Gaming Laptop Analysis

Is the Dell Alienware Area-51M R2 i9-10900 GTX 1660 Ti 32GB RAM 512GB M.2 4K good as a gaming laptop? Ok

Processor - This processor, the Core i9-10900 10-Core 2.80GHz, is excellent and can meet 2023 AAA title requirements with relative ease. Games are beginning to lean on more CPU cores for extra processing. Fortunately this CPU has 10 cores, making it an excellent gamers processor choice.

Graphics Card - The GeForce GTX 1660 Ti 6GB Mobile graphics card is an OK 2023 gaming card, but it will probably have issues next year when trying to run the latest releases. Indy titles and casual gaming should be fine though for some time to come. This GPU has 6GB of VRAM. This is considered a good amount of VRAm for modern games but some graphics solutions have more.

System Memory - The 32GB RAM found in this machine is considered an excellent 2023 amount for modern AAA titles and a solid gaming machine.

Screen Size - A laptop with a 17.3" screen size, like we find on this laptop, puts it into the excellent category for mobile laptops and top end 2023 gaming. Of course it always needs the hardware to backup this up.

Refresh Rate - The higher the screen panel refresh rate, the better for gaming laptops. The refresh rate is the number of times a second the screen is capable of refreshing the game’s image. If a laptop can deliver 100 frames per second (FPS) in a game and your laptop has a 60Hz refresh rate, then you will only get a max of 60 frames per second. The higher the refresh rate and the game’s FPS the smoother the sharpness is as the screen view moves around in game. So with those thoughts in mind and how the refresh rate impacts gaming, the review laptop has an ok refresh rate available to it. The 60Hz is certainly not great though, and if your hardware can deliver better FPS than the refresh rate, then perhaps shop around for a better refresh rate panel.

GeForce GTX 1660 Ti 6GB Mobile graphics card gaming performance in the Dell Alienware Area-51M R2 i9-10900 GTX 1660 Ti 32GB RAM 512GB M.2 4K laptop

Getting a good price to performance gaming laptop is what we are all trying to do when looking for our next mobile machine. The key component in this is usually the graphics card. So we will of course be considering this hardware setup and how well it could run modern popular games like Grand Theft Auto VI, Star Citizen and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 (2022) to help us know if this graphics card and laptop is a good price to performance point. We do this by considering the gaming frame rates achieved at its native 4K resolution while the games would be running at Ultra video settings. The GeForce GTX 1660 Ti 6GB Mobile card that's powering the Dell Alienware Area-51M R2 i9-10900 GTX 1660 Ti 32GB RAM 512GB M.2 4K laptop, when compared to today’s top 500 most demanding games, can run 488 at min system specs and will run 255 games when comparing to their increased recommended system requirements.

Comparing Dell Alienware Area-51M R2 i9-10900 GTX 1660 Ti 32GB RAM 512GB M.2 4K to today’s best price to performance laptop ranges

As you have probably discovered during your research into buying your next gaming laptop, getting an up-to-date value assessment that enables you to compare a laptop’s hardware performance against today’s games is tricky. And especially so, when we factor in all variations of hardware and prices that the Alienware Area-51M R2 comes with. What we have done in this Dell Alienware Area-51M R2 i9-10900 GTX 1660 Ti 32GB RAM 512GB M.2 4K laptop review is give a price to performance rating to help standardise our comparisons.

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 5.3 for P2P. This Alienware Area-51M R2 configuration is placed at 13th position, when we order the range by their price to performance ratings. Those getting closer to the 1st position in this list will be better gaming laptops for their price.

Now how does this laptop match to the top laptop for P2P today? The top laptop for P2P is the ASUS TUF A15 R7 4800H GTX 1660 Ti 16GB RAM 512GB M.2 and has a price of $999. This Dell Alienware Area-51M R2 i9-10900 GTX 1660 Ti 32GB RAM 512GB M.2 4K laptop is currently 206% worse rating when comparing price to performance. Another one to consider is the 2nd placed Price to Performance laptop, the MSI Bravo 15 R7 4800H RX 5500M 16GB RAM 512GB M.2. This one has a price listed as $1049 and our laptop gets 167% worse against its price to performance rating.

How does the Dell Alienware Area-51M R2 i9-10900 GTX 1660 Ti 32GB RAM 512GB M.2 4K laptop compare to the best CPU performance focused laptops and today’s most popular games?

Now we will see if our laptop compares favourably against the top CPU performance focused mobile PC that is currently available. Using the ASUS ROG Zephyrus G14 R9 4900HS RTX 2060 Mobile 16GB RAM 1.0TB M.2 laptop for the best CPU laptop performer comparison tests with our laptop. This puts the top end Ryzen 9 4900HS 8-Core 3.0GHz processor from that laptop against our review laptop’s Core i9-10900 10-Core 2.80GHz, and this comparison shows that laptop to be 17% better in performance compared to our review laptop.

A snapshot today of performance for our processor, we can currently see it beating 483 of the 500 most demanding games available right now. This is considering their recommended system requirements. For a the top 500 Minimum system specs this is 500 games.

When compared to the most popular games around today, against their recommended processor requirements, our laptop CPU performs as follows - Grand Theft Auto VI our laptop CPU is 21% better and then looking at Star Citizen our laptop CPU is 7% better and finally compared to Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 (2022) it has a performance difference : 21% better.

How does the Dell Alienware Area-51M R2 i9-10900 GTX 1660 Ti 32GB RAM 512GB M.2 4K laptop compare to the best graphics card performance focused laptops and today’s most popular games?

One of the most important focuses of a gaming PC is the graphics card and our review laptop is certainly no different. As such we will want to know how well our Alienware Area-51M R2 laptop performs in the graphical visuals area compared to what is available on the current laptop market. A great way to consider this is by putting it into a comparison against a well priced laptop that has the most powerful laptop GPU around at the moment, and then we can review its performance against that top graphics card laptop. Lets grab a graphics focused laptop for comparison then. We have chosen the MSI GT76 Titan i9-10900K RTX 2080 Super 64GB RAM 2.0TB M.2 4K laptop for its graphical performance. This big hitting GPU laptop comes with a GeForce RTX 2080 Super 8GB video card in it that performs 67% better if we bench it against our laptop’s GeForce GTX 1660 Ti 6GB Mobile graphics hardware.

Our laptop GPU beats 255 games recommended system requirements when looking at today’s top 500 most demanding games. This number changes to 488 games if we compare to the top 500 most demanding games for minimum system requirements.

Recommended graphics requirements for modern games increase all the time, so we thought we would compare the performance of our laptop graphics card to some popular games of today. First off there is Star Citizen and our laptop GPU delivers 25% better performance compared to that game’s requirement. Next we have Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 (2022) in which we see our laptop graphics has 22% worse performance compared to the game's video card specs. And then there is 22% worse performance when we put our laptop gpu against Grand Theft Auto VI recommended specs.

Today's Best Priced Mouse and Headset for Dell Alienware Area-51M R2 i9-10900 GTX 1660 Ti 32GB RAM 512GB M.2 4K laptop

Of our regular price tracked gaming mice the best value mouse today is the Kayinuo M738 Gaming Mouse 3200DPI wired 6 Buttons. With its a current price of $12.99 it should work well with this Dell Alienware Area-51M R2 i9-10900 GTX 1660 Ti 32GB RAM 512GB M.2 4K laptop. Our suggested mouse has actually lowered its price during these past two weeks, dropping by $32.26. This was part of the reason we selected it as a good mouse for the price and a great accompanying peripheral for 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.

Of our regular price tracked gaming headset the best value headset today is the Corsair HS45-7.1 Surround. With its a current price of $36.99 it should work well with this Dell Alienware Area-51M R2 i9-10900 GTX 1660 Ti 32GB RAM 512GB M.2 4K laptop. Out of interest our lowest price tracked on this headset was on 28th Nov 2019 where we saw it for $34.99.