Nvidia’s hot new RTX graphics cards are finally hitting gaming laptops, and it just so happens that our sister site, Laptop Mag, got its hands on the Alienware Area-51m with Nvidia's RTX 2080 GPU.
Based on our testing, this is the fastest gaming laptop ever. And both the CPU and GPU are upgradeable, which is a first for laptops.
This baby is equipped with the most powerful GPU currently available for a laptop, the Nvidia GeForce RTX 2080 GPU with 8GB of VRAM, and it’s paired with a 3.6-GHz Intel Core i9-9900K desktop processor, 64GB of RAM and a pair of 1TB PCIe M.2 SSDs in RAID 0 configuration.
How much does a monster like that cost? Oh, just $5,099, but don’t worry, you’ll get exactly what you paid for. (And the starting price is a more palatable $2,549.
Overall Performance
On the Geekbench 4 synthetic benchmark, which measures the overall performance of a laptop’s processor, the Area-51m scored 29,989, crushing the 21,118 premium gaming laptop average. Its competition, the Aorus X9 (Core i9-8950HK, 25,915), MSI GT75 Titan (Core i9-8950HK, 22,765) and Origin PC Eon 17-X (Core i7-8700K, 21,273), all trailed behind with their less powerful CPUs.
MORE: Alienware Area-51m - Full Review
Rise of the Tomb Raider
On the Rise of the Tomb Raider benchmark on Very High at 1080p, the Area-51m achieved 92 frames per second, which washed away the 63-fps premium gaming laptop average and even the GT75 Titan’s RTX 2080 (76 fps). Despite being armed with previous generation GTX 1080 GPUs, the Aorus X9 (73 fps) and Eon 17-X (69 fps) scored solid marks.
Hitman
The Area 51-m blasted through the Hitman benchmark (Ultra, 1080p) at 143 fps with the GT75 Titan nipping at its heels, at 140 fps. The RTX laptops crushed the Eon 17-X, Aorus X9 and category average, which all landed at 96 fps.
Grand Theft Auto V
Despite the GT75 Titan’s persistence to keep up, the Area-51m was the only laptop to reach triple digits on the Grand Theft Auto V benchmark (Very High, 1080p), averaging 105 fps compared to the Titan’s 91 fps. The Aorus X9 (86 fps) as well as the RTX laptops surpassed the 75-fps category average, but the Eon 17-X (55 fps) fell far behind.
Middle-earth: Shadow of War
The Area-51m continued to wreck shop with a whopping 132 fps on the Middle-earth: Shadow of War benchmark (Ultra, 1080p), which blows away the 86-fps category average as well as the GT75 Titan (112 fps) and Aorus X9 (99 fps).
Metro: Last Night
On the Metro: Last Light benchmark (Ultra, 1080p), one of our most taxing tests, the Area-51m dominated again with 103 fps, leaving the GT75 Titan (95 fps), Aorus X9 (85 fps) and Eon17-X (82 fps) all in the dirt. Despite that, they all easily tore through the 64 fps category average.
Bottom Line
The Alienware Area-51m is the king of monsters. Nearly each laptop that we’ve compared it to can easily run taxing games at over 60 fps, but the Area-51m aimed higher and performed in the triple digits on multiple benchmarks.
For $5,099 (starting at $2,549), you not only get a massive performance boost with a desktop CPU and killer GPU, but also the Area-51m’s gorgeous design, upgradable components, deep-travel keyboard and smooth 17.3-inch, 144Hz display.
While the Area-51m comes at a high price, you simply can’t beat all of that power.
Credit: Tom's Guide
