Alienware vs Dell *HELP*

[WILLIE]

thinkin of gettin ma self a new latop but am stuck on which one is best for gaming. ive rounded it down to 2 choices but still can decied which is the right one to have. Im slighty swaying towards the Alienware as it seems more powerful with 2 graphic cards and running on AMD Turion 64. anyways please let me know your recommendations, opinions and thoughts as im stuck in crap deciding about it :approve:

cheers.

here's the alienware maLX: http://www.alienware.co.uk/product_detail_pages/Aurora_mALX/aurora-m_specs.aspx?SysCode=PC-EU-LT-AUR-M-ALX&SubCode=SKU-DEFAULT#pdp-nav

and here's the Dell XPS: http://www1.euro.dell.com/content/products/features.aspx/xps_m1710?c=uk&cs=ukdhs1&l=en&s=dhs

 

[BenWall]

alienware no questions asked

 

[wozzaa]

Obviously be the alienware but then again it is £2600 versus £1500.

If your wanting it for gaming though why buy a laptop the battery on a gaming laptop last no time at all and there bloody heavy so they loose the protability anyway. Might as well just got for a desktop machine.

As that alienware spec'd up a bit gets to nearly £3000.

 

[WILLIE]

yea thats what im finkin but im not sure if its worth the extra dosh for it tho

 

[FiDoDiDo]

If cost wasn't an issue then Alienware, but it will be much more.

 

[WILLIE]

Obviously be the alienware but then again it is £2600 versus £1500.

If your wanting it for gaming though why buy a laptop the battery on a gaming laptop last no time at all and there bloody heavy so they loose the protability anyway. Might as well just got for a desktop machine.

As that alienware spec'd up a bit gets to nearly £3000.

i would look at the desktops but i have no room for one so my only choice it a laptop really. and the price is whats stoping me from making my choice. wetha its worth it or not?

 

[Tom]

Macbook pro.

 

[FishThrower]

Alienware is overpriced junk

(just noticed this is a laptop) not got a lot of choice there unfortunally!)

 

[WILLIE]

Macbook pro.

iv'e seen a few of them on some websites and they look well smart but i have a few macs in work and they just dont seem to appeal to me :S very nice and well made tho.

 

[Munson]

I'm of the opinion that gaming laptops are a waste of cash. You pay stupid money for a machine which will struggle to run the next generation games. So it's shelf life of top performance is probably going to be 12 months maximum. Games machines need to be easily upgraded - a gaming latop is a time bomb, just waiting to be owned by the next big game.

 

[sambonebs]

If space is an issue, why not build yourself a Shuttle system. At a very rough guess, I'd say you're be able to build a pretty good gaming rig with a 17" under £1000...

 

[zack40]

dunno about the mac pro been a gameing platform..but i do know alienware do build some good rigs they seem to know there stuff, and get good reviews theres a reason why they cost so much if you want the best you pay for it!!

 

[Rick-Reid]

If the money isnt a problem, and you'r going to get alot of use out of the machine then go for the Alienware.

If you'd perfer saving yourself a bit of cash, or you not gonna use the machine day and night then go for the Dell (its a decent enough machine).

 

[Adam K]

If space is an issue, why not build yourself a Shuttle system. At a very rough guess, I'd say you're be able to build a pretty good gaming rig with a 17" under £1000...

17" ???

welcome to the little league!!

tft's take up no space and you can hang them on a wall, may as well go for the biggest you can afford, and if he has £2600 to spend on a laptop, then he could easily go for a desktop with a 20" or bigger screen.

 

[FishThrower]

only problem with big TFT screens is that the latancy time arent great on them, not really good for gaming. There getting a lot better now mind you.

The best TFT monitors are Dell by far

 

[WILLIE]

the alienware model has a 19'' display which is gr8 in my opinion as my current laptop has a 15.4'' n i thought that was big.

 

[sambonebs]

17" ???

welcome to the little league!!

tft's take up no space and you can hang them on a wall, may as well go for the biggest you can afford, and if he has £2600 to spend on a laptop, then he could easily go for a desktop with a 20" or bigger screen.

Fair play chap! I don't use my PC for gaming (Got the 360 for that) and I've been happy with my pair of 17"s for ages.

 

[Adam K]

only problem with big TFT screens is that the latancy time arent great on them, not really good for gaming. There getting a lot better now mind you.

The best TFT monitors are Dell by far

i have the 24" dell 2407 widescreen and i've played a few fps and driving games on it, and watch loads of movies, and not experienced any problems with blurring or poor image quality.

 

[S22 JGS]

erm, Allienware ARE Dell. Dell own em.

 

[jay s]

ive got an xps inspiron gen-2 had it for almost 2 years and im still well chuffed with it today, its got a nvida ge force go 6800 ultra (256mb) card, 2gb ram, 80g hd, pentium 2.13ghz pro, 17" widescreen. does me fine, im able to play q4 on high detail setting @1900x1200 with a very good frames per sec.

 

[Saner]

ive got an xps inspiron gen-2 had it for almost 2 years and im still well chuffed with it today, its got a nvida ge force go 6800 ultra (256mb) card, 2gb ram, 80g hd, pentium 2.13ghz pro, 17" widescreen. does me fine, im able to play q4 on high detail setting @1900x1200 with a very good frames per sec.

I have exactly the same as above, had it for a year and a half now, runs, HL2, Doom 3 and FEAR all full wack.

I can see this lasting about 1 more year as it will become obsolete after the release of DX10. Still at £1800 which is what i payed for a Laptop that will last me 2.5 / 3 years of gaming and last much longer on teh desiging side of things is a bargin.

 

[Munson]

I have exactly the same as above, had it for a year and a half now, runs, HL2, Doom 3 and FEAR all full wack.

@ 10fps?

Not being funny but no 6800Ultra can run F.E.A.R. at 'full whack' in anything approaching a decent resolution and playable frame rates. Unless the magic pixie dust is being sprinkled around again

 

[tommyboy]

Dell

 

[Munson]

Self build desktop, £1500 including 24" LCD - run rings around any laptop. No space? Make space

 

[wozzaa]

And if you want to throw nearly £3000 around.

And you want a prebuilt system check out www.scan.co.uk there 3XS system can come in small form factor cases so should not be to difficult to store somewhere. And they can be spec'd up to be brilliant machines. Or you can build it yourself since its not difficult. Scan even offer a pre overclocked option on parts. And when they overclock it its still under guarantee.

 

[rich[182]]

Alienware is overated overpriced fodder
Never seen a review where they came in the top 5 on either performance or price v performance, wouldnt touch with a bargepole imho

 

[MickM]

www.scan.co.uk

Who in thier right mind would spend 6.5K on a PC, just configured one to their top spec and came out at that. Blimey!

 

[Adam K]

Who in thier right mind would spend 6.5K on a PC, just configured one to their top spec and came out at that. Blimey!

a mac pro with everything added comes to over £12k

 

[McBunny]

these days alienware is dell anyway

a mate has an alienware laptop he has had nowt but trouble with it

 

[Saner]

@ 10fps?

Not being funny but no 6800Ultra can run F.E.A.R. at 'full whack' in anything approaching a decent resolution and playable frame rates. Unless the magic pixie dust is being sprinkled around again

not being funny but how would you know?

If I could prove it I would, but I can load up FEAR set everything to max and play the game no problem (1920x1200). The laptop is not in its -out of the box- state. I load up a differnt user which has nothiong running in the background and hardly and services running aswell. But tahts besides the point and i'm saying the hardware can handle it.

 

[nottie]

i got the xps, good for games and great for my work, had a few narks with it but easily fixable ones

 

[Iain C]

arrrgh i hate pc games! Too much effort required!
Gotta love alienware tho...there stuff is soo geeky!
Sorry this reply is total tosh ... i know very little about pcs

 

[Munson]

not being funny but how would you know?


If I could prove it I would, but I can load up FEAR set everything to max and play the game no problem (1920x1200). The laptop is not in its -out of the box- state. I load up a differnt user which has nothiong running in the background and hardly and services running aswell. But thats besides the point and i'm saying the hardware can handle it.

Mainly because I had one in my old system, I know what it's capable of, and running F.E.A.R. tip top at anything approaching 60fps isn't on its CV. Also because I know my games, and their demands, and what hardware is mustard and what's not - F.E.A.R. is a total monster of a game and requires serious hardware to run at big resolution with big frame rates, the 6800 is not up to the job. Especially at 1920x1200 - that's GX2 or SLi territory.

You may be running it at a framerate you are happy with, and that's cool. I guess it depends what you call smooth. You don't need to 'prove' anything dude, I know for a fact that a 6800 based rig cannot max F.E.A.R. even at 1024x768. Still a good card though

 

[Lee]

Don't buy the Alienware. We bought 34 of their highest spec desktop systems last year and they have been shockingly undreliable. Support wasn't much better.

Go with the Dell. We've bought a couple of their top spec XPS laptops recently and haven't had any issues, not once I'd removed all the pre installed crap that is,

 

[rich[182]]

Mainly because I had one in my old system, I know what it's capable of, and running F.E.A.R. tip top at anything approaching 60fps isn't on its CV. Also because I know my games, and their demands, and what hardware is mustard and what's not - F.E.A.R. is a total monster of a game and requires serious hardware to run at big resolution with big frame rates, the 6800 is not up to the job. Especially at 1920x1200 - that's GX2 or SLi territory.

You may be running it at a framerate you are happy with, and that's cool. I guess it depends what you call smooth. You don't need to 'prove' anything dude, I know for a fact that a 6800 based rig cannot max F.E.A.R. even at 1024x768. Still a good card though

^ Too right
The acceptable fps varies from gamer to gamer, Ive had many conversation with those who say its smooth at an average of 30-35 fps and to them it certainly is, however talk to some serious fanatical hardcore pc gamers and they'll shudder at the thought of any game ever going under 60-70fps even if they have to run at 1024x768 etc etc

 

[Ex-User (19928)]

Dell.. Don't do it... Shocking customer support, and crap hardware to boot.

I was thinking about getting an Alienware notebook sometime, from what I hear the service is great and... Well you can see what goes on underneath the green case !!

 

[wozzaa]

Anything above 40fps is what i deem perfectly playable anything under and i can tell the difference. You dont absolutely need 60fps though and those that say there getting 100+ fps its total crap the number might be saying that there still usually only seeing 60.

 

[Lee]

Dell.. Don't do it... Shocking customer support, and crap hardware to boot.

I was thinking about getting an Alienware notebook sometime, from what I hear the service is great and... Well you can see what goes on underneath the green case !!

The service is far from great, even after spending £130k with them.

The desktops are nothing more than a standard PC with a fancy plastic cover on the case. The cabling is nice and neat, but this problem with this is that if you have to replace or upgrade a component you have to spend 30 minutes trying to remove all the cable ties just to remove things. The other problem is they cable things too tight IMO, it stresses the connectors, especially the SATA ones, of which we had one snap off the back of the hard drive.

I've just had one with some faulty memory so we'll see how quickly they react to my support request, especially now they have probably realised I won't be sending anymore business there way.

According to Alienware they test all components to the max. That's rubbish as out of the 34 machines I've had to replace the motherboard fan on every single one of them. Not much testing gone on there.

 

[fastwunz]

At the end of the day, the only quetion you should be asking yourself is - why on earth would anyone buy a laptop in order to play games? i appreciate your lack of space, but more space can always be made, especially where a similar PC that is a Tower is almost always 25% cheaper than a laptop alternative - laptops cannot be upgraded - easily, they will never out perform a tower and overheat to buggery - they are also a LOT easier to pinch - and thats a biggie - try finding a light fingered chav with the strength to haul off a larger tower without being seen and / or caught.

To sum up - laptops are gay for games, gay for security and just generally gay - towers are cheaper, safer and totally upgradeable - you know it makes sense. Dont fall inot the trap of image over functionality - you want the best - spend your cash wisely and get a mean tower.

 

[Munson]

According to Alienware they test all components to the max. That's rubbish as out of the 34 machines I've had to replace the motherboard fan on every single one of them. Not much testing gone on there.

Chipset fans are evil anyway. Passive all the way.