Alienware Alpha Performance Test - The Witcher 3

Alienware Alpha Model:
i5 | 8 gig RAM | 860m/750ti 2 gig RAM - Overclocked (+135 core clock & +400 memory clock) 

2015's game of the year, The Witcher 3, is a very taxing game to run well. By run well I mean 1080p and 30fps. If you were hoping for 60fps like the alienware alpha website promises then you not only need to be playing at the lowest settings but also a much lower resolution than 1080p. Infact you pretty much need to drop it down to 720p to achieve this. It's a bit of a missleading claim to make to be honest but its not techincally inaccurate.

This game runs at about 1080p and 30fps on the main consoles. I say 'about' because both have their own issues with frame drops and XboxOne is running at 900p rather than 1080p. My basic guide for how a game should perform on this model of the Alpha is slightly better than on PS4. This holds true most of the time but there are always exceptions to this rule.

It's getting more an more common for modern games to look fantastic even on low settings these days and The Witcher 3 is no exception. I use a mixture of settings but a lot of them are set to low with some set a bit higher and the game is still quite beautiful to experience. The games artstyle, lighting and almost constant movement within the game world (trees and plants swaying in the breeze for example) create what often feels like a living breathing world that is a pleasure to explore.

With the settings listed below you can get The Witcher 3 to run at 1080p and over 30fps 99% of the time. You will still get the rare hicup that drops it just below but its only for a split second here and there:

Postprocessing
Motion Blur: On
Blur: Off
Anti-Aliasing: On
Bloom: On
Sharpening: Off
Ambient Occlusion: None
Depth of Field: Off
Chromatic Aberration: Off
Vignetting: On
Light Shafts: On

Graphics
VSync: On
Maximum Frames Per Second: Unlimited (don't use this to lock the framerate, see 'vedict')
Resolution: 1920 x 1080
Display Mode: Borderless Window (Helps when locking to 30fps)
Preserve System Gamma: Off
NVIDIA HairWorks: Off
NVIDIA HairWorks AA: 0
NVIDIA HairWorks Preset: Low
Number of background Characters: Low
Shadow Quality: Low
Terrain Quality: Low
Water Quality: High
Grass Density: Low
Texture Quality: High
Foliage Visibility Range: Medium
Detail Level: Low
Hardware Cursor: Off

Verdict 

The Witcher 3 runs nicely as long as you are willing to accept playing at 30fps with a resolution of 1080p. As long as you lock the framerate using 3rd party software such as RivaTuner and use settings like motion blur then the expience is still nice and smooth. I wouldn't recommend using the ingame frame lock option as the frame timing feels off causing a slightly stuttery feel to the camera movement. You can of course just play with a variable framerate but it jumps around between 30-60 so much it becomes increadibly distracting. Going into a cave where the frame rate will rise making the game run super smooth only for it to plumet back down to 30 as you exit can bring you out of the exerience really fast. So lock it to 30 and you will stop even thinking about the frame rate at all.

Photographing the Kingfisher

I have enjoyed photography as a hobby for many years now but since my son was born a little over 3 years ago I haven't really had much time to get out with the camera. My father is also a big fan of the hobby and so we arranged a day out together at a nature reserve so we could spend some time together an give me the chance to get a few new pictures for my Flickr stream (My last upload was October 2015).

I have used a pretty humble set up for a long time now as far as DSLR equipment goes. I have just 2 lenses (albeit decent ones) an external flash and a 2 x converter. These lenses are the Tamron 18-50 F2.8 and the Canon 70-200 F4 L. My camera body is pretty aging as well (Canon 500D) but it still gets the job done. I have always believed that even the base line bodies are capable of producing great shots with the right lens attached and a little bit of user skill and creativity.

Despite the poor weather as of late we got rather lucky and summer decided to finally show up. The place we visited was primarily for bird photography which I am hardly equipped for on any sort of high end level but I have taken plenty of bird shots in my time as the opportunity presented itself. My favorite being on a holiday to Hilton Head Island in South Carolina where I was able to witness and photograph Osprey catching their morning meal.

However the big attraction at this particular nature reserve we visited was that it currently had Kingfishers nesting there. Having barely ever seen one, let alone caught one on camera, I was looking forward to seeing what would happen. I had my doubts I would come away with any shots I would be very happy with as even with the 2x converter I would only be hitting 400mm and my widest aperture would be a rather small f8. But as always I was determined to give it ago.

Well we had a great time and managed to witness the Kingfishers Hunting several times throughout the day. At first they would only be landing on perches at the other end of the pond which was far to great a distance to get any high detailed shots but it was great to see them in action anyway. Luckily for me, later on one of them decided to venture a bit closer and that gave me a little hope of producing something I was at least mildly happy with. When I got home and developed the shots I was actually pleasantly surprised that they had turned out better than I could have possibly hoped for and i got my self a nice little series of the Kingfisher hunting near its nest.

The Kingfisher surveys the hunting grounds looking for a potential target.

After selecting the target the Kingfisher dives down at lightning speed.

After each attempt it would shake off all the excess water on its feathers.

The Kingfisher would then take one final look around.

And then it would return to the nest.

While waiting for the Kingfishers to show their faces I was visited by two other interesting creatures. Firstly I saw this Reed Warbler show up near by. Its nice to see how they cling on to the reeds with their feet.

Even more interesting than that was this grass snake the decide to swim across to the other side of the pool. Another great sight for me as I have never seen a grass snake before so getting a picture of it in action was a pretty great moment.

Alienware Alpha Performance Test - Overwatch

Alienware Alpha Model:
i5 | 8 gig RAM | 860m/750ti 2 gig RAM - Overclocked (+135 core clock & +400 memory clock)

The new IP from Blizzard is unsurprisingly popular, as all their games seem to be. They are known for running only a small number of franchises (in fact this is their first new IP in years) but all are made to a very high standard from gameplay to visual artstyle and kept updated for years after release. But also like all Blizzard games it is designed to be able to run on a very wide range of hardware as they want as many people as possible to be able to purchase their games. Luckily for us Alpha 860m owners that means it runs like a dream on this tiny gaming PC.

Overwatch is a competitive team based first person shooter, so ideally you want to be playing at 60fps and 1920 x 1080 resolution. I played around with the settings and to be honest, in a game like this, it looks great no matter what settings you have (as long as you keep the resolution high). So for this reason I set it up to something where it would comfortably sit around 60fps. Here you can tweak to suit your own preference. For me I really don't notice the odd drop into the 50's so I left a few settings higher than needed, But if those minor drops bother you they are easily solved with turning one or two settings down another notch.

So for me I use the following settings to achieve 1080p with 60fps most of the time with the odd minor drop here and there:

Display Mode: Borderless Window
Resolution: 1920 x 1080
Field of View: 100
Vsync: On
Triple Buffering: On
Render Scale: 100
Texture Quality: High
Texture Filtering Quality: Epic - 16x
Local Fog Detail:  Medium
Dynamic Reflections Low
Shadow Detail: Low
Model Detail: High
Effects Detail: Low
Lighting Quality: Medium
Antialias Quality: Low - FXAA
Reflection Quality: Medium
Local Reflections: On
Ambient Occlusion: On



Verdict

Overwatch runs like a dream on the alpha. Its a very scalable game that should give you no problems getting a 1080p 60fps experience all while retaining high quality textures and highly detailed characters. Its a pretty damn good game to boot. Just don't spend any money on there somewhat dubious random loot box system.

Alienware Alpha Performance Test - Rise of the Tomb Raider

Alienware Alpha Model:

i5 |  8 gig RAM | 860m/750ti 2 gig RAM - Overclocked (+135 core clock & +400 memory clock)

Rise of the Tomb Raider is a fairly demanding game and a good test of what you can squeeze out of this tiny little gaming PC. I was expecting to match something close to the Xbox One Performance of the game and I think it even runs a little bit better overall.

For a game like this my target is hitting 30fps at 1080p. If you get the odd drop here and there below, I would still class that as acceptable just so long as it’s not to frequent.

After working through one of the more demanding areas in the game I managed to settle on what I feel are the best settings for a solid 1080p 30fps performance.

Recommended settings:

Fullscreen:	ON
Exclusive Fullscreen:	OFF (this makes it full screen in a borderless window)
Resolution:	1920 x 1080
Anti-Aliasing:	FXAA
Vsync:	Triple Buffered
Texture Quality:	Medium
Anisotropic Filter:	8x
Shadow Quality:	Medium
Sun Soft Shadows:	OFF
Ambient Occlusion:	OFF
Depth of Field:	OFF
Level of Detail:	Medium
Tessellation:	OFF
Screen Space Reflections:	OFF
Specular Reflection Quality:	Normal
Dynamic Foliage:	Medium
Bloom:	ON
Vignette Blur:	OFF
Motion Blur:	ON
Purehair:	ON
Lens Flare:	ON
Screen Effects:	OFF
Film Grain:	OFF

In the Video below there are a few settings that are different. The main one is textures were set to high and I later realised that this was causing the hitching you see at times in the video. Its simply that the 2 gig of Graphics Ram the Alpha comes with is not enough to keep up with high textures. As soon as I changed it to Medium the hitching stopped. A few other settings are different (such as motion blur and exclusive full screen) because the video is to show the game running with an unlocked frame rate. When locking it to 30 it's best to play using borderless windowed mode and have motion blur as it makes the game feel smoother at half refresh rate.

To lock the framerate to 30fps I recommend using RivaTuner in conjunction with MSI Afterburner. This software combo will give you all the tools needed to overclock your gpu, monitor your hardware performance and lock specific games to a certain frame rate and maintain decent frame times. Many ingame options I have used to lock the framerate to 30 often give poor results and make the game feel sluggish and jittery due to poor frame times.

Verdict

Rise of the tomb Raider is a pretty demanding game so it should be expected that you will need to turn a lot of settings to low or even off when using hardware such as what is in the Alpha. Despite this the game still looks very detailed even at lower settings and you will soon get drawn into the game worlds visuals regardless.

1080p is something I personally like to hit because even on lower settings, the crisp look it gives adds a lot more to the overall visual experience than some additional particle effects or slightly higher quality shadows. Lowering the resolution to below the monitors native setting introduces blurring which I find distracting.

A locked 30fps is also a good target to aim for. While you can just leave the framerate unlocked so that you experience those moments that hit close to 60fps (and it does at times), as soon as it drops back down it can be very distracting. I personally find it better to just get used to 30fps so that it never becomes a distraction. This however is very subjective and you will have to judge for yourself what you prefer. People have different tolerance levels for frame rate variance. For me, if the game can stay above 45fps for the majority of the time I will normally be fine with it. But if it is constantly dropping back down to the 30’s then I will lock it to 30 and be done with it.

The Alpha offers a very playable 1080p 30fps experience with this game as long as you are willing to make some visual sacrifices.

Alienware Alpha Performance Test - Street Fighter V

Alienware Alpha Model:

i5 |  8 gig RAM | 860m/750ti 2 gig RAM - Overclocked (+135 core clock & +400 memory clock)

My first performance test for the little Alpha is Street Fighter V. It's a game that really demands one thing above all else. That is a solid 60fps performance during gameplay. Luckily the Alpha is perfectly capable of achieving this at 1080p and medium / low settings. The game still looks great and its artstyle crisp and clean thanks to hitting 1080p. You will get some dips from 60fps but these are all out of combat so don’t really matter. For example, during some of the canned animations for super moves the frame rate might drop a bit.

But the 1080p 60fps mark is hit during gameplay which is pretty much a requirement for this game. It's not just that it’s a very fast game that would feel sluggish at anything less but the game actually goes into slow motion if that 60fps target is not reached due to how it is designed.

The in game settings are as follows:

Resolution:	1920 x 1080
Full Screen Mode:	On
Resolution Scaling:	100
Anti-Aliasing:	Medium
Post-Processing:	Low
Shadow:	Medium
Texture:	Medium
Effects:	Low

In the video you will notice some hang ups here and there but that is nothing to do with the Alpha. Those were lag related due to a poor connection to my opponent.

Verdict

Street Fighter V plays fantastically on this model of the Alienware Alpha. As always with a lower end PC you have to make some concessions with regards to visual effects but its still looks great while running silky smooth.