Gaming Laptop Analysis

Is the Dell Alienware M15 R3 i9-10980HK RTX 2070 Super Mobile 32GB RAM 512GB M.2 4K good as a gaming laptop? Excellent

Processor - This Core i9-10980HK 8-Core 2.40GHz processor in the laptop is an excellent gaming CPU choice for 2021 gaming. This CPU comes with 8 cores, which is excellent providing it extra resource to chew through game processing when required.

Graphics Card - A GeForce RTX 2070 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 - Today’s AAA 2021 gaming is easily covered by the 32GB RAM in this machine, making this an excellent gaming laptop choice.

Screen Size - This is a good screen size for gamers. This laptop has a 15.6" and is suitable for running new release titles during the 2021 gaming year. While a smaller laptop provides better portability than perhaps a 15 or 17 inch gaming laptop, it will also compromise your viewability when in game.

Refresh Rate - Look for higher refresh rate hertz for a gaming laptop. Ideally around 120Hz or more refresh rate on a gaming laptop screen. The laptop can only deliver FPS(frames per second) up to the listed refresh rate. So if you have hardware in your laptop that can turn out awesome frame rates on all the latest AAA titles, but a 60hz refresh rate, your laptop will be stuck at a maximum of 60FPS in all games. With just 60Hz refresh rate this is ok and passable for gaming, but ideally you are looking for a screen with a higher rate.

GeForce RTX 2070 Super Mobile graphics card gaming performance in the Dell Alienware M15 R3 i9-10980HK RTX 2070 Super Mobile 32GB RAM 512GB M.2 4K laptop

Gamers looking at laptops will be needing to carefully consider the performance of the machine in relation to modern, often demanding, games. So getting the mobile graphics selected correctly is key to identifying the best price-to-performance laptop for you. We will take a look at the hardware and graphics card in this laptop in relation to how well it can deliver frame rates when running modern demanding or popular games like, Far Cry 6 or New World. We will consider the laptop when it runs these games in ultra graphics settings while gaming at its native 4K screen resolution. Now this comes with the GeForce RTX 2070 Super Mobile installed as the mobile graphics card, and at the moment it is capable of running 499 games at their minimum graphics system specs and then running 472 recommended specs of today’s top 500 most demanding games.

Comparing Dell Alienware M15 R3 i9-10980HK RTX 2070 Super Mobile 32GB RAM 512GB M.2 4K to today’s best price to performance laptop ranges

We really want to see how the Dell Alienware M15 R3 i9-10980HK RTX 2070 Super Mobile 32GB RAM 512GB M.2 4K will compare across all permutations of the Alienware M15 R3 model range. This will give us a good sense of how well it sits in terms of cost to performance within its own lineup, and will better help us decide if this laptop represents good value to us today.

With a P2P rating of 6.5 today the Dell Alienware M15 R3 i9-10980HK RTX 2070 Super Mobile 32GB RAM 512GB M.2 4K. Our value to performance rating score will auto adjust as new hardware capability improves and prices drop. This laptop’s configuration, when compared to its own Alienware M15 R3 lineup, is currently placed at 15th once we order it by the price to performance figure. Obviously scoring towards the 1st position is preferable.

Lets now see how our Dell Alienware M15 R3 i9-10980HK RTX 2070 Super Mobile 32GB RAM 512GB M.2 4K laptop compares to the best P2P laptop, which is currently the ASUS TUF A15 R7 4800H GTX 1660 Ti 16GB RAM 512GB M.2. Our review laptop has 161% worse rating in price to performance and the best laptop for P2P has a listed price of $999. The 2nd best model for Price to Performance ratings today is the MSI Bravo 15 R7 4800H RX 5500M 16GB RAM 512GB M.2. It’s price is listed as $1049. Comparing our Alienware M15 R3 laptop on its P2P shows our review model to have 128% worse Price to Performance score when compared against the 2nd best laptop range for P2P.

How does the Dell Alienware M15 R3 i9-10980HK RTX 2070 Super Mobile 32GB RAM 512GB M.2 4K laptop compare to the best CPU performance focused laptops and today’s most popular games?

As a point of benchmark lets see how well our laptop looks when directly compared on processing performance against the top CPU focused laptop currently available. We will choose the ASUS ROG Zephyrus G14 R9 4900HS RTX 2060 Mobile 16GB RAM 1.0TB M.2 laptop for our CPU comparison tests as that laptop currently has the best CPU in it at the cheapest laptop price. Its CPU is the Ryzen 9 4900HS 8-Core 3.0GHz which we will compare to our review laptop’s Core i9-10980HK 8-Core 2.40GHz processor. Our performance comparison shows the top end laptop CPU to be 23% better in performance compared to our laptop’s processor.

Today there are 474 games recommended system requirements that are worse than our CPU’s performance capability, this is when we look at the top 500 most demanding games right now. This figure becomes 500 games, when we look at the 500 demanding games for minimum processor system requirements.

But the real test is seeing how well the laptop CPU performs against today's popular games. Our Core i9-10980HK 8-Core 2.40GHz compared against recommended processor requirements for Far Cry 6 delivers 17% better performance while against New World it’s 17% better and finally compared to Battlefield 2042 it has a performance difference : 35% better.

How does the Dell Alienware M15 R3 i9-10980HK RTX 2070 Super Mobile 32GB RAM 512GB M.2 4K laptop compare to the best graphics card performance focused laptops and today’s most popular games?

You will likely be considering buying a graphics and pixel crunching laptop perhaps to meet the latest and future game requirements. We will therefore be wondering how our Alienware M15 R3 review laptop competes against other GPU centric laptops in the gaming laptop market. To give us a bit of insight we will compare our laptop with a leading GPU performance laptop and see how its graphics capability performs against it. 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 27% better if we bench it against our laptop’s GeForce RTX 2070 Super Mobile graphics hardware.

A quick review of the number of games our laptop Graphics Card can run at recommended requirements is 472, taken from the top 500 most demanding games today. For min GPU specs this figure for number of games it can run is 499.

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 New World and our laptop GPU delivers 64% better performance compared to that game’s requirement. Next we have Battlefield 2042 in which we see our laptop graphics has 11% worse performance compared to the game's video card specs. And then there is 1% better performance when we put our laptop gpu against Far Cry 6 recommended specs.

Today's Best Priced Mouse and Headset for Dell Alienware M15 R3 i9-10980HK RTX 2070 Super Mobile 32GB 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. Today's best value and good quality mouse has enjoyed a price reduction of $32.26, and provides another reason for us to suggest it to compliment this laptop. Our mice price tracker had this mouse marked at its lowest price on 15th Aug 2020, where it cost $11.99.

Incidentally our price track research shows us that a good gaming headset is the Corsair HS45-7.1 Surround. Its price tag today is $36.99 and is topping our price tracking charts as a best value headset. The lowest price recorded by us so far for the headset is $34.99 recorded at 28th Nov 2019.