What a beast.

4900MQ
32gb Ram
780m GTX
Blu Ray
3d Screen
750gb 7200rpm HDD
80gb mSATA card

I've never had a computer *nearly* this powerful before. I'm playing basically everything maxed.

Wish I had a SSD instead of a HDD but seriously, everything is still fast as hell. No complaints here.

Thumbs up.

 

Okay, actually one question: I notice when I use my touchpad that it will "bounce" back a tiny bit after it hits the place I ended at. Like if I move it 10" across the screen, it will bounce back like maybe .1ish inches. It's really not deal breaking but is a bit disconcerting. Anyone else experience that?

 

You could have a look at your sensitivity options or try updating the touchpad drivers.

 

Good thoughts.

I did both and it doesn't seem to make a difference. Gives the pointer almost an "elastic" feel because it has a little bit of snap back when you move it quickly.

 

You can always upgrade you HDD to an SSD, it's a lot cheaper doing it on your own than through Dell anyways. Personally, if I were in your position and wanted to upgrade, I would get a 256GB or 500GB-ish mSata SSD drive and a 1.5TB-2TB HDD. Put your OS, all your programs, and all your open-world or "large map" games onto the SSD drive, such as Skyrim, GTA, Sleeping Dogs, Planetside, MMOs, etc. The rest of your games can be put on the HDD.

For gaming, which this laptop is made for, an SSD doesn't really help much in terms of frame-rates unless the game is a large open-world game or with huge maps, because the game constantly is being read off the drive. But for others, really all you get is faster loading times in-between levels. With pc gaming being all digital distribution it's nice to have large storage so you don't have to keep deleting/re-downloading your games

 

Great advice, tyvm.

I still need to figure out what's up with this trackpad.

 

Have you tried the trackpad with the machine physically in a different location?

 

Just out of curiosity so said you running nearly everything maxed...what are you not running maxed lol....I think the 780m should handle pretty much everything on ultra.

 

Crysis 3, Metro Last Light.

 

I have to say 3 reason Alienware is supirer then ANY other laptop
1. bottom fan intake waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay more cooler temps
2. Desktop grade GPU fan which is Fu**ing aswesome
3. Nvidia Optimus no need will keep your GPU shut off all the time saving it life during years to come (of course expect when gaming)

 

I"m not sure what you mean.

IF you mean did I attempt to use the trackpad in various locations with the laptop, then yes I have indeed.

 

I say just about everything because I have not tried some of my more graphically intense games, so I can't speak for them. As of right now I have run everything on native resolution 1920x1080 at max without any particular issues. Most recently I was playing XCom: Enemy Within maxed out and the only issues I ever had was when the camera panned very quickly during cutscenes.

However, given the graphical quality of that game (which is rather poor despite cool alien design, the people in it look down right horrid) I'm inclined to believe that is not the 780m struggling to keep up so much as poor coding on the part of the writers.

 

Every game I've tried has been playable in Very High/Ultra, but there are quite a few titles that won't be 1080p / 60 fps on max settings but I haven't tried a single game that wouldn't be a constant 30 fps +. I tend to dial things down a bit to get a minimum of 60 fps, mostly, I'll do 2xMSAA instead of 4 or 8 for instance.

Games that is a challenge on Ultra on my machine:

Metro 2033 (50 fps). Very playable. I've only run this with the GeForce Experience recommended settings which has Advanced PhysX and Advanced DOF set to off. And this quite old game is still a challenge.
Far Cry 3 Blood Dragon (40-60 fps) Strangely enough the original Far Cry 3 runs beautifully.
BF4 40-60 fps in single player. Maybe some patch have or will fixed it, cause I was quite annoyed by the micro stuttering. Multiplayer runs astonishingly well though!
The Witcher 2. They have some ridiculously taxing graphical options in this game, especially for a 2011 title! But dial a few of them down and it runs smooth and still looks absolutely incredible.
Bioshock Infinite. On the Infinite benchmark tool I score above 60 fps, but I noticed some extremely annoying frame drops on ultra which made me put this game on the shelf for a while. Haven't tried it since I unlocked the vbios which might have been the problem.
Tomb Raider 35 fps average if using TressFX, 60+ without it and everything else maxed out.
Shadow Warrior This game is beautiful, but it wasn't smooth enough for me with everything maxed out.
Max Payne 3 Had to turn MSAA down to 2X to get constant 60 fps+
Batman Arkham City Had to turn "DirectX features" off and GeForce Experience recommends the same. Think it's quite poorly optimized. Still looks amazing.
Splinter Cell Blacklist Had to turn AA down a bit I believe.

Then I'm sure there are others like CoH2, Last Light and so on that would struggle not to mention Crysis 3 (Crysis 2 runs great maxed out).

All in all, I'm incredibly impressed and happy with the performance of this laptop. You can run any game in native resolution at a constant 30 fps+, but it's not like every game is a piece of cake maxed out.