his is going to be gamers’ best holiday quarter ever. Alienware has updated its 15 and 17-inch notebooks, Acer has released a whole new Predator gaming line, ASUS announced a wide range of new ROG devices and Dell hit the market with its new Inspiron 7559 with 960M and Skylake at a ridiculously low price. Even HP brought out an affordable Pavilion 15 Gaming. But now we turn our heads to two of the most luxurious gaming models – Alienware 17 R3 and Acer Predator 17. Since most gaming laptops have nearly the same specifications and internal components, the performance and user experience mainly differs in terms of the cooling system and the temperatures (or throttling).
A few seconds after the start of the 100% CPU load, the Predator CPU temperature had already reached ~90°C while Alienware 17 remained around 70°C. We kept things like that for half an hour and then we measured the values again. Alienware’s CPU cores ran at 74°C and The Predator’s – at 88-95°C. There is a slight advantage for Alienware in the clock values as well – the CPU in Alienware 17 R3 ran at 3.2GHz while the one in Predator 17 jumped between 3.0 and 3.1GHz, which is great for both of them, since the max Turbo Boost of 6700HQ used by Predator is 3.1GHz and 6820HK’s max Turbo is 3.2GHz.
100% CPU + 100% GPU load
Without stopping the CPU load, we’re adding 100% GPU load in order to squeeze out the maximum from the cooling system. Here’s a surprise – although the Predator immediately throttled the CPU to 2.5-2.6 GHz and the Alienware once again got us slightly higher clock – 2.7 GHz, there is a notable advantage for the Acer model in the GPU temperature – NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980M runs at 67°C while the same GPU in the Alienware enclosure reached 73°C with the same default clock speeds. Alienware is quieter since its fans work at lower RPM.
Let’s check what the situation is after 30 minutes of 100% CPU + 100% GPU load. Acer Predator’s CPU clock speed hovers around 2.4-2.5GHz and Alienware’s 6820HK is back near its max Turbo Boost – 3.1 GHz. Alienware’s cooling system has managed to stabilize the CPU using higher RPM and respectively higher noise, so the advantage of the silence is gone. Predator’s 6700HQ works at 95°C while Alienware’s 6820HK runs much cooler – 75-78°C. Both GPUs run at 73-74°C.