2 points: 1. Seeing that someone had wiped the screen with window cleaner made me want to push it in the pond and 2. I won this laptop from a PC world giveaway in 2015 (it was not for this laptop it was for a Vaio fit 14 that was sold out and this was on an after Christmas mark down and was considered equal/less value.) I played WoW, D3 and Arkham Knight on this thing for years. Cex properly took it off my hands in late 2018 for a £500 voucher toward the 1080ti I still have today as a backup GPU. It ran very hot so sat on a fan plate and the Klipsch speakers were the best part, crispy sound for a laptop. Fond memories of a laptop I never wanted, used loads, heated my computer room with often and eventually part traded for a legendary GPU. Cheers for returning to the used market. I love the things you pull from your CeX down south. Up here it is all crap or former mining GPUs.
Since Sony exited the market in 2014, you probably had one of the last Vaio laptops ever made. I bet CEX sold it to a collector for multiple times what that 500 quid voucher was actually worth (rough guess, about 200quid in real money). I see people asking $300+ for Vaio E series laptops in the US. I have a 17" 3rd gen E series with a HD 7650M that I bought new in late 2013. It now runs Windows 7 and serves as a Windows 9X/XP retro gaming machine as well as an optical media player (incl. BluRay). The display still looks good by 2024 standards. I don't have a backup GPU anymore. Even a 1080Ti is still worth a chunk of change. What I do have are multiple hacked consoles and older PCs. If my GPU takes a dump, I could keep myself occupied for an entire year while I save up money for a new GPU. And I wouldn't be missing much. As a lifelong gamer in their 40s, I'd say new release video games have never been less valuable or desirable to play than at this present moment. I had to see a therapist after playing Starfield for 150 hours. It can only be played 'for a long time' if you don't care about your sanity. I played the original Fallout at launch. Bethesda did a good job with FO3 (I am playing it rn) and an OK job with FO4 (just finished playing it) but after that, they kinda lost the plot. I live in fear of how the FO4 next gen update will destroy one of my favorite games. Todd Howard has literally lost his mind at this point. Don't ever forget that 2023 was the year Motorfest launched, lol. It is like someone decided to take FH5 (already not a great game) and copy it, poorly. Online races were somehow even more of a crapshow than the legendarily compromised by hackers FH5 online racing. Mixing bikes and cars sounds good - until you poorly execute the concept and all anyone has to do to put you completely out of the race as a rider, is to just not brake on the first corner, slam into you at 120mph, and send you flying halfway across the map so you instantly get an 'out of bounds' penalty. Racing is no fun when you have to drive/ride like everyone is out to get you, because they are. Even in a car, you had to take some interesting lines to keep deliberate high speed ramming from punting you off the track. You basically had to assume they were going to hit you and position yourself accordingly. An interesting exercise in Newtonian mechanics if you are a nerd like me but annoying as hell if you just want to play a game and have fun. Crapfest was the worst game I've played in 30 years and even less realistic than FH5 due to some bizarre choices in game mechanics. The boat racing part of it was just a total abortion. The flying was only marginally better than the nonsense in BF1 and flying a plane was more fun in Whorezone 1.0 or pretty much any Far Cry game. The bikes were actually the highlight of the game - until you ended up in a race against cars. Even the AI was out to get you. Like, 10 times as much as in Forza. It was so bad, I have to complain about it here because there aren't any new Motorfest vids to comment on.
@@ashenwattegederasearch the IMEI number online. There's websites for IMEI lookup. Search for them. I've only used them once 9 years ago so I forgot the actual site. There's probably many different sites now.
That was because the employee was stupid enough to buy the phone from a customer and not lookup the IMEI first, and they didn't want their boss to find out they bought illegal merch. If they gave you the refund, then it is a paperwork trail of stupidity.
Only if Alienware made it swappable. It would help in light video editing (1080p resolution) and some games, but the older GPU with only 2GB of VRAM would still hold it back a lot. But yeah, an i7 with 4C/8T would make it usable at least. I’ve swapped my i3 4130t to an i7 4790t and the difference was huge.
@@dimitriasimov2140A lot of these old Alienware are very upgradable. It might be possible to upgrade the GPU to a 960m. Theoretically, even to a chinese 1060/2060/3060 mobile in that old mobile format. The problem is, it would be very costly and very janky
@@dimitriasimov2140 alienware isnt really the one that decides. If the chip is made as PGA by intel, then it will always be socketed. And according to intel 4210M was only made as FCPGA, so no soldered down variant, that was probably reserved for u and y cpus. Dell could still restrict it in the bios, but when the swap works on their business class laptops form the time, i doubt they would dedicate time to disable it here.
I can't relate. Younger me was gaming at 60fps on a 486 in 1995. It was a DX2-100, courtesy of a FSB and multiplier overclock and outperformed either the AMD or intel DX4-100. If they can call a DX3 a DX4 then I can call a DX2.5 a DX2, lol. And that was just the budget build I was allowed to call my own. The 'family' PC was even more powerful.
Never really like to leave two comments, but this video also made me have a flood of emotions about the M17X R2 I had in highschool and the M18x I got as a replacement from dell when that broke.
normally any laptops are not susceptible to CPU/GPU upgrades, unless you're into high risk-low reward things and also into microsoldering. It's nearly impossible to consistently solder those chips, so the only recourse is motherboard swap. Normally, that is also not an option on older hardware, as the motherboards are custom for almost any laptop model, so you're limited by the shape of the chassis. Hope this puts some light on this idea
@@jamesdong8179 yes I am aware of that, but that laptop is the last one where intel used pga sockets for they CPUs and on the GPU side there were MXM format graphics cards that allowed u to swap if needed
This is your niche and I love it. Currently gaming on a 7970 Ghz edition from my old crossfire system. It's fun to see what it's capable of these days.
Interesting timing, just ordered my first Alienware product today, a 3225Qf, figured I have the best of everything else, that it’s time to ascend to 4k 240hz QD-OLED.
Wow, an early video catch! I am blown away how well that laptop did with fairly recent games. However, I am most impressed with its performance in games from its era and older. I would have been happy with that machine 10 years ago as a mobile gaming station for a lot of the older titles I still enjoy even now. And the weird resolution seems to be fitting for a screen that size and a nice performance balance for the CPU/GPU. Heck, in 2014 I believe I was still running an overclocked AMD Phenom II X6 on a socket AM3+ motherboard, 8GB of decent DDR3 RAM, with a 2GB GDDR5 Sapphire Radeon HD 7870 that was also overclocked.
AM3 unite!!! I had an ancient FM2 system I upgraded, eventually jumping up to AM3+ with an FX8350 and GTX970. Not an awful combo, but blown out of the water by the little Ryzen 3 1200 and 1070Ti which I replaced them with!
Hey, that's my graphics card! I scored mine on Facebook Marketplace for $120, been using it for over 6 months now, and it's been an amazing upgrade from my gtx 1660 6gb.
I have a 2015 or 2016 Alienware 15 and it looks very much the same. It's still a decent laptop if a bit bulky. If I could be bothered getting it from my parents house I could send it over to you for a reasonable price for some content :D
I must implore other viewers, if they are thinking about buying a relatively cheap used laptop to consider one of the models from 2016. that have the gtx970m 6GB version and the i7 6700hq the 4core 8 thread cpu. these are well worth the hassle of upgrading the ram to 16GB and the storage to some big ssd.
This was my dream laptop back then! 2GB of video was a dream. This would compete against PS3/360 and PS4/Xone games. This is what mobile gaming looked like to us lol (Remember those portable PS4 cases?).
This was my first Alienware laptop, and since then I became a fan of the brand. Like all brands, they have their ups and downs, but overall I'm happy. My AW 14X had the same GPU, an i7-4700HQ 4c/8t, 16GB RAM, 1080p screen and a Blu-ray Drive. At the time performed well with most games on Medium or High. It's nice that it has an mSATA slot and a standard SATA connector. The downside of this laptop, in my opinion, is that the same cooling pipes and one fan is used to cool both the CPU and GPU, but I suppose it still gets the job done. I think this was just about the last generation of Alienware laptops that included a DVD or BD drive, so it's a nice one to own in your collection. I sold mine like 4 years ago, but then re-bought the same one with slightly lower hardware specs a couple of years ago. Would recommend as a toy and for playing slightly older games, but not for current games.
I like cex for pc parts. I got my 7800x3d for £35 cheaper than new and it came with the box. I wouldn't buy it if they didn't offer a 24-month warranty, which is kinda crazy for a second-hand product
I mean you would've got an extra year warranty if you bought new for that £35 plus it being new, AMD will give you a new CPU if your failed, CeX warranty isn't as good as AMDs
I haven't played BG3 yet and as an old school Gary Gygax DnD player I'm amazed to see intellect devourers being one shoted. I remember those monsters as being insanely deadly party killers.
That slot on the bottom of the case at 1:35 is that a slot loading dvd player? An OK laptop. I like the lighting effects on the track pad. And in surprisingly good condition considering the grade. I expect after all the dust is cleaned off of it it would look quite respectful.
Dude! I was lucky enough to get one of these my freshman year of college. I remember thinking it was really awesome to be able to play Skyrim maxed out on a laptop and also enjoyed Fallout 5 a good bit too.
I had this exact same laptop back in 2014. It was my first ever gaming PC and it was such a beast back then, I played alot of Metal Gear Rising Revengeance and Battlefield 4 as well on it. Crazy how fast technology moves and now this is basically a paperweight in terms of gaming performance lol
I actually had one of these in college. I got it when I came out and it was one of my favorite laptops. It’s strange to think cs 2 runs so poorly on it. I had the 765 and the i7 in mine and all I played were cs and wow. I remember them both running great on max settings, 60+ fps no problem. But I know cs2 is a different animal. Anyway thanks for the vid!
To test older pc's, you should also try Dirt Rally. My g3258 would run it nicely. The ego engine is nice for older pc's, so that would be a interesting benchmark, I believe. Nice video, as always. These old computers can have a nice second life with a ssd and some repairs/cleaning. For basic stuff and older games/emulators it should be good enough.
I have this laptop, but with the GTX 860m GPU. Picked it up for £30. My GTX 860m GPU only works when the charger is plugged in, as soon as I take the charger out the GPU doesn't work and I get blue screen. Doesn't bother me as I just keep charger plugged in and works perfectly. However this has always baffled me and have never seen an answer as to why the GPU would only work when the charger is plugged into laptop. Any ideas?
I love seeing Kepler being tested, although i think the 765m is maxwell technically. But still, my first actual gaming pc had an athlon x3 and a 750ti with 6gb ram. Man,good times and fond memories.
Great video I love the Alienware laptops I’ve owned 9 of them in my time from various models the only one from that classic line up I didn’t own was the m18x which had the sli, but had great fun with them especially as you could upgrade the mxm 3.0 in some of them for better graphics if you kid you can go far and cpu to a point lol
You can upgrade the CPU to a Core i7-4700MQ 4-cores/8-threads. It's 47W vs 37W for the i5 but for double the cache and double the cores. The cooling solution can handle the difference. The socket is FCPGA946.
I still have an old MSI gaming laptop i5 4210H - same CPU as yours, but with 47W TDP & higher clocks GTX 850M - a bit faster than the GTX 765M. And memory OC could gain 10-15% more FPS easily It now functions as a office/backup PC
I'd love to see a follow-up video where you maybe upgrade the CPU and ram and compare the FPS. That unit should support up to an i7-4910MQ, and that alone would almost double your performance.
My now main PC is a laptop from the same era, though a Lenovo one. With a i7-4710HQ and a GTX 860M (thankfully still supported by Nvidia) and 16GB of RAM with a 1TB Samsung EVO 850 SSD. (my own upgrades). It came originally with 8GB of RAM and a SSHD by Toshiba. That was the worse performing driver I ever had and the first and last SSHD I ever owned. POS. (yes I still have it in "storage" (aka a drawer). It's nice to see someone buying a computer from the same year my actual computer is, as a video for old hardware. /s Pain aside, another great video.
Saw one of Iceberg's videos finding the "cut off point" for the viability of gaming using an older gpu...is that something you'd be interested in doing with this? Picking a game or two from each year from this laptop's release up to the point it's no longer playable? With Steam and others being like game museums, I feel like these laptops still have a useability factor, like old consoles.
I've just bought a Lenovo ThinkPad A285 from Back Market for £140, as I needed a better laptop. It can't make the jump to Windows 11, because of MS' controversial minimum spec requirements, but it runs Linux Mint like a champ. The Ryzen 5 PRO 2500U works like a dream, especially when using Proton! It also boasts 16GB of DDR4 RAM clocked at 2400MHz.
For £120 I would have still bought that anyway, the look of it is awesome, I'd definitely have it in my cabinet along with my collection of older laptops and tech :)
Still have an old "Schenker" with 970m 6gb, which suprisingly can still run a lot of newer games (at low of course), seeing this the 970m still holds up quite well.
It's times like these I wish there was a better way to do a screen capture. The video footage I am watching looks gorgeous but then I have to remember that it's being captured internally and then rendered into video so it looks good. Way better than it would if I were sitting in front of the laptop. Perhaps you can take footage of the screen itself through a good camera next to the captured footage from time to time.
if you do some looking you're likely able to upgrade that CPU to a 4810MQ which is much better for that era. In addition, I believe but am not entirely sure, but that generation alienware should have an MXM slot in there, so the GPU can get upgraded up to a 1060 without real issues.
Watching this' reminding me of my M17 R1 that's now just resting. Fun times that thing gave. If only the GPU on the 14 inch model was an MXM, it would have been able to kick a little more.
I'm curious if u could do any upgrades to cpu gpu probly not but if so it would make for a fun follow up, they seemed to be hellbent on soldering things to boards after this era of laptops sadly... but for what it is not bad at all.
Is it possible to put a more modern MB and CPU and GPU into this laptop ?? I think a great looking machine like this would make the perfect " Sleeper " build . I think also it would make a great video for your channel and also a fantastic idea for a commercial project , imagine modern builds to order in classic cases .
How about turning it into an emulation box? the design is cool enough for a living room. If it works, you can play all of your ripped games (and other, if you sail the high seas) on a single system.
It's just barely too old to have a maxwell gtx 8xx or "gtx 960m" (aka 750 ti) in there. I have an old lenovo with nearly the same cpu but a 960m sitting around, but sadly the gpu seemsto be borked, otherwise it would have been the "perfect" windows xp retro laptop lol also intel had 2 core mobile i5s up until at least 7th gen core series....,I'm typing on one right now. Granted the later ones were only for the lower power ones but still
The “how does the old hardware run stuff” type of video is my favorite from both you and Iceberg Tech. I couldn’t care less about new, expensive graphics cards. There are thousands of channels benchmarking and running comparisons for the newest $600+ GPU’s and they are informative, but not really that interesting anymore.
I think it is the old graphic cards that cause it to be overlooked. It is kind of screwy that the machine only has a GTX 765M in 2014 because I have had two Asus laptops with 4th Gen CPU (i7s however) with one having a GTX 960M (2 GB) and the other having a GTX 980 (4 GB). Both are also 2014 models and originally had Windows 8 as well.
Those hybrid drives aren't bad. They're best suited for the OS(In the days before SSDs became dirt cheap anyway...), or anything else that will take up long term residence on the drive since it takes a fair bit of time for the drive controller to fully determine what files should be moved to the drive's flash memory. But once they did settle in after a month or so, they were a pretty significant upgrade as far as loading times went. Still basically glacial when compared to even a SATA SSD, but considerably faster than a pure mechanical drive. And a lot more reliable than the early SSDs, kinda like the OCZ drives I spent a fortune that s**t the bed because I left the computer off for 3 months while I was out of town for work. Yeah, I'm still salty about that, lol... And I do miss those old chonky desktop replacement gaming laptops. Yeah, they were huge and heavy as a house. But they did have plenty of room for cooling solutions, tons of drive bays, and not even a hint of soldered RAM. Plus, it made for a pretty effective impromptu flail if someone tried to mug you while you were carrying it in your backpack. Best part was it would probably still work when you got home afterwards.
Yeah, that wasn't in "poor" condition, I think CeX were being a bit pessimistic with their grading. Other sites would have easily put this as a Grade B.
Always interesting to see, how upgradeable these, chunkier laptops are. Memory and ssd, easy, but cpu, maybe even gpu? Thermals were good, still, some fresh paste might make it happy. 😋
Dell's high-end laptops from the time put their GPUs on removable daughterboards that retained the same form factor across multiple generations, so it wouldn't surprise me to learn that their Alienware division did the same thing.
Same specs ASUS with 820m worked similar in GTA V and CP2077(a bit better with former, a bit worse with latter) while consuming less power on GPU side...
Depending which version of the M14x it is. It might have been possible to upgrade this to an i7.... There are tonnes of guides on the internet with more information on how to do it.
i can't believe alienware actually shipping machines running win8, they would have been rolled back to 7 faster than they would have been updated to 10 after that finally released
Can the CPU be upgraded to a quad core i7 or is the CPU soldered? Same question for the GPU. Upgrading a mobile GPU would be interesting. Could put in a 970m.
OML hahaha! I'm watching this on the exact same laptop but slightly better specs with a gtx 770m and i7 4700hq and 16gb ram rn. My pc just died, so dug up the 10 year old laptop, shes serving me well rn before ill build the new pc next weekend :3 I tried bg3 on it but im in the lower city. a solid 10fps with the same settings youve tried lmao! But i mostly play wow anyway and it's perfect for that in the meanwhile.
I do believe sometimes, they don't know quite what they're selling and that's what I look for. with Easter approaching and the mass of 'spring sales', then I guess it's going to be good to look for cheap laptops as folk seek to replace their old ones. I much prefer cashies to Cex, but will use one against the other for comparing prices. sometimes, the specs of some laptops go over the heads of some of the staff at those places, and the only thing that can trigger an instant 50% off is something ridiculous, like a solitary dead pixel in the upper left hand side of the screen that's barely noticeable unless you really _really_ look! (and how I missed a hi-end laptop for £100 for spending too long thinking about getting it.................... also kicking myself for missing out on a google pixel7 for £50 because I was just a few seconds too slow 😛)
Another awesome vid Steve love older Alienware PC's and laptops👍🏻👍🏻 Maybe do a colab vid with Kryzzp from zWORMz gaming with the CS2 benches, sure he will be able to help you better your game lol cheers mate
Uff, that laptop aged not that well, but still looks great. I'm also still having a MSI with i7-4720HQ & GTX 950M , the CPU is still alright for a lot of things, but the 950M (2GB GDDR3 version) is really struggling a lot. :D
Got the same in my Asus laptop. Cpus plenty fast but man that ddr3 version of the 950m is checking out. Would of held up better with the 960m or gddr5 version of the 50
@youtubeaccount7544 eh! Honestly played some games back in the day. Old need for speeds and fortnite, little golf it and csgo. Legit can't really do any of that anymore but CPU was fast enough to carry at the time. Got a 3080ti in my desktop and that's definitely good enough still for now.
I use one of these old Alienware (GTX 1060) as my work laptop. Works great and get a good workout carrying it back & forth 5 days a week. Rather take one of these older models over a modern laptop that would break just by sneezing in their general direction.
Specs like this are obviously terrible, but I wonder what it would be like to play much much older games, as well as emulation etc. To me this seems like it would be really cool to tinker with if I was going away for a week or so. Obviously you could bring a switch or something like that, but I feel like this would at least allow you to watch some content with some form of comfort.
I got an RX 5700 XT from them a year ago and was faulty, got a replacement two days ago and faulty too, not sure how they don't test their GPUs! Luckily I got a full refund
This reminds me of Luke Miani who went through a phase on his channel of buying 'trash' MacBooks online only to be totally surprised when they arrived in nearly new condition. RUclipsrs seem to have unnatural luck when it comes to buying second hand goods that are listed as poor quality.
Never forget what they stole from us, on most importantly cars. One day I hope CD’s come back like vinyl or a leap forward happens regarding them (Blu-Ray doesn’t count, that was the succesor of DVD’s)
@@tezcanaslan2877 I can't see CDs making a comeback for music, because the sound quality was such a drop-off from cassettes/vinyl. Some albums sounded sooooo bad when they went to CD, Boston's debut album before it was remastered is a good example.
I personally hated the era of discs and couldn't wait for it to end. They'd get scratched up so easily compared to older cassettes and current flashdrives and sd cards
@@ivangerginov5648 as long as you dont store them in paper sleeves or those books and keep them in cases (not to mention not using them as frisbees) they will not get scratched. The scratches are also fixable. Like all formats, they are better when properly taken care of.
As someone who's had their fair share of CEX items from online, it's either the best deal you've ever had or the worst ripoff ever. However the 2 week return window for online stuff is great if u dont like it.
The problem with Seagate SSHD is they were so half-arsed. Even that drive was a good 3 generations since Seagates first attempt, and it's still only has a measly 8GB of cache NAND when 32GB would have been pennies more.. Also because Seagate; they were terribly unreliable.
2 points:
1. Seeing that someone had wiped the screen with window cleaner made me want to push it in the pond and
2. I won this laptop from a PC world giveaway in 2015 (it was not for this laptop it was for a Vaio fit 14 that was sold out and this was on an after Christmas mark down and was considered equal/less value.) I played WoW, D3 and Arkham Knight on this thing for years. Cex properly took it off my hands in late 2018 for a £500 voucher toward the 1080ti I still have today as a backup GPU. It ran very hot so sat on a fan plate and the Klipsch speakers were the best part, crispy sound for a laptop.
Fond memories of a laptop I never wanted, used loads, heated my computer room with often and eventually part traded for a legendary GPU. Cheers for returning to the used market. I love the things you pull from your CeX down south. Up here it is all crap or former mining GPUs.
Since Sony exited the market in 2014, you probably had one of the last Vaio laptops ever made. I bet CEX sold it to a collector for multiple times what that 500 quid voucher was actually worth (rough guess, about 200quid in real money). I see people asking $300+ for Vaio E series laptops in the US. I have a 17" 3rd gen E series with a HD 7650M that I bought new in late 2013. It now runs Windows 7 and serves as a Windows 9X/XP retro gaming machine as well as an optical media player (incl. BluRay). The display still looks good by 2024 standards.
I don't have a backup GPU anymore. Even a 1080Ti is still worth a chunk of change. What I do have are multiple hacked consoles and older PCs. If my GPU takes a dump, I could keep myself occupied for an entire year while I save up money for a new GPU. And I wouldn't be missing much. As a lifelong gamer in their 40s, I'd say new release video games have never been less valuable or desirable to play than at this present moment. I had to see a therapist after playing Starfield for 150 hours. It can only be played 'for a long time' if you don't care about your sanity. I played the original Fallout at launch. Bethesda did a good job with FO3 (I am playing it rn) and an OK job with FO4 (just finished playing it) but after that, they kinda lost the plot. I live in fear of how the FO4 next gen update will destroy one of my favorite games. Todd Howard has literally lost his mind at this point.
Don't ever forget that 2023 was the year Motorfest launched, lol. It is like someone decided to take FH5 (already not a great game) and copy it, poorly. Online races were somehow even more of a crapshow than the legendarily compromised by hackers FH5 online racing. Mixing bikes and cars sounds good - until you poorly execute the concept and all anyone has to do to put you completely out of the race as a rider, is to just not brake on the first corner, slam into you at 120mph, and send you flying halfway across the map so you instantly get an 'out of bounds' penalty. Racing is no fun when you have to drive/ride like everyone is out to get you, because they are. Even in a car, you had to take some interesting lines to keep deliberate high speed ramming from punting you off the track. You basically had to assume they were going to hit you and position yourself accordingly. An interesting exercise in Newtonian mechanics if you are a nerd like me but annoying as hell if you just want to play a game and have fun. Crapfest was the worst game I've played in 30 years and even less realistic than FH5 due to some bizarre choices in game mechanics. The boat racing part of it was just a total abortion. The flying was only marginally better than the nonsense in BF1 and flying a plane was more fun in Whorezone 1.0 or pretty much any Far Cry game. The bikes were actually the highlight of the game - until you ended up in a race against cars. Even the AI was out to get you. Like, 10 times as much as in Forza. It was so bad, I have to complain about it here because there aren't any new Motorfest vids to comment on.
@@Lurch-Botomg… thanks for the lord of the rings response chief. Jeesu
CEX screwed me over and sold me a stolen phone then gave me the hardest time to get my money back
😔
So, did the police take your phone back as evidence?
How do you find out if a phone is stolen?
@@ashenwattegederasearch the IMEI number online.
There's websites for IMEI lookup. Search for them. I've only used them once 9 years ago so I forgot the actual site. There's probably many different sites now.
That was because the employee was stupid enough to buy the phone from a customer and not lookup the IMEI first, and they didn't want their boss to find out they bought illegal merch. If they gave you the refund, then it is a paperwork trail of stupidity.
I5 4210M should be a PGA cpu, so you can swap it for a 4 core i7. I did so on an old latitude with 3rd gen intel.
He should use the i7 4910MQ, its reasonably priced and clocks up to 3.9ghz and has the full 8MB of l3 cache.
Only if Alienware made it swappable. It would help in light video editing (1080p resolution) and some games, but the older GPU with only 2GB of VRAM would still hold it back a lot. But yeah, an i7 with 4C/8T would make it usable at least. I’ve swapped my i3 4130t to an i7 4790t and the difference was huge.
@@dimitriasimov2140A lot of these old Alienware are very upgradable. It might be possible to upgrade the GPU to a 960m. Theoretically, even to a chinese 1060/2060/3060 mobile in that old mobile format. The problem is, it would be very costly and very janky
@@dimitriasimov2140 alienware isnt really the one that decides. If the chip is made as PGA by intel, then it will always be socketed. And according to intel 4210M was only made as FCPGA, so no soldered down variant, that was probably reserved for u and y cpus. Dell could still restrict it in the bios, but when the swap works on their business class laptops form the time, i doubt they would dedicate time to disable it here.
Runs at 80C+ with the 2c/4t chip... An i7 would melt through the case 😅
Younger me would've loved playing games with this laptop even with 30 fps.
Yeah, child me had no money and low expectations too.
I can't relate. Younger me was gaming at 60fps on a 486 in 1995. It was a DX2-100, courtesy of a FSB and multiplier overclock and outperformed either the AMD or intel DX4-100. If they can call a DX3 a DX4 then I can call a DX2.5 a DX2, lol. And that was just the budget build I was allowed to call my own. The 'family' PC was even more powerful.
There's a program called Magpie that can add FSR 1.0 to any windowed program. Might be useful in a case like this
Awesome I’ll have a look!
"In fact, it didn't help, because I did enable it" LOL that made me chuckle. Great video as always friend.
😁
God damn, it's actually 2024...nothing fucks you harder than time.
Hope you have a nice Sunday, Steve!
You too!
@@RandomGaminginHD I sort of did, it's Monday for me now haha
Mental now that you can buy a sub 400 quid handheld pc that can blow this outta the water, how quickly we've moved forward is insane
ive made a rx 5700xt build for £290 excluding the case so ur very right
Never really like to leave two comments, but this video also made me have a flood of emotions about the M17X R2 I had in highschool and the M18x I got as a replacement from dell when that broke.
Great video, would love to see a tear down and possible CPU or GPU upgrade!
normally any laptops are not susceptible to CPU/GPU upgrades, unless you're into high risk-low reward things and also into microsoldering. It's nearly impossible to consistently solder those chips, so the only recourse is motherboard swap. Normally, that is also not an option on older hardware, as the motherboards are custom for almost any laptop model, so you're limited by the shape of the chassis. Hope this puts some light on this idea
@@jamesdong8179 yes I am aware of that, but that laptop is the last one where intel used pga sockets for they CPUs and on the GPU side there were MXM format graphics cards that allowed u to swap if needed
@@mateodupetit4842it’s a BGA gpu, only the 17 and the 18 got the MXM cards
@@jamesdong8179 it would he great if you knew what the OP was talking about before egotistically typing out a novel
This is your niche and I love it. Currently gaming on a 7970 Ghz edition from my old crossfire system. It's fun to see what it's capable of these days.
Interesting timing, just ordered my first Alienware product today, a 3225Qf, figured I have the best of everything else, that it’s time to ascend to 4k 240hz QD-OLED.
Wow, an early video catch! I am blown away how well that laptop did with fairly recent games. However, I am most impressed with its performance in games from its era and older. I would have been happy with that machine 10 years ago as a mobile gaming station for a lot of the older titles I still enjoy even now. And the weird resolution seems to be fitting for a screen that size and a nice performance balance for the CPU/GPU. Heck, in 2014 I believe I was still running an overclocked AMD Phenom II X6 on a socket AM3+ motherboard, 8GB of decent DDR3 RAM, with a 2GB GDDR5 Sapphire Radeon HD 7870 that was also overclocked.
AM3 unite!!! I had an ancient FM2 system I upgraded, eventually jumping up to AM3+ with an FX8350 and GTX970. Not an awful combo, but blown out of the water by the little Ryzen 3 1200 and 1070Ti which I replaced them with!
On the topic of Cex I just got an MSI GeForce RTX 3060 Gaming Z Trio 12GB GDDR6 for my PC. Damn I used to want this laptop so bad!
Hey, that's my graphics card! I scored mine on Facebook Marketplace for $120, been using it for over 6 months now, and it's been an amazing upgrade from my gtx 1660 6gb.
That's a damn nice card. For how much if you don't mind me asking?
I've been really into Alienware as of late, and this video is no exception
I have a 2015 or 2016 Alienware 15 and it looks very much the same. It's still a decent laptop if a bit bulky. If I could be bothered getting it from my parents house I could send it over to you for a reasonable price for some content :D
That would be awesome 😁
I must implore other viewers, if they are thinking about buying a relatively cheap used laptop to consider one of the models from 2016. that have the gtx970m 6GB version and the i7 6700hq the 4core 8 thread cpu. these are well worth the hassle of upgrading the ram to 16GB and the storage to some big ssd.
Yeah that’s probably the earliest I would go for a machine that’s still capable for sure
@@RandomGaminginHD nah the 780M ones are good too but consume much more power
Gotta love how early I am, just made myself a cup of tea and got something to watch lol.
Nice :)
😁☕I have a cup of Tea with RGinHD too
A quad core I7 and a mild overclock on the 765M could help quite a bit with performance.
Don't think mobile CPUs were 4 core (with the exception of high performance options, such as MQ models or HQ models) util Gen 8...
@@TheSpotify95quand core 8 tread mobile CPUs exists since the first Intel core generation
and a actual SSD
@@TheSpotify95my aunt still uses a crappy HP with a quad core Q 720, made in 2009...
This was my dream laptop back then! 2GB of video was a dream. This would compete against PS3/360 and PS4/Xone games. This is what mobile gaming looked like to us lol (Remember those portable PS4 cases?).
This was my first Alienware laptop, and since then I became a fan of the brand. Like all brands, they have their ups and downs, but overall I'm happy. My AW 14X had the same GPU, an i7-4700HQ 4c/8t, 16GB RAM, 1080p screen and a Blu-ray Drive. At the time performed well with most games on Medium or High. It's nice that it has an mSATA slot and a standard SATA connector. The downside of this laptop, in my opinion, is that the same cooling pipes and one fan is used to cool both the CPU and GPU, but I suppose it still gets the job done. I think this was just about the last generation of Alienware laptops that included a DVD or BD drive, so it's a nice one to own in your collection. I sold mine like 4 years ago, but then re-bought the same one with slightly lower hardware specs a couple of years ago. Would recommend as a toy and for playing slightly older games, but not for current games.
I like cex for pc parts. I got my 7800x3d for £35 cheaper than new and it came with the box. I wouldn't buy it if they didn't offer a 24-month warranty, which is kinda crazy for a second-hand product
Yeah the warranty definitely seals the deal
I mean you would've got an extra year warranty if you bought new for that £35 plus it being new, AMD will give you a new CPU if your failed, CeX warranty isn't as good as AMDs
I haven't played BG3 yet and as an old school Gary Gygax DnD player I'm amazed to see intellect devourers being one shoted. I remember those monsters as being insanely deadly party killers.
Love your review videos. keep it up! I'd love to see another video covering the intel atom due to it being not so well known❤🙏
That slot on the bottom of the case at 1:35 is that a slot loading dvd player? An OK laptop. I like the lighting effects on the track pad. And in surprisingly good condition considering the grade. I expect after all the dust is cleaned off of it it would look quite respectful.
Dude! I was lucky enough to get one of these my freshman year of college. I remember thinking it was really awesome to be able to play Skyrim maxed out on a laptop and also enjoyed Fallout 5 a good bit too.
I had this exact same laptop back in 2014. It was my first ever gaming PC and it was such a beast back then, I played alot of Metal Gear Rising Revengeance and Battlefield 4 as well on it. Crazy how fast technology moves and now this is basically a paperweight in terms of gaming performance lol
You need a frog step - ramp for that pond bro lol.
I had to google frog ramp, I never knew those even existed til now 😂
I have one of those with the 4710 i7 in my drawer. Its a freaking tank! Love the startup sound of the hard drive
Would you be interested in testing one of those 3060m Frankenstein Desktop form factor cards? I feel like you have already but if not I have one.
Oh for sure. Check my business email in the about section. I’ve tested a 3070m so a 3060m would be cool :)
I was dying to see this laptop being cleaned
I actually had one of these in college. I got it when I came out and it was one of my favorite laptops.
It’s strange to think cs 2 runs so poorly on it. I had the 765 and the i7 in mine and all I played were cs and wow. I remember them both running great on max settings, 60+ fps no problem.
But I know cs2 is a different animal.
Anyway thanks for the vid!
An Alienware laptop was my dream computer in 2013 before I knew anything about tech. I was so impressed you could play Minecraft at more than 25fps.
To test older pc's, you should also try Dirt Rally. My g3258 would run it nicely. The ego engine is nice for older pc's, so that would be a interesting benchmark, I believe.
Nice video, as always. These old computers can have a nice second life with a ssd and some repairs/cleaning. For basic stuff and older games/emulators it should be good enough.
I have this laptop, but with the GTX 860m GPU. Picked it up for £30. My GTX 860m GPU only works when the charger is plugged in, as soon as I take the charger out the GPU doesn't work and I get blue screen. Doesn't bother me as I just keep charger plugged in and works perfectly. However this has always baffled me and have never seen an answer as to why the GPU would only work when the charger is plugged into laptop. Any ideas?
I love seeing Kepler being tested, although i think the 765m is maxwell technically.
But still, my first actual gaming pc had an athlon x3 and a 750ti with 6gb ram. Man,good times and fond memories.
Great video I love the Alienware laptops I’ve owned 9 of them in my time from various models the only one from that classic line up I didn’t own was the m18x which had the sli, but had great fun with them especially as you could upgrade the mxm 3.0 in some of them for better graphics if you kid you can go far and cpu to a point lol
You can upgrade the CPU to a Core i7-4700MQ 4-cores/8-threads. It's 47W vs 37W for the i5 but for double the cache and double the cores. The cooling solution can handle the difference. The socket is FCPGA946.
I still have an old MSI gaming laptop
i5 4210H - same CPU as yours, but with 47W TDP & higher clocks
GTX 850M - a bit faster than the GTX 765M. And memory OC could gain 10-15% more FPS easily
It now functions as a office/backup PC
I'd love to see a follow-up video where you maybe upgrade the CPU and ram and compare the FPS. That unit should support up to an i7-4910MQ, and that alone would almost double your performance.
I bought one myself, with the same specs but with a faulty keyboard :) couldnt resist!
My now main PC is a laptop from the same era, though a Lenovo one. With a i7-4710HQ and a GTX 860M (thankfully still supported by Nvidia) and 16GB of RAM with a 1TB Samsung EVO 850 SSD. (my own upgrades).
It came originally with 8GB of RAM and a SSHD by Toshiba. That was the worse performing driver I ever had and the first and last SSHD I ever owned. POS. (yes I still have it in "storage" (aka a drawer).
It's nice to see someone buying a computer from the same year my actual computer is, as a video for old hardware. /s
Pain aside, another great video.
Saw one of Iceberg's videos finding the "cut off point" for the viability of gaming using an older gpu...is that something you'd be interested in doing with this? Picking a game or two from each year from this laptop's release up to the point it's no longer playable? With Steam and others being like game museums, I feel like these laptops still have a useability factor, like old consoles.
I've just bought a Lenovo ThinkPad A285 from Back Market for £140, as I needed a better laptop. It can't make the jump to Windows 11, because of MS' controversial minimum spec requirements, but it runs Linux Mint like a champ. The Ryzen 5 PRO 2500U works like a dream, especially when using Proton! It also boasts 16GB of DDR4 RAM clocked at 2400MHz.
For £120 I would have still bought that anyway, the look of it is awesome, I'd definitely have it in my cabinet along with my collection of older laptops and tech :)
Still have an old "Schenker" with 970m 6gb, which suprisingly can still run a lot of newer games (at low of course), seeing this the 970m still holds up quite well.
I just tested the Alienware 18!
i7 4930MX
16GB DDR3 RAM
GTX 980M 8GB !!!!!!
It's really cracking!
It's times like these I wish there was a better way to do a screen capture. The video footage I am watching looks gorgeous but then I have to remember that it's being captured internally and then rendered into video so it looks good. Way better than it would if I were sitting in front of the laptop. Perhaps you can take footage of the screen itself through a good camera next to the captured footage from time to time.
if you do some looking you're likely able to upgrade that CPU to a 4810MQ which is much better for that era. In addition, I believe but am not entirely sure, but that generation alienware should have an MXM slot in there, so the GPU can get upgraded up to a 1060 without real issues.
Looks like no- but the Clevo from that era, the P157SM-1 has both a 4th gen upgradable CPU socket and an MXM slot so can take up to a 1060.
Watching this' reminding me of my M17 R1 that's now just resting. Fun times that thing gave. If only the GPU on the 14 inch model was an MXM, it would have been able to kick a little more.
I'm curious if u could do any upgrades to cpu gpu probly not but if so it would make for a fun follow up, they seemed to be hellbent on soldering things to boards after this era of laptops sadly... but for what it is not bad at all.
Is it possible to put a more modern MB and CPU and GPU into this laptop ?? I think a great looking machine like this would make the perfect " Sleeper " build . I think also it would make a great video for your channel and also a fantastic idea for a commercial project , imagine modern builds to order in classic cases .
How about turning it into an emulation box? the design is cool enough for a living room. If it works, you can play all of your ripped games (and other, if you sail the high seas) on a single system.
Wonder if it would perform any better with a repaste, but it looks like any gains would be marginal at best
Yeah not sure it would help. Think we’re definitely just hardware limited
It's just barely too old to have a maxwell gtx 8xx or "gtx 960m" (aka 750 ti) in there. I have an old lenovo with nearly the same cpu but a 960m sitting around, but sadly the gpu seemsto be borked, otherwise it would have been the "perfect" windows xp retro laptop lol
also intel had 2 core mobile i5s up until at least 7th gen core series....,I'm typing on one right now. Granted the later ones were only for the lower power ones but still
Intel had 2 core i7s for a while, I think that's even more misleading.
The “how does the old hardware run stuff” type of video is my favorite from both you and Iceberg Tech.
I couldn’t care less about new, expensive graphics cards. There are thousands of channels benchmarking and running comparisons for the newest $600+ GPU’s and they are informative, but not really that interesting anymore.
I think it is the old graphic cards that cause it to be overlooked. It is kind of screwy that the machine only has a GTX 765M in 2014 because I have had two Asus laptops with 4th Gen CPU (i7s however) with one having a GTX 960M (2 GB) and the other having a GTX 980 (4 GB). Both are also 2014 models and originally had Windows 8 as well.
Those hybrid drives aren't bad. They're best suited for the OS(In the days before SSDs became dirt cheap anyway...), or anything else that will take up long term residence on the drive since it takes a fair bit of time for the drive controller to fully determine what files should be moved to the drive's flash memory. But once they did settle in after a month or so, they were a pretty significant upgrade as far as loading times went. Still basically glacial when compared to even a SATA SSD, but considerably faster than a pure mechanical drive. And a lot more reliable than the early SSDs, kinda like the OCZ drives I spent a fortune that s**t the bed because I left the computer off for 3 months while I was out of town for work. Yeah, I'm still salty about that, lol...
And I do miss those old chonky desktop replacement gaming laptops. Yeah, they were huge and heavy as a house. But they did have plenty of room for cooling solutions, tons of drive bays, and not even a hint of soldered RAM. Plus, it made for a pretty effective impromptu flail if someone tried to mug you while you were carrying it in your backpack. Best part was it would probably still work when you got home afterwards.
Love the video love you I have Asus g751 jl laptop with GTX 965m and I cannot over clock it can you help me out
If you use rufus to block cpu requirements for windows 11 22h4, like my HP it worked fine but that's insider preview
Yeah, that wasn't in "poor" condition, I think CeX were being a bit pessimistic with their grading. Other sites would have easily put this as a Grade B.
Always interesting to see, how upgradeable these, chunkier laptops are. Memory and ssd, easy, but cpu, maybe even gpu? Thermals were good, still, some fresh paste might make it happy. 😋
Dell's high-end laptops from the time put their GPUs on removable daughterboards that retained the same form factor across multiple generations, so it wouldn't surprise me to learn that their Alienware division did the same thing.
better than my i7 5th gen yoga which struggled to play games at 30fps lol
Same specs ASUS with 820m worked similar in GTA V and CP2077(a bit better with former, a bit worse with latter) while consuming less power on GPU side...
What's going to happen to the laptop now I'd be interested in buying I am in the UK. Cheers 👍
Depending which version of the M14x it is. It might have been possible to upgrade this to an i7.... There are tonnes of guides on the internet with more information on how to do it.
i can't believe alienware actually shipping machines running win8, they would have been rolled back to 7 faster than they would have been updated to 10 after that finally released
We're now the history Channel talking about ancient aliens
isnt possible to upgrade the cpu? dont know if its soldered or socketed. Think thats going made a bigger difference.
Can the CPU be upgraded to a quad core i7 or is the CPU soldered? Same question for the GPU. Upgrading a mobile GPU would be interesting. Could put in a 970m.
Is the 980m not socketable?
OML hahaha! I'm watching this on the exact same laptop but slightly better specs with a gtx 770m and i7 4700hq and 16gb ram rn. My pc just died, so dug up the 10 year old laptop, shes serving me well rn before ill build the new pc next weekend :3
I tried bg3 on it but im in the lower city. a solid 10fps with the same settings youve tried lmao! But i mostly play wow anyway and it's perfect for that in the meanwhile.
I do believe sometimes, they don't know quite what they're selling and that's what I look for. with Easter approaching and the mass of 'spring sales', then I guess it's going to be good to look for cheap laptops as folk seek to replace their old ones.
I much prefer cashies to Cex, but will use one against the other for comparing prices.
sometimes, the specs of some laptops go over the heads of some of the staff at those places, and the only thing that can trigger an instant 50% off is something ridiculous, like a solitary dead pixel in the upper left hand side of the screen that's barely noticeable unless you really _really_ look! (and how I missed a hi-end laptop for £100 for spending too long thinking about getting it.................... also kicking myself for missing out on a google pixel7 for £50 because I was just a few seconds too slow 😛)
I was thinking to buy older laptop like Lenovo ThinkPad T530. It's so easy to upgrade ram,ssd,battery and even keyboard is easy to replace.
Don't buy Lenovo, is Chinese cheap crap
Wait the minimum framerate is lower than the 1% and 0.1% lows for RDR2, I don’t think I have ever seen that in your other benchmarks.
Could you do a video on gaming on 1366×768 vs 1080p on fps difference because my monitor is 1366×768
"Product in poor condition." Isn't that the normal state of Alienware design these days? 🤣
Another awesome vid Steve love older Alienware PC's and laptops👍🏻👍🏻 Maybe do a colab vid with Kryzzp from zWORMz gaming with the CS2 benches, sure he will be able to help you better your game lol cheers mate
Haha yeah that would be cool
The CPU IS upgradable. I'm actually posting this on a Thinkpad with the same dualcore i5 and I'm planning to get a cheap quad i7 from ebay.
Ah that’s awesome I’ll look out for a cheap CPU!
you can definitely upgrade that cpu to i7 no problem for that gen and it will definitely boost the performance a lot!
Earlyy , hello RG , i've been watching u since 2017
Thanks for sticking around!
Uff, that laptop aged not that well, but still looks great.
I'm also still having a MSI with i7-4720HQ & GTX 950M , the CPU is still alright for a lot of things, but the 950M (2GB GDDR3 version) is really struggling a lot. :D
Got the same in my Asus laptop. Cpus plenty fast but man that ddr3 version of the 950m is checking out. Would of held up better with the 960m or gddr5 version of the 50
@youtubeaccount7544 eh! Honestly played some games back in the day. Old need for speeds and fortnite, little golf it and csgo. Legit can't really do any of that anymore but CPU was fast enough to carry at the time.
Got a 3080ti in my desktop and that's definitely good enough still for now.
Why were you wearing a chainmail on that box clip?
Why don't you try Ghost recon Wildlands on specs like this or similar ?
Awsome content
Would the FSR3 mod function with cyberpunk and this gpu?
is it upgrade capable man? im thinking of getting one of this
A cpu upgrade would be interesting?
I use one of these old Alienware (GTX 1060) as my work laptop. Works great and get a good workout carrying it back & forth 5 days a week. Rather take one of these older models over a modern laptop that would break just by sneezing in their general direction.
Haha yeah this is a sturdy beast indeed
Specs like this are obviously terrible, but I wonder what it would be like to play much much older games, as well as emulation etc. To me this seems like it would be really cool to tinker with if I was going away for a week or so. Obviously you could bring a switch or something like that, but I feel like this would at least allow you to watch some content with some form of comfort.
I got an RX 5700 XT from them a year ago and was faulty, got a replacement two days ago and faulty too, not sure how they don't test their GPUs! Luckily I got a full refund
Can you do a test of the Ryzen 5 5500GT?
This reminds me of Luke Miani who went through a phase on his channel of buying 'trash' MacBooks online only to be totally surprised when they arrived in nearly new condition. RUclipsrs seem to have unnatural luck when it comes to buying second hand goods that are listed as poor quality.
It's been a while since I saw an optical drive on a laptop lol
Haha yeah same
Never forget what they stole from us, on most importantly cars. One day I hope CD’s come back like vinyl or a leap forward happens regarding them (Blu-Ray doesn’t count, that was the succesor of DVD’s)
@@tezcanaslan2877
I can't see CDs making a comeback for music, because the sound quality was such a drop-off from cassettes/vinyl. Some albums sounded sooooo bad when they went to CD, Boston's debut album before it was remastered is a good example.
I personally hated the era of discs and couldn't wait for it to end. They'd get scratched up so easily compared to older cassettes and current flashdrives and sd cards
@@ivangerginov5648 as long as you dont store them in paper sleeves or those books and keep them in cases (not to mention not using them as frisbees) they will not get scratched. The scratches are also fixable. Like all formats, they are better when properly taken care of.
0:56 weird splattering = vape dribbles. Ask how I know...
I'd love to this upgraded to 16GB ram and an SSD :D
As someone who's had their fair share of CEX items from online, it's either the best deal you've ever had or the worst ripoff ever. However the 2 week return window for online stuff is great if u dont like it.
The problem with Seagate SSHD is they were so half-arsed. Even that drive was a good 3 generations since Seagates first attempt, and it's still only has a measly 8GB of cache NAND when 32GB would have been pennies more.. Also because Seagate; they were terribly unreliable.
I suppose for some older games that Alienware machine would be perfectly serviceable....
If you can stick an i7 4910mq it has a 3.9GHz turbo 8M L3 cache and is cheap