![]() 3DMark Fire Strike Extremeįirst up is 3DMark Fire Strike Extreme. ![]() For reference, I also threw in the far-smaller Razer Blade 2016, so you can see what the GeForce GTX 970M gives you. None of these details matter without solid performance to make it all worthwhile, so I decided to see how the Predator 17X stacks up against a crowd of truly beefy gaming laptops. If you open the bottom panel, you can drop in more RAM and gain access to M.2 SATA SSDs and the hard drive. For most people, this amount of access is safer. You can’t access the GPU or CPU, but that’s fine, since messing with those would void your warranty. It’s probably under the keyboard, or maybe buried somewhere else-but in either case, good luck getting to it easily. If you’re wondering where the existing RAM is, well, that’s a good question. Popping open the door lets you get at the slots for additional RAM, the SSDs, and the hard drive. The access port for the Predator 17X (right) is smaller than that of the Predator 17 (left). However, the Predator 17X’s door is quite a bit smaller, so you don’t get as much access to hardware. When you flip both the Predator 17 and the Predator 17X over, you can see the subwoofers in red and the large feet that lift up the laptop and clear the air intakes. Too close for missiles, switching to guns. I like the handy “off” switch just to the right of it-this lets you switch off the trackpad when using a mouse, so that you don’t ruin your gaming session with an errant touch. Overall, it felt firm, but with no click, and it has a slight texture. The trackpad is suitably large, and had no issues during use. The Predator 17X’s keyboard outlines the WASD keys in a garish red. As a result, the keyboard just isn’t as pretty as that of the Razer Blade 2016, which is simply lovely with its individually tweakable colors. You can change the color of the backlighting, but it’s zone lighting rather than adjustable per-key. The keys felt solid with no give, and are backlit. The keyboard is pretty typical for a gaming laptop: It’s full-sized with a standard layout. The right side gives you a gigabit ethernet jack, full-sized DisplayPort and HDMI, two USB 3.0 Type A ports, and a Thunderbolt 3 port. The other side of the Predator 17X features two more USB 3.0 Type A ports, full-sized DisplayPort and HDMI, gigabit ethernet, a Kensington lock port, and a USB Type C port that supports Thunderbolt 3. The left side of the Predator 17X gives you two USB 3.0 Type A ports, two analog audio ports, and an SD Card reader. (You’ll want to keep the massive 330W power brick handy.) You can expect better battery life when watching a movie, but the truth is, heavy-duty gaming laptops rarely leave the grid.įor ports, the left side has a pair of USB 3.0 Type A ports, 1/8-inch analog in, 1/8-inch analog out, and an SD card reader. The battery subsystem is a massive 90 watt-hour tank…which gives you maybe an hour when playing a game. And like many other gaming laptop companies, Acer goes overboard on system RAM, stuffing 32GB of DDR4/2133 into the 17X when 16GB would be fine for most people. Other amenitiesĮlsewhere in the Predator 17X, you’ll find two Samsung M.2 SSDs in RAID 0, a 1TB HGST 2.5-inch hard drive, and G-Sync support for the 1920×1080 17.3-inch IPS screen. The Acer Predator 17X includes a preset profile that bumps the CPU to 4GHz on all cores and overclocks the GPU by 135MHz. I’ll cover that more in the performance section below, but I will say for now that I had no stability issues or screen artifacts running on turbo. Out of the box, the i7-6820HK is set to stock, but a preset profile lets you overclock the CPU to 4GHz and bump the GPU by 135MHz. That’s an unlocked 6th-gen Skylake CPU, with a stock clock of 2.7GHz and a Turbo Boost of 3.6GHz. ![]() Paired with the GTX 980 is a quad-core Core i7-6820HK chip. Here’s the heat dispersion on the Acer Predator 17X’s keyboard after running an hour-long graphics stress test. I barely noticed any noise when the 17X got stuffed into a backpack for a DIY VR backpack setup, either, so kudos to Acer. In fact, we played hours and hours of VR games using the Predator 17X, and whenever it wasn’t my turn, I hardly noticed the laptop was there. ![]()
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