Gaming Laptop Analysis

Is the Dell Alienware Area-51M i7-9700K RTX 2070 Mobile 16GB RAM 256GB M.2 good as a gaming laptop? Excellent

Processor - The processor we find in this laptop can meet modern AAA game requirements with ease, making it an excellent 2023 laptop gaming choice for CPU. This laptop CPU has 8 cores. This is excellent for modern AAA gaming as the games start to require more cores for simultaneous activities.

Graphics Card - This laptop graphics solution can chew through modern AAA titles and is an excellent laptop gaming choice of GPU. Dont underestimate the importance of your GPU VRAM in modern gaming. Fortunately this GPU has 8GB, making it an excellent gamers choice of GPU.

System Memory - Today’s AAA 2023 gaming is easily covered by the 16GB RAM in this machine, making this an excellent gaming laptop choice.

Screen Size - This laptop’s 17.3" panel size is excellent for 2023 gaming. It helps you see in game detail and feel like you have room to move your mouse about. This amount of physical space is certainly not essential but it will make this a viable laptop for gaming on the move.

Refresh Rate - If you want a gaming laptop then aim for a refresh rate that is more than 60Hz. If you don't clearly see the advertised laptops screen refresh rate then assume it is 60Hz. This would mean that the laptop will be capped at 60FPS when running games. The higher the refresh rate and the FPS then the smoother the game plays as it delivers more images a second to your screen and makes movement feel more responsive in game. Ok so after that refresh rate recap we can see that this laptop can be found with the excellent gaming refresh rate of 144Hz. However, you can always look for others, but try to find something with more than 60Hz.

GeForce RTX 2070 Mobile graphics card gaming performance in the Dell Alienware Area-51M i7-9700K RTX 2070 Mobile 16GB RAM 256GB M.2 laptop

No two laptops are the same. But one of the primary gaming laptop components is of course the graphics card. Often a slightly weaker mobile solution, when compared to its desktop equivalent. Today we will consider this laptop's hardware, when running modern popular and sometimes demanding games, like Grand Theft Auto VI, Star Citizen and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 (2022) which will help us know if this mobile graphics card and the overall laptop hardware is considered a good price to performance point. We consider it running these titles at its native 1080p resolution, and at Ultra video settings. The GeForce RTX 2070 Mobile in this machine is currently capable of running 495 games at minimum system requirements of the 500 most demanding games available today. Where as it is capable of running 410 games of the top 500 most demanding recommended system requirements.

Comparing Dell Alienware Area-51M i7-9700K RTX 2070 Mobile 16GB RAM 256GB M.2 to today’s best price to performance laptop ranges

Stepping into it, we can standardise our assessment of this Dell Alienware Area-51M i7-9700K RTX 2070 Mobile 16GB RAM 256GB M.2 laptop review by giving every laptop a relative price to performance rating. This rating, for all laptops, will adjust over time and keep the data in this review relevant to today's expectations and inline with ever increasing game demands of modern AAA laptop gaming.

We review performance and allocate a P2P rating out of 10 that will adjust over time as the prices for hardware adjust. This laptop is currently given a 5.8 for P2P. With a number of Alienware Area-51M laptops in the model lineup this particular variant places at the 4th position for Price to Performance value. Laptops closer to the top place (1st) are value gaming laptop options that deliver the best performance for the laptop price.

We will now check against leading Price 2 Performance laptops outside of this model range to see how the Dell Alienware Area-51M i7-9700K RTX 2070 Mobile 16GB RAM 256GB M.2 compares. Looking at the best gaming laptop on price to performance, our laptop has 187% worse rating between its price to performance rating and today's best valued laptop, which is the ASUS TUF A15 R7 4800H GTX 1660 Ti 16GB RAM 512GB M.2 that is currently priced at $999. The next best model is MSI Bravo 15 R7 4800H RX 5500M 16GB RAM 512GB M.2, which costs $1049. Our Alienware Area-51M review laptop is 150% worse when comparing Price/Performance against the next top P2P laptop. Again this is purely a value for performance comparison, and many things go into helping us choose the right laptop for us. This is a good indicator but it's certainly then worth looking through the range for other configurations of a laptop you are interested in to find the right price point for you.

How does the Dell Alienware Area-51M i7-9700K RTX 2070 Mobile 16GB RAM 256GB M.2 laptop compare to the best CPU performance focused laptops and today’s most popular games?

You might be considering a CPU heavy laptop and wondering how this Alienware Area-51M laptop does in the grand scheme of CPU focused laptops. Let's compare this laptop with a top CPU performance laptop available today and see how its CPU performance stacks up. Selecting todays ASUS ROG Zephyrus G14 R9 4900HS RTX 2060 Mobile 16GB RAM 1.0TB M.2 laptop, we will use its mighty Ryzen 9 4900HS 8-Core 3.0GHz to compare against our Core i7-9700K 8-Core 3.6GHz processor from our review laptop. We can see that the top end CPU currently delivers 16% better performance when benched against our own review laptop’s Core i7-9700K 8-Core 3.6GHz.

Our laptop processor, the Core i7-9700K 8-Core 3.6GHz, can currently meet the recommended system requirements of 484 games when compared against the top 500 most demanding games right now. This number changes to 500 for the top 500 most demanding minimum system requirements.

When compared to the recommended processor requirements of the most popular games today, like Grand Theft Auto VI our laptop CPU is 22% better in performance. Compared to Star Citizen our laptop processor is 9% better.

How does the Dell Alienware Area-51M i7-9700K RTX 2070 Mobile 16GB RAM 256GB M.2 laptop compare to the best graphics card performance focused laptops and today’s most popular games?

One of the key hardware aspects in any laptop is certainly the graphics card. Our Alienware Area-51M laptop’s GPU solution can be compared against a laptop that has one of the most powerful GPU’s around today, which will give us a relative benchmark. And will help us know how this laptop performs against the top end GPU laptop available today. We choose the MSI GT76 Titan i9-10900K RTX 2080 Super 64GB RAM 2.0TB M.2 4K laptop as one of the best GPU laptop performers today to compare graphics ability with our laptop. This puts a GeForce RTX 2080 Super 8GB video card from that laptop, one of the best laptop graphics cards available at the moment, against our review laptop’s GeForce RTX 2070 Mobile. This comparison shows that laptop to be 35% better comparably in performance as our review laptop.

Our laptop GPU beats 410 games recommended system requirements when looking at today’s top 500 most demanding games. This number changes to 495 games if we compare to the top 500 most demanding games for minimum system requirements.

A game’s listed recommended GPU requirements are a good way to compare the performance of our laptop graphics card. Lets see today's popular titles up against our laptop graphics. First off let's look at Star Citizen which shows our laptop video card has 53% better performance than it. How about Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 (2022), where we see our GPU is 4% worse. Then there is 4% worse performance when compared against today’s most popular title, Grand Theft Auto VI.

The Dell Alienware Area-51M i7-9700K RTX 2070 Mobile 16GB RAM 256GB M.2 has a 1080p screen resolution, should I get a 4K resolution gaming laptop instead?

This laptop’s panel has a physical 17.3" screen that delivers 1920x1080 pixels natively. But should you consider moving from this 1080p laptop and searching for a 4K laptop instead, with the intention of getting better visuals for your games or movies? With 60Hz being the usual screen refresh rate on 4K laptop panels this would cap a game to run at no more than 60 frames per second, even if the 4K laptop hardware could deliver more. And then most AAA games require more powerful hardware than a laptop houses to play stable 4K Ultra graphics setting games, even at a passable but, some would consider, a bit low, 60FPS. With a bigger refresh rate helping your FPS this Dell Alienware Area-51M i7-9700K RTX 2070 Mobile 16GB RAM 256GB M.2 has 144Hz screen refresh rate variants available.

So lowering a game’s screen resolution down to 1080p or 1440p during your gaming of modern AAA games will help get more frames per second. But in doing so, by down scaling the game resolution will then make the game look blurry on a native 4K laptop panel. So the purpose of getting a 4K laptop monitor for gaming maybe lost at this point. The 1080p laptop could run games you love at 4K resolution, with a few tweaks to the graphics settings? In this situation you can always plug the gaming laptop you are not on the move, plug the laptop into a 144Hz or better desktop monitor that’s 28inches and comes with a 1440p or 4K resolution to enjoy modern gaming without FPS or size limits.

However, you could be after watching 4K streaming content on your laptop, while on the move. Then perhaps the 17inch laptop screen and 4K resolution is going to net a more enjoyable experience than a 1080p alternative.

At the moment our advice would be, stick to the 1080p laptop panels for now. Your laptop remains portable and 4K laptop’s just aren't quite there yet. The 4K needs to be a no brainer but at the moment you will still have to lower resolution in game to get playable but sub par visuals that still can't raise above 60FPS.

Today’s best 1440p desktop monitor for a laptop is - ASUS ProArt Display PA278QV 27 inch 1440p 75Hz 5ms IPS

A well priced 1440p gaming monitor today is the ASUS ProArt Display PA278QV 27 inch 1440p 75Hz 5ms IPS. With its 75Hz refresh rate and a current price of $311.99 it should go nicely with this Dell Alienware Area-51M i7-9700K RTX 2070 Mobile 16GB RAM 256GB M.2 laptop. We have seen this desktop 1440p monitor recorded at a low price on 9th Mar 2021, where we saw it was costing $229.99.

Today’s best 4K desktop monitor for a laptop is - Asus Predator XB273K 27 inch 4K GSYNC IPS 1ms 144Hz

A well priced 4K gaming monitor with 144Hz refresh rate is the Asus Predator XB273K 27 inch 4K GSYNC IPS 1ms 144Hz. It has a price today of $618 and should be a nice accompaniment to the Dell Alienware Area-51M i7-9700K RTX 2070 Mobile 16GB RAM 256GB M.2 laptop. It's interesting that even though this is a well priced 4K monitor today, our price tracking shows it has gone up in price by $618 during recent weeks. Reviewing tracked prices for our suggested 4k monitor, its lowest price was recorded on 13th Nov 2020, where we spotted it for $549.99.

[Note - check that monitor display connectors are compatible between a monitor and a laptop before purchase]

If you stream 4K content, films, services like Netflix then perhaps the quality of 4K resolution on a 17inch panel would be better than the 1080p alternative that the majority of laptops provide.

As you can probably gather from the information above, it's probably not worth the extra cash for a 4K laptop if gaming is your Laptop purpose. 1080p is likely plenty and has enough alternative gaming options for when you want better resolution. It feels like you might not get what you were after if you picked up a shiny new 4K laptop, then was needing to lower game resolution, while getting blurry in-game experience and achieving a max 60FPS when you could push the hardware into better frame rates.

Today's Best Priced Mouse and Headset for Dell Alienware Area-51M i7-9700K RTX 2070 Mobile 16GB RAM 256GB M.2 laptop

If you are looking for a good value mouse to go with your Dell Alienware Area-51M i7-9700K RTX 2070 Mobile 16GB RAM 256GB M.2 laptop, then the Kayinuo M738 Gaming Mouse 3200DPI wired 6 Buttons is our favourite today, of those we are price tracking. Currently it’s priced at $12.99. This mouse has also dropped its price by $32.26 during the past two weeks, which is a solid reason for us to select it with this laptop. To give some extra insight into this mouse, we had it price tracked on 15th Aug 2020, where it was at its lowest price of $11.99.

A headset that is well priced at the moment and could accompany the Dell Alienware Area-51M i7-9700K RTX 2070 Mobile 16GB RAM 256GB M.2 laptop is the Corsair HS45-7.1 Surround. Of the headsets we price track, it is one of the best valued headsets today and currently priced at $36.99. Checking our records our lowest tracked price for this headset was on 28th Nov 2019 which had it priced at $34.99.