Here I am at Year Three with the Alienware M18x, a gaming laptop that continues to justify it's $2,000 price tag even if I've finally found a game that puts the boots to the system. While some of that might relate to the optimization of the game -- Dead Rising 3 -- it feels like the first time the system just couldn't keep up.
Here's a quick comparison video for a visual comparison between the High, Medium and Low preset graphical settings:
On the default settings chosen by the game, Dead Rising 3 chugs at a single-digit framerate. This time, a lot of experimentation and poking around with the graphical settings was required to reach a better framerate at the expense of graphical fidelity.
Learning from past mistakes (see my Year Two review), during this fiddling process I checked the power setting for the laptop. It's a little disappointing to have to scale back the look of the game. Shouldn't raw computing power overcome optimization issues? No, I suppose not.
In contrast, Alien: Isolation played with all the bells and whistles turned on hums at an even 60 frames per second. Granted, Dead Rising 3 and Alien: Isolation are dramatically different experiences -- Dead Rising 3 is wide open with hordes of zombies, while Alien: Isolation features tight corridors and a relatively short viewing distance.
Besides this development there's not much that has changed over my report from last year, even after another year of heavy use and toting the (truly heavy) laptop around with me a few days a week.
No additional nicks, scratches or equipment failures -- that one finicky USB port has been behaving lately -- aside from one aspect I'd never given any thought to and that's updating the software for the BluRay drive.
The drive has seen some good use of the last three years without any issues so I was surprised when I put in the latest James Bond film, "Skyfall" and the stock software reported that I needed to upgrade to the latest version (for real world cash). The disc would not play!
So, I have yet to see Skyfall but everything else seems to work without a hitch.
Some other games played this year, all with great performance, on the M18x:
- The Last Tinker: City of Colors
- Resident Evil 4 Ultimate HD Edition
- Tesla Effect: A Tex Murphy Adventure
- Alien: Isolation
- Dead Rising 3
- The Walking Dead Season 2
- Yaiba: Ninja Gaiden Z
- Metro 2033 and Metro Last Light Redux
- The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings Enhanced Edition
- LEGO Marvel Super Heroes
- Gabriel Knight: The Sins of the Fathers Anniversary Edition
- Mass Effect 2
- Smite
I've also made good use of the M18x as a workstation. No, really! I've done actual work work while at the keyboard. It handles typical office stuff -- word processing, spreadsheets, Twitter -- with no problems at all.
Three years on and really no sign of slowing down, the Alienware M18x is holding up really well and is the best computer I've ever had the pleasure of using.
Please read my Year One and Year Two reviews for an even more detailed breakdown.
- Aaron Simmer
Follow @EmpireArmchair
