Alienware debuts 480Hz refresh rate with new 17-inch laptops

PC display speeds are about to rise. Alienware Update m17 R5 And the × 17 R2a pair of 17.3-inch gaming laptops, each featuring a 480Hz display option — about 33 percent faster than its previous top speed 360 Hz.

As of press time, 480Hz options for laptops aren’t available for purchase, but an Alienware spokesperson told Ars they should be available online soon.

480Hz displays have a resolution of 1920 x 1080 and a gray-to-gray response time of 3ms. In its announcement, Alienware promised “smooth animations to facilitate target tracking, reduce ghosting, reduce distraction effects and reduce system latency, making it easier for you to spot other players early.”

The target audience for laptops is gamers who want to keep up with professional esports players. Alienware hasn’t revealed which company makes its 480Hz panels, but we know that speed comes from Companies like AU Optronics for several months. We are still waiting for a file Desktop screen 500Hz From Asus, but in the meantime, Alienware laptops are the fastest among consumer screens.

Of course, the boost will be less noticeable if you’re familiar with 360Hz, for example, while your experience should be noticeably better if you’re graduating from 60Hz. We haven’t tried Alienware’s 480Hz laptops personally but we can confirm that the 360Hz screens showed noticeable visual improvements, especially when it came to fast motion, such as swiping text.

To fully reap the benefits of 480Hz, you will also have to play content that can be played at 480fps using the system’s hardware.

Alienware M 17 R5 Comes with up to an AMD Radeon RX 6850M XT (12GB GDDR6, up to 175W) or an Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 Ti (16GB GDDR6, up to 155W, 1410MHz), AMD Ryzen 9 6900HX CPU (eight cores, 16 series, up to 4.9GHz), 64GB DDR5-4800 memory, and 4TB of SSD storage.

The × 17 R2Meanwhile, it’s focused on being Alienware’s thinnest 17-inch laptop. It has up to an Intel Core i9-12900HK (14 cores, 20 threads, up to 5GHz), an Nvidia RTX 3080 Ti GPU (16GB), 64GB DDR5-4800 memory, and 4TB storage.

The displays are designed to have 300 nits of brightness and cover 100 percent of sRGB.

They also support Adaptive sync via AMD FreeSync Premium and Nvidia G-Sync, as well as Nvidia Advanced Optimus, which allows the system to switch between integrated and discrete graphics as needed and uses a “hardware-based dynamic rendering switch that allows GeForce GPUs to directly control the display” rather than just integrated graphics, According to Nvidia.

480Hz monitors will charge a premium of $300 over standard laptop configurations, which have 165Hz displays.

Both mobile devices will also come with displays with up to 4K resolution, but they will be maxed out with a 120Hz refresh rate and 3ms response time.

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