Thinking About Alienware 13 - advice?

Really torn on the new AW 13. I'm not a huge gamer, but my current desktop PC is an AMD A8-5500 w/ a GeForce GTX760. I'm noticing BF4 is really lagging when I switched to this AMD PC after my i5 PC died. I'm guessing this i5 laptop with the 760 card running in the accelerator will be a decent boost over my current AMD PC. But hate that there's no i7 option. I know for pure gaming I should just invest in another PC but having a single laptop for business and gaming at homeis appealing. Trying to decide whether to go with AW 13 and accelerator or just get ultrabook+ build up another gaming PC.

 

Don't get the AW13. The CPU is a 15W CPU that will bottleneck pretty much any GPU you choose to put in the Accelerator box. You will be looking at performance close to mid end mobile GPUs.

Get a different notebook with a dedicated GPU and a i5 non ULV or i7

 

Wouldn't be a better idea to upgrade the CPU on your desktop? It circumvents the need for a gaming laptop in the first place.

 

No question upgrading my PC alone is the lowest cost option, but I also have a Surface Pro 3 I'm considering selling. The idea being that the AW13 now replaces my laptop for work and travel productivity as well as my existing AMD desktop for gaming at home on my 1440p monitor (using the accelerator with my GTX760). I like the idea that I can upgrade the graphics card on this laptop down the road and still get the flexibility a 13" laptop offers. If only it came with an i7.

 

The i7 option will arrive when Broadwell-U hits the market (Jan. to Feb.). If you want to wait a couple of months, then you know what to buy. I think the CPU performance of the i7 Broadwell-U could be better than your current AMD processor, but I am unsure of that; as well, you should be familiar with the performance of a ULV processor since that is what is in a Surface Pro 2/3.
Impatient? That's alright, there are other laptops on the market. How big does the laptop need to be?

 

you will be ok with the alienware 13.

 

the cpu on the new alienware 13 will handle any no cpu demanding gaming out there with no problem!

 

thinking about upgrading graphics card in the future is absurd, AW 13 bottlenecks even the current GPU's, so no need to think about future GPU's, even the i7 release after few months will be a wimpy ULV part.

Start a new thread here: What Notebook Should I Buy? - A Laptop Buyers Guide and check out your options in portable yet powerful laptops or upgrade you desktop if you don't find anything suitable.

 

If your not much of a gamer there are much better alternatives, cheaper too.
Don't be fooled by the AW branding.

 

I was considering purchasing the AW 13 a few days ago. But the CPU is really putting me off. Not only is it a 15w TPD processor, but it's a BGA package as well, so it doesn't have a "socket" You're pretty much stuck with what you purchase. The 4210u CPU, bottlenecks any gpu, even the gtx 850m in other laptops, let alone the gtx 860m, and lets not even talk about the alienware amplifier. I think I will be skipping out on this. I really need to replace my 4 year old m14x, I thought the alienware 13 would've, but it can't. I will not give up my quad core i7 cpu, it's still multiple times better than the 4210U, even though it's almost 4 years old. Well, that's just my view. Don't get me wrong through, the alienware 13 will still be a great performer for the price. But what gets me, their Dell XPS 13 with the same CPU is 1199, while the alienware 13 with the gtx 860m is 999…I wonder where they're cutting costs.

If you don't game too much, or don't want to run BF4 on 1080p on ultra, then yeah it'll be perfect for you. Laptops with quad core i7's and the gtx 860m can pretty much run BF4 maxed out (almost) I doubt the alienware 13 could. Also, as far as premium ultra books go, the AW13 doesn't seem to use premium materials. Maybe that's how they were able to include a gtx 860m in it and keep it 200 cheaper than the dell XPS.

Like others have said, it's a horrible time for someone to be in the market for any gaming laptop. Waiting for the new 900m cards, broadwell delays plus skylake, computer manufacturers holding back on performance, and to top it all off, having an OS that no one really wants to use.

And I know the Alienware 13 is supposed to be a successor to the m11x, and not the 14. I'm just hoping for an Alienware 15.

On the Geekbench 3 test, which measures overall performance, the Alienware posted 5,261, which is nearly 1,000 points higher than the 4,332 ultraportable average. However, the Razer Blade 14, which has a 2.4-GHz Intel Core i7-4702HQ CPU, hit 11,497 while the Lenovo Y50-70 Touch (2.4-GHz Intel Core i7-4700HQ) took the top spot with 12,748. - See more at: http://www.laptopmag.com/reviews/laptops/alienware-13#sthash.ZZdgGIh5.dpuf

But hey, in a few months when broadwell comes out, and it does end up being a worthwhile laptop, it'll replace both my m14x and my macbook air 13. But I'm more of a "tick" guy than a "tock" Guess I'll just wait for skylake

 

For the $1199 XPS 13 compared to the $999 AW13, it is obviously much thinner (more comparable to a macbook air), a full HD screen, a touchscreen and a better battery.
(What's funny is that dell is not even selling this particular model in my country, the entry model where I live has a 256GB SSD and an i7 4510 CPU)

I'm also considering buying an Alienware 13, but the 4210u seems really too slow for anything than gaming on the go. It will sure bottleneck a GTX 970/980 in the graphics amplifier, it will be quite slow for professional tasks (I'm a developer, number of cores and frequency directly affect compilation speed) and I'm not even sure I'll be able to play some newer games because they require a quad-core CPU.

In this price range I guess I was expecting something at least comparable to other non-ultrabook laptops in terms of processing power but I guess there is no simple solution to handle heat issues when both the CPU and GPU are 100% used.