Alienware has no current plans for Kaby Lake-G

Alienware has no plans to incorporate Kaby Lake-G as part of its lineup (Image source: Dell)

According to Dell, Kaby Lake-G caters better to casual mainstream gamers while the Alienware brand will stick to hardcore gamers and enthusiasts with the familiar Intel H-series and Nvidia GTX GPUs. The Intel-AMD processors will instead be used for Dell's mainstream families like the XPS line to provide GTX 1050-level graphics.

by Allen Ngo, 2018/04/25

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Speaking to Frank Azor during the XPS 15 9575 reveal back in January, we queried the team if they had any intention to use Kaby Lake-G for the Alienware series of laptops. After all, Intel and AMD designed the processor specifically for performance laptops and the Alienware family seemed like a great fit. Instead, we received a very affirming "no" for an answer.

It's an unsurprising response given the different target markets of Kaby Lake-G and Alienware. Intel is marketing its AMD hybrid platform as a middle-ground option between its U-series and H-series of processors while Alienware laptops cater towards enthusiasts and power users. Even though the processor performance of the fastest Kaby Lake-G SoC is on par with the Core i7-7700HQ, a common CPU for gaming notebooks, its Radeon Vega M GH GPU cannot compete with the GTX 1070 or GTX 1080 that most Alienware models carry. Dell could technically offer an entry-level Alienware configured with Kaby Lake-G similar to how some older Alienware laptops would carry Radeon GPUs, but such an option is unlikely since significant internal changes between Vega M and Pascal configurations would be required.

Dell will alternatively be reserving Kaby Lake-G for systems outside of its Alienware branding. We've already seen this in action with the XPS 15 2-in-1 which is the manufacturer's first and so far only Kaby Lake-G offering at the time of writing. Dell could theoretically expand its Intel-AMD portfolio for its Inspiron family or upcoming gaming G3/G5/G7 series since they encompass budget to mainstream gamers. For now, however, future XPS and G3/G5/G7 SKUs will focus on offering Coffee Lake-H options while the upcoming Precision 5530 2-in-1 will use the workstation-specific discrete Radeon Pro WX GPU. Of course, plans could change in the future as the novel Intel-AMD platform develops over time.