The display is to small and I read from some brightness issues (to dark), from the 15 panels.

i simply don't even know why someone would spend that amount of money on a laptop. i've been gaming on laptops myself, built a desktop couple of weeks ago and will never ever return to my laptop for gaming. basically the price you paid for that laptop is a gamepc 10times stronger.

 

[TheLighterDark]

i simply don't even know why someone would spend that amount of money on a laptop. i've been gaming on laptops myself, built a desktop couple of weeks ago and will never ever return to my laptop for gaming. basically the price you paid for that laptop is a gamepc 10times stronger.

I can't imagine it either, especially when buying solely to play one or two games. It turns PC from a $75.00 purchase to a $2,000.00 one.

 

[aDOLPHINjoy18]

its called real life people. pc gaming can be an expensive hobby. someone commented on one of my youtube videos that its a good cpu and gpu. i dont wont the best. i want what is good enough for me and will make me happy and this is what i want. i will not listen to anyone who says the cpu and gpu are not gòod enough. both cpu and gpu are high end according to sources like gamingdebate and notebook check. even the sims 4 wrote in its gpu requirements (GTX 970) in the GPU requirements. (...) means overpowered so its a good not best gpu. the person who commented on my youtube video said i should get it and he said to find a machine with those specs in the US its like $5,000. face it. high end gaming pcs are not cheap. NZ $2700 is not expensive. maybe to you US/UK peps.

 

[stuk71]

Wow... 3 pages on this subject,

Have you put your order in yet?