Review MSI Alpha 15 Gaming Laptop Review: All AMD, All the Time

[Admin]

The MSI Alpha 15 has a CPU and GPU from AMD, but performance is middling. It tries to make up for that with its screen and keyboard

MSI Alpha 15 Gaming Laptop Review: All AMD, All the Time : Read more

 

[Bejito81]

is the computer CPU limited in games?
the RX 5500M should be way more powerful than the GTX 1650

 

[larkspur]

is the computer CPU limited in games?
the RX 5500M should be way more powerful than the GTX 1650

It appears that the CPU (actually an APU) is having a detrimental effect here yes. If you look at the Dell and the Lenovo, they both have the nvidia 1650. The Lenovo has 16gb of RAM and an i7 versus the Dell's 8gb of RAM and an i5. Of course the cooling and power-limiting schemes (boost clock behavior) are different, but you can at least see how much better the Lenovo is in games despite using the same GPU as the Dell.

This MSI has 16gb of RAM too and yeah the RX5500m on paper should easily beat the 1650, but this isn't happening in this bench suite. It isn't the cooling either - this MSI laptop has a pretty good cooling system. Just for comparison, I really wonder how the RX 5500m would do with a i7 9750H. The i7 is 6 cores / 12 threads while the Ryzen here is 4 cores / 8 threads. The i7 in the Lenovo also boosts much higher than the Ryzen in the MSI.

I certainly wouldn't write-off the RX5500m as weak yet, but in the meantime, this particular laptop is a horrible value vs the Lenovo. This thing appears to be designed only for die-hard AMD fanboys.

 

[N_tell]

It feels like they built a work computer that can sorta game.