Dead GPU, considering an Alienware laptop any users out there with comments/recommendations?

[Strangepork]

In 2012 I built a $7000.00 computer dealing with audio/video and thanks to Hollywood I made a lot of money using it. Eight years later it still runs cool playing ED. I upgraded it with a better video card and all works fine.The GeForce GTX 1660 Ti nailed it playing in Ultra mode with no lag other than too many ED players in the same instance. That is a Frontier server issue they may never figure out.

If future ED PC versions requires windows 10 or better I'll have some issues running windows 7.

There are laptops that have the processing power to play ED but what is the point? A huge curved widescreen with the best HOTAS controllers and many players going to VR a PC laptop will never do. If your job is flying around the world a laptop can keep your ED account up to date. But then get back to home with serious ED game play.

"Hollywood"!!



Here's hoping you made your buck and got out just in time?


Check you out BTW, gracing the top 10 of Cmdrs to have first become triple Elite, you've been keeping that quiet!

Best to you Hooplah

 

[Strangepork]

I have almost that exact setup in MSI, very happy with it, I think the extra cost loading for the name "Alienware" is pretty pointless and as pinted out, upgradability is really a myth, no-one ever does it. Even though my laptop is nearly a year old the Alienware locally is still $600 more than my purchase price.

What performance do you see in Elite and at what settings?

 

[Cmdr Eratosthenes]

I must say they do look very solid and well speced machines.

I have an MSI I no longer use (got replaced by a HP with horrible build quality) & it's built like a tank. Will be buying another MSI once Nvidia 30x mobile is released sometime after CES in January (so probably early Q2)

 

[varonica]

What performance do you see in Elite and at what settings?

I can get close to 300fps on mostly high settings when I am running the FSS and galaxy map, never seen it drop below 60 anywhere, but I am using the laptop display, so if you intend to plug into a separate display it very much depends on what that display is capable of.

 

[Quantis Trap]

OP, I've had a couple ASUS gaming laptops and not had the good luck you've had with either. There's a very good chance you'll spend too much money and won't be as lucky this time!

I'd recommend going with either a desktop or at the very least ONLY considering a laptop which uses a standardized replicable graphics card!

Also, if you're going to get a gaming laptop pay particular attention to the cooling and NEVER play heavy 3D games (yes, this includes Elite) directly on the battery even though they might tell you it's ok!

 

[Strangepork]

OP, I've had a couple ASUS gaming laptops and not had the good luck you've had with either. There's a very good chance you'll spend too much money and won't be as lucky this time!

I'd recommend going with either a desktop or at the very least ONLY considering a laptop which uses a standardized replicable graphics card!

Also, if you're going to get a gaming laptop pay particular attention to the cooling and NEVER play heavy 3D games (yes, this includes Elite) directly on the battery even though they might tell you it's ok!

Thanks QT. I rarely use a pc not plugged in. Everywhere I work has power. I use an iPad when roaming.

 

[Cmdr Snuffler]

My only experience with Alienware was a year after Dell bought them.
I purchased the top of the range gaming laptop with all the bells and whistles...4+ grand iirc.
They had disabled the ability for virtualization in the bios, which was a must for me at the time.
Over the next 3-4 months I found their support to be one of the worst I have ever dealt with just got bounced from country call centre to country call centre. In the end I threatened legal action and they reluctantly gave me a refund.
Very unimpressed.

The laptop was a beast though!

 

[Morbad]

From the benchmarks I've seen the raid 0 setup gives a meager 20% performance boost.

In sequential tasks performance can be nearly double, if the RAID 0 is configured correctly. However, this does not translate into real-world performance in most tasks.

Ultimately, for most tasks, including gaming, drive performance reaches diminishing returns pretty much the moment you have any kind of modern SSD at all. A top of the line NVMe SSD can be more than ten times as fast, on paper, as a budget SATA SSD, but not be noticeably different in real-world use. The practical gains from NVMe RAID are even more limited.

I lost my last souped-up laptop after 6 years because of a soldered GPU, I'd happily have run it's for another 4 years if not. As much as upgrading I'm hoping any new purchase will have replaceable parts, even if identical ones found second hand into the future.

I ditched desktops completely about 8 years ago, wanting just a single machine to work with. The strategy is to buy the best machine in terms of spec I can find with something approaching desktop performance and keep it for as long as I can.

The issue here is that this Alienware is twice the price of many laptops with nearly the same GPU. If you get five or six years out of a gaming laptop, you could buy a much faster one with the money you've saved than trying to get ten years out of a more expensive model.

Something like this, this, or this (not necessarily recommendations, just examples) would perform nearly as well in games as most of the Alienware Area-51m R2 options.

 

[Strangepork]

Thanks again Morbad.

...everything is so much more expensive in, ‘rip-off Britain’, man.

The other brand I considered was Clevo.

 

[Garix]

...everything is so much more expensive in, ‘rip-off Britain’, man.

Convert US to UK then add 20% VAT. Price wont be that different. US pricing generally doesn't include sales tax.

 

[Zieman]

Convert US to UK then add 20% VAT. Price wont be that different. US pricing generally doesn't include sales tax.

Currency conversion, or just replace $ with £ ?

 

[limpetdwarf]

Convert the currency.

If you watch the Linus Tech Tips channel on youtube (or somewhere else), they recently made videos about laptops using AMD CPUs and said these CPUs are pretty amazing.

It all depends on what you want and on how much money you want to spend. I wouldn't recommend a laptop unless you have no choice but to have something portable, but do you really need portable gaming, or can you get a small laptop that's easier to carry and a stationary computer or an xbox for games?

If you want to save money and don't mind buying used, you might be able to get a used HP Z book off ebay. If I wanted to buy a new laptop, I'd seriously check out the ones with AMD processors. Or you buy a used xbox one which might get cheaper when the series X is available, or buy a series X when you can ...

 

[Strangepork]

Convert the currency.

If you watch the Linus Tech Tips channel on youtube (or somewhere else), they recently made videos about laptops using AMD CPUs and said these CPUs are pretty amazing.

It all depends on what you want and on how much money you want to spend. I wouldn't recommend a laptop unless you have no choice but to have something portable, but do you really need portable gaming, or can you get a small laptop that's easier to carry and a stationary computer or an xbox for games?

If you want to save money and don't mind buying used, you might be able to get a used HP Z book off ebay. If I wanted to buy a new laptop, I'd seriously check out the ones with AMD processors. Or you buy a used xbox one which might get cheaper when the series X is available, or buy a series X when you can ...

Thanks for such a helpful suggestion limpetdwarf.

I made the decision to go with the whole miniaturization of computing thing about 8 years ago. I do most of my stuff on an ipad these days.

I just buy the best laptop i can afford and run it until it dies - 6-8 years if you get a decent one.

Maybe in ten years we will wirelessly docking our super watches when we arrive at home and the Game and Watch cycle will be complete.