Alienware M18 laptop with AMD 7945HX/7900M tested, similar performance to RTX 4080 laptop at a lower price, suffering from short battery life

AMD is entering a new GPU segment with their first ever Radeon x900 class GPU based on RDNA architecture. The high-end mobile market has been dominated by Intel and NVIDIA for the past few years, but AMD is quickly catching up with their Ryzen CPU series. The recent released of Ryzen 9 7945HX3D processor has left Intel in behind to some extent. The next step is to try competing with NVIDIA with high-performance graphics.

This attempt is possible with the release of Radeon RX 7900M graphics, which are based on Navi 31 GPU with 4608 Stream Processors and 16GB of GDDR6 memory. This is a high-end GPU with TGP, configurable up to 180W. The tests have shown that AMD-powered laptop has strong performance in CPU and GPU related workloads overall:

Alienware M18 in CPU and GPU ratings, Source: Notebookcheck

GPU performance will vary depending on a title. AMD Radeon RX 7900M is a clear winner in synthetic tests, but as long as gaming is considered, at least the games selected by NBC, then RTX 4080 is still a better choice, especially when ray tracing is enabled. There is one more thing to consider, which is support for productivity/content creation tools which have much better driver support on the GeForce platform, notes reviewer.

The M18 AMD system has several issues that simply need to be addressed by Dell. The reviewer notes that the system has problems with external monitors, where the primary screen would simply go dark and never turn back on again before reset. There are various ‘insignificant’ bugs on AMD-powered M18 laptop, such as boot issues, video playback frame skips, stuttering when gaming and unusual high power consumption when idling.

The battery life may be a big concern when choosing this laptop. The GPU requires more power, which has a direct effect on gaming battery life. When the system is used for web browsing, the battery life is just 85 minutes, which is much less than Intel’s based system with the identical chassis (260 minutes). The detailed review confirms that the system consumes nearly 30W when idle, which may be contributed to the chiplet design on the 7945HX processor and graphics.

Alienware AMD vs. Intel M18 battery life, Source: Notebookcheck

A major concern is the laptop’s standby power of 25.6 watts. This is not normal and should be within 1 to 2 watts. For this reason, the reviewer said that the system should be considered “a desktop with an emergency battery” rather than a laptop, but even desktops do not draw that much power when they are under standby.

Consumption when idling on desktop is not optimized which may contribute to the very short battery life. We’re sometimes able to measure a consumption level as high as 101 W even when on the Balanced power profile with no active applications running. Consumption on standby mode would also be very high at 25 W when it should be closer to just 1 or 2 watts.

— Notebookcheck

The AMD system might provide superior CPU performance at a significantly lower cost compared to the Intel/RTX 4080 system, but potential customers should take into account the concerns raised by Notebookcheck before making a purchase decision. The standout advantage is the system’s price of $2,499 (7945HX/7900M) compared to $2,849 (13980HX/4080), as per current listings. It’s noteworthy that Dell is anticipated to release a 7945HX3D version, although it is not currently available.

Source: Notebookcheck