alienware 17 for engineering

hey, I'm planing on buying alienware for uni. I'm doing mechanical engineering. do you think its suitable for my course? and i like to play games too so i was hoping it'll fit for both

 

I wouldn't see why not.

i7 Quad-Core Haswell for good cpu power.
Up to 32GB of ram so you shouldn't run out of memory
Dual HDDs + mSATA + Another HDD if you take out the optical bay (HDD space shouldn't be an issue)
780M for the best gaming experience and also performs decent in OpenGL apps. (If you'll be running OpenGL apps)
1080p screen resolution so you shouldn't be limited in what you can fit on the display. (I had a Precision M4800 with a 3200x1800 display previously and find the 1080p screen on the AW17 to be fine)

It'll be a bit big/heavy compared to 15" laptops, but if that doesn't bother you then I'd say it'll be fine. :thumbsup:

 

I have to say, I have an m17x r2 and it weights wayyyyyy more than the Alienware 17. Also, keep an eye out for the 880m, I spoke to a rep today to weasel some info out on release and he said this Friday, same available processors.

 

It was actually released today

 

Hi Natalia! Any ETA on the 3d 120hz screen released with the 880m? I waiting for it to be available so I can re-order

 

This set-up will be more than enough for mechanical engineering. I think there's only 2 computers (out of 100) at my office with 32GB of RAM and those are the "super computers" that run 3D simulations and models continuously at, up to 1 month intervals.

 

Go for it you wont regret it.

 

No info on that unfortunately, but if we hear anything, we will definitely post on Facebook and Twitter.

 

Alienware is a fine choice. I chose a radeon 7970m card over nvidia because runs circles around it in professional applications, while sacrificing a little gaming performance. If you're looking to save a penny or two, I'd advise getting a M17x R4 or M18x R2 with radeon 7970m cards.

 

I'm planning on buying ALIENWARE M17XR5 actually

 

That's precisely what I did...I paid like half the price of a new Alienware and got excellent performance... BTW, studying for engineering degree here too...

 

I am in the same boat, engineering managment, and am still deciding if I go with a 7970m (or a R9 m290x in a R5) or a m6600/m6700 with a m6100. I have read quite abit on this matter and have seen that a 780m/880m is not good for what we do, not even ideal but really not good. AMD is much better in this department. So check a R5 withe the R9 m290x,

 

We had no serious processing tasks to do at home on my engineering course (electronics) anything that needed it we could connect to the server on campus and process it there.

 

Agreed. Its similar here too for me.. BTW meaker, what university are you studying at here in UK? (Imperial here )

 

ah well in my case (australia) sometimes we have assignment that require us to design stuff on CAD or solid work at home so i can't do it on my mac.

 

Should be an issue on mac to be honest. Get Bootcamp or one of those VM Windows solutions... I have plenty of friends who do the same and they run CAD (Creo) and Solidworks with no issues...