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00:00This here is AMD's new god-tier gaming laptop.
00:03It's running their new 6850M-XT, which is their new top-of-the-line GPU,
00:08and it's paired with their 6900HX, which was their top-of-the-line CPU.
00:13And it's the AMD Advantage, right? All-ND package.
00:16And this thing... this thing is crazy.
00:19So they announced this in January. I was looking forward to it.
00:21Comes in, I'm like, okay, gotta test it out.
00:24This thing performs significantly better than I thought it would.
00:27So this is on par with the 3080Ti.
00:30But it comes in at like $500 to $600 cheaper.
00:33I don't know the exact pricing on this yet, but all the information that I've gathered so far...
00:37In general, devices with this chip, that 6850M-XT,
00:41will run $400 to $600 cheaper than competing 3080Ti products.
00:47And it delivers fantastic performance.
00:49The M17 R5 has the highest 3DMark FireStrike score of any laptop I've ever had in the studio.
00:55Now, in games, it also crushes.
00:57Some titles will still favor NVIDIA's hardware,
01:00and some titles also favor the higher clock speed of Intel CPUs,
01:03and also resolution played a role in performance.
01:06But in general, for around $500 less, this is a true competitor to what NVIDIA's offering right now.
01:11It does fall behind in terms of ray-traced graphics.
01:14NVIDIA still has the lead in that, in terms of performance and image quality,
01:17and also when it comes to content creation.
01:19I was finding that in Adobe Premiere, renders were slower on this machine
01:23compared to an Intel-slash-NVIDIA system.
01:25And I think it really just boils down to those Intel chips having many more cores.
01:29Also, energy consumption of this new GPU is on par with the 3080Ti,
01:33so it'll hit 175W on the top end, at least on this system.
01:37But the thermal load of this whole product is a lot lighter than an Intel-equipped system.
01:43Like, Intel chips run a lot more wattage, produce more heat.
01:47AMD, a lot less.
01:49And because of that, there's way less thermal stress on this system.
01:52Internally, the M17 R5's been improved over the R4 in terms of its ability to remove heat.
01:58It's got a significantly bigger vapor chamber.
02:00I think this is, like, 3.5 times larger than the one on the R4.
02:03It's got bigger fans and better airflow compared to the previous version.
02:07See, the thing is, every time I've ever reviewed an M-series product from Alienware,
02:12it's always been, like, powerful components, good performance, but it's hot.
02:16It's just always been a thing with Alienware products that ran Intel chips.
02:20This time around, even with a 175W GPU, the temperature and fan noise is very acceptable.
02:26It's just the energy efficiency of AMD chips.
02:29Now, the battery life on this device is one of its best features.
02:33So, normally with 17-inch devices, even if they have big batteries,
02:36this one has a big battery, 97Wh,
02:38normally with 17-inch devices, they don't have great battery life.
02:41It's just the nature of large laptops with large screens.
02:44But this device will hit almost 8 hours of light use.
02:47It's very good for a device this size.
02:49And this is running the 4K panel.
02:51If you have a 1080p panel, it's gonna be even longer.
02:53It truly is something special.
02:55Now, the 4K panel here is really nice, but it's not new.
02:58This is the same 4K panel that we've seen from Alienware before,
03:01so it's bright, it's color accurate, fast refresh,
03:03but it is still a 16x9 aspect ratio, not the taller 16x10s.
03:08The keyboard options include this mechanical keyboard.
03:10It does that, like, metallic ring, which I personally don't mind,
03:15but it has a fantastic feel to it.
03:17I've done a video on it before, so I'm not gonna go into too much detail,
03:20but if you like mechanical keyboards on laptops,
03:22this is one of the better ones out there.
03:24The rest of the device hasn't changed much.
03:26It still has that Alienware aesthetic to it,
03:28and it has that RGB light-up ring on the tail end of it.
03:31Now, there is one thing I noticed that I was...
03:34I wasn't sure if I was gonna mention this in the video,
03:36but I feel like the responsible thing is that I should.
03:38So, in all of the gaming that I tested, I didn't notice any stutters,
03:41because this is relatively early on in the launch of it.
03:44I was cautiously looking for it,
03:46but there was one game that did, and it's Overwatch.
03:49For whatever reason, it didn't matter what resolution I was playing in,
03:52I was seeing a good amount of stutter in most of my gameplay.
03:56Now, I imagine it's driver-related, so I'd expect it to be fixed over time.
04:00It's just that it is something I noticed in my testing.
04:02But my overall thoughts on this product,
04:04the 6850M-XT is a excellent performer.
04:09An excellent performer.
04:10It's just way better than I thought it would be,
04:12and it's not just the fact that it's a powerful GPU,
04:16it's the CPU.
04:17Like, the AMD Advantage thing going on is very real here, right?
04:20You can have access to Smart Access memory,
04:22you have Smart Shift going on,
04:24and because the AMD CPU is lower wattage,
04:26it allows that system to just crank the GPU use
04:29and just maintain good thermals.
04:31It's really cool.
04:32But more interesting to me is just the future of where these systems can go.
04:35If you notice, this system is the M-series.
04:38This isn't their top-of-the-line, like, X-series product,
04:41and you're still able to get amazing performance on this.
04:44Good cooling, but not Alienware's best cooling, right?
04:47Can you imagine this hardware stuck in the X-chassis?
04:50Like, I don't know if Alienware's ever gonna do it,
04:52maybe Intel's got too much of a hold on them,
04:55but if you could put this hardware
04:57and put it into really well-cooled systems,
05:00this would be amazing.
05:02Like, truly amazing.
05:03But you can already see what it's doing in a good chassis like this.
05:07Okay, there you have it.
05:08AMD ADVANTAGE M17 R5.