Size still matters: Alienware 16 Area-51 RTX 5080 can outperform the Razer Blade 16 RTX 5090

The Alienware Area-51 is almost 60 percent heavier and 2x larger than the new Razer Blade 16. Subsequently, the Dell system is able to run GeForce RTX 50 GPUs at higher power levels than on the Razer for faster performance. The advantage is wide enough that the Area-51 equipped with the RTX 5080 can sometimes outperform the Blade 16 equipped with the RTX 5090 when gaming — even when the Alienware GPU is set to just 150 W TGP instead of the full 175 W.

As an example, our benchmarks below compare the Area-51 RTX 5080 running on Balanced mode to the Blade 16 RTX 5090 running on Performance mode. While synthetic 3DMark benchmarks show the Razer system ahead, the story becomes less clear-cut when running actual games. Titles like Monster Hunter Wilds and Assassin's Creed Shadows would consistently favor the Alienware while others like Cyberpunk 2077 and Indiana Jones would come very close by mere percentage points. The additional 8 GB of VRAM on the mobile RTX 5090 is therefore not a dealbreaker in most gaming scenarios.

Running the Alienware on "Overdrive" mode instead of Balanced mode would widen its advantages against the Blade 16 even further by another 5 to 10 percent or so when gaming.

This phenomenon isn't new as similar results were observed on last generation gaming laptops running on older GeForce RTX 40 hardware. Size still matters just as much as the names of the GPUs for users who want to squeeze as much performance as possible from their laptops.

More benchmarks and comparisons can be found on our full review of the Alienware 16 Area-51.