AW13 R2 & AW 15 R2 / AW 17 R3 BIOS 1.3.10

13 R2 Link
15 R2 / 17 R3 Link
Fixes & Enhancements
[BIOS]
1.Improve user experience in Battery mode
[EC]
1.Add Caldera SW flag for Fn+F1/S3&S4 plug in.

As a side note, I think this is the most Alienware has done to a laptop revision after they've been discontinued. Updated drivers and BIOSes. If you're testing any GA improvements, be sure you have the latest Command Center and Graphics Amp software versions.

 

Going to test it out this week.

 

Improve user experience in Battery Mode, i dont get it, they mean battery life improvements ?? anyways im gonna test and see..

 

I'm not observing any problems.

 

What about amplifier performance?

Sent from my SM-G930F using Tapatalk

 

Testing out battery performance (well, more or less the battery life). I thank that to having no [wall] power.
Will report back with result later.
EDIT: Power is back, so the result is a bit premature, but I did see some improvement in battery life. After about 25% to 30% was used to charge a phone's battery (10% to 76%), another 10 to 15% went to about an hour of battery life. Expected battery life was somewhere between 6.5 to 7 hours, which is higher than the usual 6 to 6.5 hours without the charging. Not bad, but more tests are needed.

 

Even battery life reporting is more precise and some 20-30mins of additional battery life even in CPU performance mode turned ON on 15 r2.

 

5hours 20mins is what i got on my R2, which 5 google chrome tabs open, softwares installed adobe CC suite, and MS office 2016, Few other 3D software, i guess it could be due to background tasks running, and also after this bios update, my TPM 2.0 on device says it cannot start CODE 10 error, tried googling it, nothing fixed my issue.. any ideas ??

 

Installed the new bios. I haven't tested the battery life yet but I noticed that the clock speed on idle is lower than it used to be. When I purchased the computer it idled at 0.88ghz. After Windows 10 Anniversary update and some bios updates the idle clock was closer to 1.2ghz. Now it hovers between 0.88 and 0.95ghz again.

 

Are you running Windows Insider Fast Ring version? On 14393.576 TPM 2.0 hasn't reported any errors.

 

im using the exact same version. i dont use Fast ring builds on my laptop.. i have a desktop rig for that.. where that one got 15002 insider build.. which was released yesterday.. i tried flashing bios to latest ones and also OS.. still that thing is a problem.. should i disable it on BIOS ?

 

@VICKYGAMEBOY : I'm facing inability to reinstall audio driver on 15 r2 and the damn things gets stuck during installation setup. Did you face this issue? Did you try Troubleshooting your devices in Control Panel?

 

no nothing works.. I tried flashing from BIOS 1.1.0 - 1.3.10.. one by one.. still that TPM 2.0 is saying CODE 10 error. cannot start.. drivers are upto to date though.. for sound driver I download from dell website.. not from creative ones, creative ones gave me error before.. dell ones no issues..

 

on 576 version, even dell's creative SB driver ain't working. I'm hoping that 693 update would resolve it. Have you tried re-running audio driver setup? I'm guessing TPM isn't working at hardware level. What about uninstalling it from Device Manager and then reinstallling?

 

Yes ive tried that many times, seems the hardware become faulty after I updated to BIOS 1.3.10, this is my second motherboard, I just got it replaced.. U can try the latest OEM Creative Sound Recon Driver from Station-drivers website..

 

Latest BIOS 1.3.10 fixed mouse stutters when Compal EC is enabled but I fear it took out my audio with it. How to diagnose board problems? I'm facing high temp issues because of stock paste it idles at 40-55C and opening a word document ramps it upto 65C-70C. I'm calling up Dell to fix it.

 

Idle temps are okay because fans arent running. But 70c are mid load temps

 

I'm on Windows 10 693. I haven't seen any error with TPM. @Vasudev, what kind of audio issue are you having? I have the SB drivers from Dell's site and my audio is working. Is it a delay or not audio at all?

 

I'm trying to reinstall audio driver from Dell, it simply gets stuck gobbling up CPU and progress bar won't move at all. The thing refuse to re-install.
@rinneh: Opening Word doc ramps up the temp to 60-70C doing nothing. A workaround I found is to enable CPU OC mode to ramp up CPU fan speed.

 

@VICKYGAMEBOY: I downloaded those drivers from Station drivers and will report after a day of testing.

 

I just unistalled my sound blaster drivers, restarted, then re-installed them to test if it would work for me. I didn't have any problems uninstalling or reinstalling the drivers. Sorry if that's not any help.

 

What about his part of the update:
1.Add Caldera SW flag for Fn+F1/S3&S4 plug in.

I wonder if this fixes the no resume from any powerstate with the lid closed

S3: Standby
S4: Hibernate

edit: nope... this is the only laptop I have ever owned that I cannot wake from sleep with the lid closed.. my 8 year old Inspiron and my few years old Inspiron 17R SE both do this fine..

 

In addition to that, disable fast startup if you're on SSD.

 

Thanks, which means my OS is somehow corrupt. I verified the hashes of the driver from DELL and it is perfect match. I'll a try a reinstall.

 

I had this issue until i updated to the latest intel drivers for the GPU on dell's website.

 

I actually do get it to wake from sleep with a graphics amplifier attached. Using the USB3 ports on the AGA.

 

Finally got around to using my GA with my laptop, and they did not fix the AMD Sleep bug (AMD GPU disconnects after the laptop sleeps for a period of time). Bummer.
No Hibernate option either.

 

Installed the one on their website and it failed to initialize after the comp restarted. AW 13 R2
Version: 1.3.10 ,1.3.10

 

Put it on a fat32 formatted usb drive and start the bios menu. Flash from there.

Also flash with the AGA disabled.

 

If you're on one of the earlier bios eg: 1.2.3 you need to update to 1.2.8 or any latest 1.2.x bios before proceed updating to 1.3.10.

 

Was it listed specifically by Dell. My Bios was 1.2.8 IIRC, I upgraded to 1.3.6 directly.

 

If your bios was on 1.2.8, which is the latest 1.2.x bios IINM, you can upgrade to 1.3.x just fine. But if you're on the earlier versions like 1.2.x you will fail to boot up after the first restart

this was mentioned by a AW rep in one of the comments in this video

 

@ZeneticX: Thanks for the heads up. I directly upgraded to 1.3.x w/o knowing.

 

To all Alienware 17 R3 users has anyone experience cpu throttling down after the bios update? My Alienware 17 R3 throttled down for the first time when running 3dMark Firestrike and The Witcher 3.

 

for me i had bit of GPU throttle, that was due to new nvidia driver.. some bug.. but reinstalling fixed my issue. for CPU throttling, monitor ur PCH sensor temp using HWinfo..

 

PCH temp and CPU temp barely reaches 80 celcius.. The things that I have updated are the following:
Nvidia driver from 372.54 to 376.60
Hwinfo 64 to latest version
CPUZ to latest version
GPUZ to latest version
Nvidia Experience to latest version
3d Mark to latest version
and the most recent was the bios update from 1.3.9 or from 1.3.6(i forgot) to 1.3.10..
after the bios update thats when I noticed the throttling.

 

What's your firestrike score? I'm currently on 1.3.10 as well but so far haven't noticed any throtthling or performance issues

 

My firestrike score is http://www.3dmark.com/fs/11742727. My alienware 17 r2 scored higher.. all are defaults no overclock or undervolt. My r2 scored 6573.
what could have be the problem.. T_T all settings are in high performance as well.

 

ah crap i got a different configuration from yours - 6820HK and 980M. But I'll run one anyway and you can take the physics score as reference I guess

 

this is mine

http://www.3dmark.com/fs/11744445

nothing wrong with yours it seems

 

LOL.. my config is the cheapest.. kinda new to alienware.. the r3 is the replacement of the r2 which was the most problematic laptop.. Guess I might roll back to 1.3.6 bios..

 

just so to verify this wasn't a bios problem, how do I check whether my proc is being throttled? XTU and HWInfo?

 

checked mine through both.. xtu and hwinfo..

 

Just tried runing another session of firestrike with XTU and HWInfo in the background. No throttling reported

 

No throttling with this bios. Performance is rock solid.

 

Pretty weird for me then. To the updates and changes I made before updating bios it is not that suspicious that it would cause this problem. I even tried rolling back gpu driver to 372.54 and it still throttles especially playing the witcher 3 and overwatch. T_T I guess I will inform dell tech support about this and maybe the only solution is to roll back to 1.3.6.

 

Maybe try enabling CPU performance mode in bios?

 

Tried CPU performance mode in bios:
What I've noticed was that the fan speed and fan start up was more aggressive. Played The Witcher 3 for 5 minutes and no throttling. Played Overwatch for 2 minutes(searching game) and CPU throttled down to 1.90ghz.. T_T I was abit happy when it didn't throttle when on the witcher 3. damn.

 

Pretty weird in that case.... Overwatch wasn't supposed to be too reliant on the CPU

since thermal throttling is out of the question, I'm out of ideas as well lol

 

Nyahahahahaha.. same here out of ideas. I'll let dell know before I roll back bios in case my laptop will get bricked they will replace my mobo.. Thanks alot for your help anyways. Oh b the way is there a significant gain using the latest bios in terms of battery life?