Gaming Laptop Analysis

Is the Dell Alienware Area-51M R2 i9-10900K RTX 2080 Super Mobile 64GB RAM 512GB M.2 4K good as a gaming laptop? Excellent

Processor - The Core i9-10900K 10-Core 3.7GHz is an excellent gaming CPU for 2021. This CPU comes with 10 cores, which is excellent providing it extra resource to chew through game processing when required.

Graphics Card - A GeForce RTX 2080 Super Mobile graphics card that is housed in this laptop is excellent for modern AAA gaming during 2021. This GPU has 8GB of VRAM. This is excellent and plenty for modern AAA gaming.

System Memory - The system memory (64GB) we find in this gaming laptop can meet modern AAA game requirements. This amount of RAM is an excellent 2021 gaming laptop choice, that will help meet game requirements now and into the future.

Screen Size - This laptop’s 17.3" screen can deliver a good viewable amount of real estate for modern games and in terms of screen size this is a step towards the laptop being an excellent gaming laptop choice. You can of course game on smaller screen laptops, but in game menus could become tricky to see on smaller screens.

Refresh Rate - I personally wouldnt consider getting a gaming laptop with a screen panel that had a refresh rate of 60Hz. The refresh rate number is the number of times an image can be displayed to the screen by the laptop's own screen. So if I had paid more money for a good graphics card and CPU and RAM then even though the hardware might be able to get 150FPS on Ultra settings in the latest games, the laptop screen would only display 60FPS. The more FPS capable of being displayed to screen the smoother and sharper the response of the game you are playing. An ideal minimum refresh rate amount would be around 144Hz for a great gaming laptop, but you can certainly get some with even higher refresh rates than that. The refresh rate for this laptop is just ok by modern gaming standards, with a 60Hz version panel available. You will want a higher refresh rate laptop screen if the laptop regularly gets a higher game frame per second number than the refresh rate number. So if you are getting 85FPS and your screen refresh rate is 60Hz, the laptop will always cap off at 60FPS, regardless of what the hardware can return.

GeForce RTX 2080 Super Mobile graphics card gaming performance in the Dell Alienware Area-51M R2 i9-10900K RTX 2080 Super Mobile 64GB RAM 512GB M.2 4K 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 Far Cry 6, New World and Battlefield 2042 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 4K resolution, and at Ultra video settings. Coming loaded with the GeForce RTX 2080 Super Mobile, this laptop is capable of beating 500 games at their minimum system specs and 491 games at their recommended system specs. This is when looking at today’s top 500 most demanding games.

Comparing Dell Alienware Area-51M R2 i9-10900K RTX 2080 Super Mobile 64GB 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 i9-10900K RTX 2080 Super Mobile 64GB RAM 512GB M.2 4K laptop review is give a price to performance rating to help standardise our comparisons.

The Dell Alienware Area-51M R2 i9-10900K RTX 2080 Super Mobile 64GB RAM 512GB M.2 4K is getting a 4 for its P2P score out of 10. This relative value will change as game performance, hardware costs and laptop expectations adjust over time. This Alienware Area-51M R2 configuration is placed at 53rd 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 i9-10900K RTX 2080 Super Mobile 64GB RAM 512GB M.2 4K laptop is currently 281% worse rating when comparing price to performance. Again only comparing against Price to Performance we can see that the second best model in today’s P2P ranking list is the MSI Bravo 15 R7 4800H RX 5500M 16GB RAM 512GB M.2 laptop, and our laptop is 233% worse when compared against this price to performance rating. The price of the 2nd best laptop is listed as $1049.

How does the Dell Alienware Area-51M R2 i9-10900K RTX 2080 Super Mobile 64GB RAM 512GB M.2 4K 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 R2 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. The CPU performance laptop we picked today is the ASUS ROG Zephyrus G14 R9 4900HS RTX 2060 Mobile 16GB RAM 1.0TB M.2. Its processor is the Ryzen 9 4900HS 8-Core 3.0GHz which delivers 1% better performance when stacked against our own review laptop’s Core i9-10900K 10-Core 3.7GHz.

Interestingly we can see 499 games recommended system requirements are lower in performance than our laptop’s CPU performance capability. This is when we look at the top 500 most demanding games around today. For minimum system requirements in this same area the number is 500 games are worse than our cpu performance, again looking at the top 500 most demanding minimum system requirements.

A game’s listed recommended CPU requirements are a good way to compare the performance of our laptop CPU. Lets see today's popular titles up against our laptop processor. First off let's look at New World which shows our laptop CPU has 56% better performance than it. How about Battlefield 2042, where we see our CPU is 47% better. Then there is 32% better performance when compared against today’s most popular title, Far Cry 6.

How does the Dell Alienware Area-51M R2 i9-10900K RTX 2080 Super Mobile 64GB RAM 512GB M.2 4K laptop compare to the best graphics card performance focused laptops and today’s most popular games?

Wondering how strong this laptop is in the GPU department, then let's have a look at it compared to one of the current best GPU performing laptops available today and this should show us the relative graphics performance of our review model. Lets look at the MSI GT76 Titan i9-10900K RTX 2080 Super 64GB RAM 2.0TB M.2 4K laptop due to its graphics processing power. The GPU it houses is ideal for comparison benchmarking, because it currently has one of the best laptop graphics solutions, at the cheapest laptop price. Its GPU is the GeForce RTX 2080 Super 8GB which we compare to the GeForce RTX 2080 Super Mobile graphics card in our review laptop. Our performance comparison shows the top end laptop GPU to be 11% better in performance compared to our laptop’s graphics processing power.

The GeForce RTX 2080 Super Mobile Graphics Card found in this machine can currently run 491 games of the top 500 most demanding games right now. This is basically how many recommended game system requirements our laptop GPU beats in performance today, but we will update this figure as new games come out. This is 500 games when looking at beating minimum system requirements.

When compared to the most popular games around today, against their recommended graphics requirements, our laptop graphics card performs as follows - Far Cry 6 our laptop video card is 15% better and then looking at New World our laptop GPU is 87% better and finally compared to Battlefield 2042 it has a performance difference : 1% better.

Today's Best Priced Mouse and Headset for Dell Alienware Area-51M R2 i9-10900K RTX 2080 Super Mobile 64GB RAM 512GB M.2 4K laptop

Of the mice we monitor and price track, today’s top mouse is the Kayinuo M738 Gaming Mouse 3200DPI wired 6 Buttons, 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. Our lowest price tracked for this mouse was marked down at $11.99, which we spotted on 15th Aug 2020.

We price track a number of good value gaming headset and the one that currently stands out is the Corsair HS45-7.1 Surround, which is currently available for $36.99. For reference, our lowest tracked price for this headset was on 28th Nov 2019 and it was priced at $34.99.