Prissy Little Chloe

Rating: 4.5/5 With the Alienware 2016 OLED display model on the way, I found it fitting to review the unit as a whole--and my thoughts on who this competitive little machine is for. Price Let's start with the basics; the Alienware 13 comes in multiple configurations, starting at $999 USD and goes upwards $2000 USD. Design The Alienware 13 has a striking carbonfiber-like enclosure and grooves that look like something off a Sci-Fi set. The chassis is very smooth and comfortable to rest your palms on while typing. The keyboard is evenly backlit and keys spring nicely, (and in any color and gradient variation I must add, but much more on that in a bit.) The Alienware 13 is pretty slim for a gaming notebook, at just around an inch thick closed; it's also a very portable notebook, at about 2 kilos or 4.5 lbs in weight. Touchpad The touchpad is another situation entirely; it doesn't feel smooth in comparison to the chassis or ...

Get much for an extra $50? Take the NVidia GTX 960, for example. This mid-range card offers 2 GB and 4 GB versions, respectively -- at about a $50 discrepancy between the two cards. That being what the cost of a whole new game, for some, this makes the world of difference.     GTA V A memory-hungry game to the fullest; where the more vRAM, the better. That is, the 970's 3.5 GB is just about the bare minimum, to run this game at max, 60 FPS. The 960's 4 GB are not fully taken advantage of on the lower GM206 Maxwell architecture. Therefore any additional vRAM here would be best for a more constant frame rate, with less dips and stutters between lowest and highest framerate. While this can be easily rectified with vSync enabled - you do get about 3-5 FPS higher on the four GB model of the GTX 960. You can enable far more advanced graphics options in GTA V with 4 or more GB of vRAM - namely ancillary settings like higher population density, depth of view,...