It was a pleasure to see these machines battling today because they’re both performing great, no matter what test we throw at them. Alienware 17 R3’s CPU runs cooler and the fan system is more quiet when you tax it with short-term heavy load but when we bring in intensive CPU+GPU load for continuous period, Predator does better – the GPU got us better performance and the body surface temperatures are lower. Nevertheless, Alienware 17 R3 and Acer Predator 17 are well built and they definitely deserve the attention of all gamers.