Can The Alienware Alpha Acually Play GTA V? Let's Find Out!

The curt answer to that question is a resounding and, perhaps surprising, yes, because it can certainly playGTA V. Though to what end? What kind of graphics options tin can we have on while maintaining good performance. What about achieving 60 FPS? Permit'due south accept a await at what information technology can really do.

The Alienware Alpha is actually pretty competent at GTA V

GTA V is a monster in terms of its graphical prowess. The number of options on the PC version arrived unexpectedly and were both a source of woe and excitement. You mean we really do have all these fantastic options to play with to fine tune our operation? And in that location's a fifty-fifty a measure of graphics memory consumption? Yeah, information technology's quite the nice surprise.

The trouble with the Alienware Blastoff is not that the seemingly underpowered components tin can't handle the college settings because of whatsoever raw functioning issues, just that there is a lack of dedicated graphics memory to support turning everything on. GTA 5absolutely loves video memory, and having everything on will consume a large amount, fifty-fifty at 1080P.

As I'll show you, the hardware can do it, only it can't put everything in retention to do so. The performance is adequate, but some scene elements seem to have a delay when showing up on the screen with the lack of dedicated retentiveness. Those things are rendered and the work has been done, nevertheless, they're just missing for a few seconds as they get swapped into video memory and thus onto your screen.

Does this mean that we tin't ever see cute visuals on the Alienware Blastoff? Not actually, actually. It just means that you'll have to be mindful of the settings you turn upwardly and the ones yous keep moderated. The two largest memory hogs in GTA V are the texture quality and AA settings. Express video memory ways yous just can't have the texture quality up all the way. In fact, I institute that the 'Normal' setting was nigh nominal. Moving it to 'High' shot up retentiveness usage exponentially, and 'Very High' fifty-fifty further.

Procedure

All benchmarks are completed using the in-game benchmark utility and placing the results into an excel spreadsheet. All memory usage data was gathered using HWiNFO64.

The Alienware Alpha tested is the base of operations model with the following specs:

CPU	Intel Core i3-4130T @2.9GHz
Video Carte	GeForce GTX 860M+ w/ 2GB GDDR5
Memory	4GB DDR3L 1600MHz
Hard Bulldoze	500GB SATA HDD (WD Bluish)
Wireless	Intel 3160AC + Bluetooth 4.0
OS	Windows 8.ane westward/ AlphaUI

First of all, permit'due south bear witness you what it canpractice. And it tin can practise a lot more, in fact, but these are the settings I found to be the well-nigh playable with the best bodily in game experience with piddling performance issues is to have no AA, and 'Normal' settings all around at a resolution of 1080P. Shadows were set up to NVIDIA's PCSS and Anisotropic filtering was x16.

Despite the awful minimum FPS that information technology presents, the average conspicuously shows that performance is relatively steady. More than that, when actually playing the game information technology feels bang-up. No, information technology'south not at the most gorgeous and mind blowing visual settings, and it won't wow y'all like having a dedicated PC with triple Titan X'south or 290X'southward, but it works, and it plays well. If you lot relish gaming for gaming and not nitpicking visuals, so it works more than well. It'due southfun.

Now, allow'southward take a wait at the memory usage during this run. How much memory really is being used? For this, I ran HWiNFO64 in the background to capture the data.

Quite honestly that's pushing the limits at near 69.5% of total. And but at the 'Normal' texture setting. Because the usage is below 100% of maximum and it's relatively stable, we can assume that there is no swapping being done and no organisation memory beingness used. Non horrible by whatsoever ways, and GTA V doesn't wait so bad at all at these settings!

At present let'southward wait at what happens when nosotros plough everything upward to maximum. To be a piffling more realistic, I set MSAA to 2x and reflection MSAA to 2x as well, everything else was at its absolute maximum, either 'Very High' or 'Ultra' where applicable.

I think pass 0 is a bit of an anomaly. I'm not sure why the FPS would exist higher than on lower settings, simply we can disregard that i. The best representation of the game is in the last pass, where there is more action happening. And explosions, because explosions are groovy. While watching the criterion, it did seem to have information technology's share of slowdowns, but overall the scenes played out relatively stable. I wouldn't telephone call it playable in the real game, simply the functioning isn't so bad. In fact, those numbers represent far meliorate performance than I predictable. I though the Alienware Blastoff would exist completely destroyed past these settings.

What near 1440P?

Y'all won't have plenty VRAM to play 4K, then those benchmarks are a useless venture. Just 1440P might exist a feasible choice on this little box of wonder. Well, if we plow up all the settings to their accented highest, then it might bring the machine to its knees.

That'due south actually a bit surprising. The Alienware Blastoff manages to provide an adequate experience where the maximum is beyond the cinematic 24 or 30 FPS. Only the boilerplate tells a different story, meaning that while there are moments of lucid quickness, the game plays rather slowly. The good news is that it seemed to be 'smooth', for whatever that's worth. But no, 1440P with everything turned upwardly is not a good idea, and information technology won't make for a good gaming experience. You're better off with 1080P.

And the memory usage at 1440P?

The depression usage in the beginning is consideringGTA V takes some time to load, so I didn't start the benchmark as quickly. But the VRAM usage is most certainly near the maximum. And the relatively less stable usage tells me that in that location is a flake of swapping going on in the groundwork. Large graphical elements are making their manner from system retention into VRAM, causing spikes in usage. That might be a reason for the less desirably functioning, and then. 1440P, while fantastic, is non the Alienware Alpha's forte. It'due south not horrible, and you lot can play it, but it's non platonic.

What can we conclude?

The obvious answer is thatGTA V is more than playable on this little un-intimidating machine. What we tin't practise is put everything on maximum and play at 4K and beyond. But is that really necessary to actually enjoy a game? Do we need all the goodies turned on to enjoy the experience? Perhaps for some, and that's alright. I'll admit that I enjoy turning the graphics upward to maximum and enjoying the scenery.

But when I'1000 really interesting in playing a game, none of that matters. At all. I savour the gameplay, story and other elements. And what wecan do with the Alienware Alpha is really quite surprising. We can playGTA V at 1080P with a good bargain of graphical fidelity at a very great average framerate. And it plays well.

The Alienware Alpha is indeed limited past it'southward VRAM, but that doesn't mean it can't nonetheless be an effective and fun box to use. The experience still rivals its console brethren and is, quite bluntly, a far amend experience than I would have expected.

Only remember, the Alienware Alpha is obviously not marketed towards anybody, and the hardcore PC oversupply need not apply. But for those inbound the PC market or that demand low ability and relatively good operation, then this magical black box can provide that feel y'all're looking for.