Battle of the notebooks. G75vw-bbk5 Vs Alienware MX17

So having more then a few notebooks and a pile of high end hardware from my benchmarking days i decided to do a few fights of notebooks that are close to the same price. In this fight its clear who won but lets go ahead and check it out.

This is niddy griddy what one should i get if im looking at these two.

System specs....Well the ones we care about

G75vw-bbk5 Specs $1,250

i7 3610QM
8gb of DDR3 1600
GTX 660M
1920X1080
1tb 5,300rpm drive
b,g,n wifi
Blue tooth? Says its installed but i dont use it so meh
4 X USB 3.0
HDMI and Mini display ports.

Alienware MX17 $1,499

i7 3610QM
6gb of DDR3
1600 X 900
500gig 7,200 rpm drive
a,g,n with blue tooth 4.0
4 X USB 3.0
HDMI and Display ports.


So i'll start this with wow. Dell think you could give us a little hardware? I mean the specs for that price as pretty sad.


Displays. The Alienware's stock display is trash. Its sad when my Galaxy Nexus almost has a higher resolution then a 17 inch laptop. Angles are pretty bad picture quality is bad at best. Asus is 1920X1080 viewing angles are slightly better then most for this price range and the colors and picture are pretty good. G75 is the clear winner.

Ram. Both use DDR3 1600mhz ram but the Asus comes packing 8gigs why the Alienware is lacking with 6gb. The bare min that should be in any gaming system is 8gb so again Asus wins.

Cpu's. Both are i7 3610QM's so this is a Draw

Storage. So do you want longer load times or use a few external drives? The Asus gives you a slow 1tb 5,300rpm drive and the Alienware has a much faster 500gig 7,200rpm drive but the drive in the Asus is an Advanced format drive. Alienware is the winner

GPU's Both use the GTX 660M however i will tell you that the one in my G75VW overclocks much higher then the Alienwares. This could be that Asus uses GK107's that are binned higher or the Alienware's having problems supplying the card with the power it needs when its overclocked. Winner Asus

Cooling. No shocker here but the cooling on the G75 is much much better then the MX17. I also found that Alienware aka Dell uses way to much thermal paste and the heatpipes are smaller then the Asus. Winner Asus.

Looks. Both look good. One you have a sleek looking system thats looks are not flashy but grab attention. the other is pretty flashy and will get your attention pretty easy. There is no winner here since its all based on what you like.

Keyboard. Both work well. But the back lighting on the G75 is junk. The Alienwares is much better and the lighting color can be changed. Winner Alienware

Sound. When you set up the G75 the sound is pretty good. Not the best but it works. Same with the MX17 but the G75 does go a bit louder but to me the MX17 just sounded a little better. Winner Alienware.


Support. Asus support blows at best. Your warranty is useless pretty much. My dealings with Asus have always been painful long and made me wish i never bought the product. However Dell's is much better. After you get patched to India and get someone you can understand they are fast to send out a tech to replace parts the next day. However their techs are pretty bad a few times i had to do the repairs for them and show them how. Find out who has your service contract when you have a dell and call them o see who services your area and ask them about them. Winner Alienware/Dell

With a $250 price difference and pretty bad system specs for the basic entry MX17 the Asus is the clear winner. However if you use the system as a desktop and you need the peace of mine of a solid warranty the MX17 is not to bad. But for $250 you can RAID two SSD's on the G75 "With TRIM enabled" and even pile on more hurt to the MX17 why staying at the same price point.

Alienware you are paying the the name and for the "Oh he has a Alienware he must be a pro gamer" But i will say that Asus is becoming the same way. When the G series launched is was a great deal now there's better deals out there and soon they to will be like Alienware and underspeced and overpriced.


Now i know some Alienware fan boys will come up and say well thats the cheap one you need to get the real MX17. The $2,550 one. Well i have the GTX 660M in that G75 overclocked to match a stock GTX 675 so from a price point that that G75 will knock out that MX17's tooth at 1/2 the price and my EON17-S would why still being cheaper would made that thing look like a netbook in all the benchmarks.


So if your looking at the two and your going to get one and you wont buy any other brand because you like the looks of these two and i cant talk you into buy somthing worth the money then i say take your $1,500 pick up a G75 with 2 SSD's. Or take it buy the notebook and get a nice mouse and stuff.

 

Can you upgrade the gpu on the ASUS?

 

Not in the G75, the mxm structure they used this time is way too short and grew even wider than the previous 460M, totally off from the standard MXM type B cards.

If you want to use anything stronger than GTX670M then the G75VW is at its dead end, but the Alienware M17X is GPU upgradable. Strictly speaking, Alienware values a lot more than ASUS now consider they are upgradable.

 

The biggest difference is the that the M17x offers the 660M as a stock option you can upgrade it to the 680M or 7970M which is why it will win in comparison.

Both are overpriced compared to a sager or clevo which now offers a backlit keyboard to go with its other benefits over both of them also.

 

the m17x strength is its customization.
Better CPU, GPU, RAM, and Hard drive options and upgradability all around.
Obviously that comes with a price though.

Not going to bash asus though. for the low-mid range systems, they are the best for the money besides sager, and their looks blow sagers out of the water. I also love the fact they come with a blue ray player. Unfortunately you have to pay to get a BRP on AW laptops (although the fact AW uses a slot load CD drive makes up for that a little bit).

 

Because for the price of the upgrade and the price diff. we can buy a new G75. This was a fight between bottom level 17inch systems that the average joe will be deciding between. When we consider upgrading gpu's were pushing a $1,500 over priced system to $2,050 on the low end of the price. And anyone with a GTX 680M and considered that 1600X900 display is better off with a ultrabook. When we fit it with a proper display that's $2,200 that's almost $1,000 more then the G75. As you can see the upgrade of the GPU means nothing since for the price of it you can just wait until the next gen gpu's come out and get a whole new system. The users who these brands and availability apeal to care less about this and wont spend that much more to get that.

Personalty i would love to give it points for this but the fact of the matter is mobile gpu's are so expensive i cant. And those used i tell people to avoid since most people will run them at 90c +. Put out a mobile GTX 680M new cheaper than what they are "$800-$1,000 for new bare cards" get it in the $500 price range and we can talk. In the current price range this puts it in the place with extreme edition intels and very very very few people buy them because of the price "i have them"

 

You can upgrade the M17x's screen to 1080p, and 1080p 120HZ 3-d...

 

Yes that add's even more to the price. and you can do the same with the Asus or buy the version that has the 3D display with the Asus.

The point was two bottom end common systems people buy when they walk into a best buy. Not if they spend $2,000 in upgrades what is better. Hell give me enough money and i'll run a GTX 690 as a EPU on that G75. But im pretty sure the average joe is not going to do this or do any upgrades outside the hd's and ram. They are going to walk into a best buy with money and look at these two systems "Both in stock at my local best buy" Chances are they want to game and they dont want to spend time taking it apart when its first out of the box or some dont want to order one online they want to pick it up and use it that day.

Last time i was in Best buy a guy was looking at the MX17 and told me this one is $200 more so its better. I then broke it down to him about its specs vs that of a G75 and then tossed in Sager and a few others to the mix to show him that for what the MX17 base model is. Its about $600 over priced.


I am not a fan boy. I have had a few Alienware systems notebooks and desktops and i found they had some really cool features and details to them. However i find them extremely over priced and quality has been going down since the dell take over and prices going up. Will i buy one? Depends on the price and specs but as of right now no. Do i own them yes i got 2 MX17's sitting right here because i was sent one as a sample when it came out and the other i won. Do i like them? Yeah i do.

 

Which is neither the Asus nor the Alienware it is the Sager or Clevo. It is cheaper than both and more powerful.

You can call Alienware overpriced but at least they offer the hardware Asus is overpriced without allowing their customers any room in terms of GPU.

 

Hey Bignaz, nice thread man. Okay, how about mine M17x-r2 vs. your G75vw-bbk5

G75vw-bbk5 Specs $1,250

i7 3610QM
8gb of DDR3 1600
GTX 660M
1920X1080
1tb 5,300rpm drive
b,g,n wifi
Blue tooth? Says its installed but i dont use it so meh
4 X USB .0
HDMI and Mini display ports

vs.

Alienware M17X-r2 $2,500
Anodized Aluminum
i7 820QM
5870 x2 in crossfire
6gb of DDR3 1333
RGB 1920 X 1200
blu ray drive (reader)
1tb 7,200 rpm hard drive
4 X USB 2.0
HDMI and Display ports.

Old tech. vs. new tech. By the way this is just for fun

 

Edit the first post, find "then" and replace with "than". It'll make it less painful to read.

 

I really hate it when people spell check posts, but If you must then so shall I. You missed out the word "it" after "replace" in your sentence.

 

I never post about spelling/grammar errors, but this one just bothered me every time I read "then". In my post I think "it" would be optional since my intent was to describe what to place into the "find and replace" dialog boxes.

Have a good day! :thumbsup:

 

Grammatical*