beasts the alienware x-17 versus the msi
ge76 both machines have some amazing and unique features that set them apart from the rest but that doesn't mean they don't have some flaws as well we're gonna be declaring a winner for each category and an overall category at the end when it comes to design both machines are stunning in my opinion the simplistic design of the led logo on the alienware x17 looks a lot cooler than that embossed dragon logo on the ge76 the highlight of the ge 76 is for sure this sleek and stylish glow bar on the
front it's an iconic feature that just defines the front of the laptop this similar feature on the x17 is their out of this world tron bar that wraps around the hexagonal ventilation on the back the lighting effects on its touch pad are something that i've never seen before and looks really awesome in person both machines have per key rgb
lighting and plenty of animations to choose from but in person it looks quite a bit nicer and quite a bit brighter on
the x17 the winner in this department definitely goes to the x-17 as far as build quality goes both machines are made out of pretty solid materials which led to very minimal screen wobble screen
flex and keyboard flex the x17 is impressively thin but it's actually heavier than the ge 76 due to how thick the screen and chassis on the ge 76 is it does feel a little more durable as far as the keyboards go the mechanical keys on the x17 offer better travel distance are more comfortable to type on
and just feels so much better than the ge76 it is a bit louder though so just keep that in mind and one thing that disappointed me on the x-17 is the lack of secondary key illumination however the secondary keys on the ge76 do light up like they're supposed to it also has a number pad while the x-17 doesn't so i'm going to say the winner for build quality and layout goes to the ge76 sound quality both machines had pretty decent sounding speakers about average for gaming laptops but the x17 put out a few decibels louder than the ge76 and the quality also sounded a little bit sharper and a little bit more crisp on the x17 so the winner for sound quality just barely goes to the x17 the batteries the x17 holds a pretty average 87 watt hour battery while the ge 76 holds a massive 99 watt hour battery this resulted in almost one extra hour of hd streaming and almost two extra hours of web surfing but due to its smaller size the x17 recharged faster than the ge76 but overall the clear winner here is definitely the ge76 fan noise now you would think that the fans on the x17 would sound a lot louder due to the fact that it has four fans versus the two fans in the ge76 but the fan noise on the ge 76 was actually a few decibels louder on average it was also more noticeable and a little more annoying due to the pitch of the fans so the clear winner for fan noise is the x-17 thermals the x-17s cryotech cooling technology and four fans did wonders for thermals it's exponentially more difficult to cool a machine that's this thin but it actually did a better job cooling down than the ge-76 these are a few of the individual results we got for a few games you can see the x17 was just a little cooler on most games we also calculated the average across 11 games which revealed a 6 degree cooler average cpu temperature on the x17 versus the ge76 the gpu on the other hand was 1.5 degrees warmer on the x17 i can't imagine how great those numbers would be if they use this new technology on their
area 51 series that thing is going to be a beast but there's not even a hint of information on whether they're going to even continue that series but overall the thermals winner in this comparison is the x-17 performance both of these machines that i got include the 11th gen intel i7 processor and both have an rtx 3080 graphics card with 165 watts max graphics power now the ge76 comes with 155 watts max graphics power but with a v bios update you can bring it up to 165 watts for geekbench 5 the ge76 scored a 1 higher single core score a 2.6 percent higher multi-core and a 5 higher cuda score for 3d mark the ge 76 scored a two percent higher overall with a three percent higher graphics score for cinema r23 the x17 actually got a one percent higher single core score and a 14 higher multi-core score the ge 76 came out on top but the cinebench r23 score shows that for all you 3d creators out there and render artists the x-17 is actually going to perform better for you this was confirmed even further by my pugen benchmark tests the only puget benchmark test the ge76 won was with photoshop scoring five percent higher than the x17 for editing and then rendering your edits the x17 again proved to be better for creatives with a 14 higher score in adobe premiere and a six percent higher score in davinci resolve so the winner for creative app performance definitely goes to the x17 gaming benchmarks was a different story here you can see individually in these games the ge 76 performed a little bit better but not by a huge amount if you want a closer look at all these benchmarks with thermals and graphs of these machines relative to seven other gaming machines then click on my benchmark link in the description i'm building a master spreadsheet where we can compare and contrast all the most important gaming laptops i crunched down the benchmark results from 10 different games and it showed that the ge 76 on average got 23 more frames per second which is 15 more frames per second than the x17 for 4k on average it only got about five frames per second or six percent higher than the x-17 so the winner for gaming benchmarks and the go-to for most gamers is the ge76 software both machines have decent software nothing too special with pretty similar functionality but the ui was just a little bit more comfortable on the alienware command center it was also easier to customize thermal profiles although i was left with wanting more functionality with both machine software the winner is the x17 overall both of these gaming beasts are amazing computers the only spec differences between the two that i got were the differences in ram which kind of cancel each other out the x-17 has 34 66 megahertz xmp ram but it was single-sided ram the ge76 only had 3200 megahertz but it was dual sided price-wise at the time of this recording the x-17 is actually about 35 cheaper with the same specs than the ge 76 but i highly recommend upgrading to the mechanical keyboard for fifty dollars more and getting the 3466 megahertz ram
for a hundred dollars more or you could just upgrade that yourself later on down
the road the webcams the x17 includes a pretty standard 720p webcam but the ge76 has stepped up to a full 1080p full hd webcam and as you can see side by side looks quite a bit better than the x17 and here's an indoor sample of that audio and video quality and here's a little indoor sample of that audio and video quality so the webcam winner is definitely the ge76 now the ports offered with both machines are pretty similar but the x17 has zero usb a ports on the sides while the ge 76 has three and it also has a full size sd card reader so the winner for ports is the ge 76 summing all of this up i'm gonna declare the winner based on my audience which is mostly gamers the ge76 is the overall winner the main reasons that i personally like the x17 a little better is because i like the design and the lighting effects and the mechanical keyboard and the fact that as a creator it had a little bit better scores for creative