Alienware 13 Pre-Release Speculation Thread

A Samsung SSD? That's good to know.
Also good to know the the trackpad/touchpad still has that little line the separates the left and right-click buttons. Keyboard looks a lot bigger than imagined, but the RAM is oddly separated. Ehh... size constraints.
Still hate the page up/down locations.

 

Really Nice Reborn2003

I look forward to more info....

 

I am really curious about how it handles MMO's such as WoW.

I am in the market for a small gaming laptop now and would definitely buy this one if it can play WoW maxed out in a raid environment or large city with high population. Also if it can play League of Legends at like 60+ fps that would be awesome too.

I dont plan to play any of the "big shooter" type games on it. I have a ps4 for that

 

Can't wait to get mine!��

 

Anyone else notice the 512GB SSD option has disappeared from the Alienware 13 configuration page?

 

Congrats!!!!

Now, a very serious question.... how loud is "loud" when playing games? Like an M11x ?

Agh... I will never get used to those keys I can tell....

 

In the US. Australia and New Zealand still have the option; pretty sure so does some other regions.
In other news, Dell just sent me a $15 coupon on any accessories or electronic order $50 and up as a gift for this past year. And I only got one thing from them, the 13. Anybody else get this coupon?

 

I'm looking at putting a wd black2 in mine when it comes in but it has a depth of 9.5mm, anyone know if that drive will fit? Dell said yes but the guy didn't sound so confident over the phone, thanks

 

Looking at reborn's photos, the Black^2 should fit in there. Might be tight fit, though.

 

I noticed that too and thought that drive was part of the base price on the i7 config, Though I don't think the price changed when that drive went away.

 

Nope. The 1 TB was the base for the i7 config.

 

Hey All,

Just thought I'd check in and say this 13 is an awesome little beast so far.
I'm pretty sure the hdd above should fit; I'll see later if I can test for you.

Also in terms of fan loudness, I'm not going to beat around the bush, it gets quite loud indeed especially in a completely silent room. I would say that it is louder than the M11x's - mainly due to the 13 having 2 fans.
I will try some more extensive gaming later today and see how I feel about the fan noise then.
However so far when not under load the 13 is completely silent. TBH i prefer it being completely silent compared to having the fans spin at really low RPM.

I've got to head out this morning and take care of a few things but after that I will be back to test out the 13 some more and hopefully answer some of your questions that are within my power. So feel free to create a list of things you would like to test or ask.

PS: I didn't get the GA at this stage.
Also if I was still in school/college I reckon this would be the perfect little beast laptop for it!
I now have a little beast that I know I will be taking with me everywhere HAHA! :thumbsup:

Cheers.

 

hey Reborn2003, test it with 3dmark 11, and if you have some games that will be cool to

 

Reborn's testing will probably determine whether or not I grab one in January for my next semester.

I'm waiting for Broadwell, so I'm not stuck with Hotwell. I'm also hoping (by then) the 960M will be out. I hate purchasing something and then it being outdated within 6 months. But the AW 13 is almost perfect for my needs. I hope Intel and NVIDIA stay on schedule. Even if it has a ULV, I think it would be adequate. And I love Alienware's warranty.

Thanks for sharing, Reborn. Can't wait to see/read more. :thumbsup:

 

I wonder if the 13 will get the GTX 965m...
I wonder if this is worth it, but could you (reborn) audio record the fan noise in one of the benchmarks? I'm guessing the laptop would have to be at an angle so there's a gap between the fans and the desk/surface.

 

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 860M video card benchmark result - Intel Core i5-4210U Processor,Alienware 0VMGD7

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 860M video card benchmark result - Intel Core i5-4210U Processor,Alienware 0VMGD7

I'm also recording the fan noise on my iphone's voice recorder. Anyone know any good places to upload the mp4 files too? Thanks.

Cheers

 

It seems as though that i5-4210U is bottlenecking the 860M. It's holding it back approximately 18%-23% (average 20%).

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 860M - NotebookCheck.net Tech

With the 4700HQ/4710HQ the 860M averages nearly P5200 in 3DMark 11, with a minimum of around P4810. In 3DMark Vantage, the difference is even greater.

 

Can you please make a "first impressions" video ? There are absolutely no videos on YouTube (except for the media).

 

Hey reborn,

Thx for the Testing so far �� what i am interessted now is: is there an Option for overclocking the Cpu in bios? And if yes: does it work?

 

I've been reading through every thread I can find concerning this product, as I've been looking for something like the 13 for some time. It's a shame to hear that the cpu isn't strong enough. Do you think that the i7 model would have similar issues?

 

Okay so pretty crazy atm. Not exactly sure if this is a glitch or misreading from Windows 8.1
However it reckons I have over 10hrs of battery life available.
I've not been doing much but just sitting outside surfing the web, reading and replying to emails.
Every setting has been set to power saving mode except I am running the screen at max brightness because it is very hot and bright out today.

More 1st impressions so far include:
Great potential battery life - will continue to monitor progress
Fans do get quite loud when gaming - FIFA 15 (maxed out settings)
Playing Left 4 dead 2 (close to maxed out settings) the fans were about half as loud as playing FIFA 15
Screen is gorgeous just like the Alienware 14 1080p monitors.
Keyboard is great to type on.
Silent when not gaming.
Very small, slim (for an Alienware) and compact.
Weight is not too bad.
Boots up and shutdowns extremely quick!
Having used more power Alienwares in the past this one when gaming doesn't seem as quick (however I expected that going in) so not really too shocked. As most people already know the CPU is low on the performance side.
So far initial impressions are good on day one and I think I will be keeping it. Especially if the battery life is really good.



Cheers.

 

It's standard for Windows (7 and 8.1) to report some amount of battery life that could be crazy. It's calculated based as if you were doing that amount of work until the battery depletes. You might want to do a battery test to have get a better answer than what Windows reports.

Look at post #1195.

 

True that.
I am very impressed so far with it being silent and the battery life so far is holding up well.
About 1hr usage so far and it shows I still have about 9hrs battery life left.

 

What are you currently doing? (Select one of the below options)
- Office work
- Web browsing (I think this may be a nah duh)
- Gaming
- Photoshop-type stuff
- Watching a video/movie
- Idle
- Some combination of the above

 

Hey reborn good to hear you are liking your alienware 13. I was wondering how reflective is the screen? Also are colors vivid and is there graininess (like in usual matte displays)?

 

I'm just currently web surfing and replying to emails atm.
All lights are on and full screen brightness.
At this rate depending on what you are doing your right it will get me about 6hrs + or close to 7 or 8hrs depending on usage activity.

Not too shabby so far. I'm just comparing the battery life experience I had with the 2x Alienware 14s that I previously had which wasn't very great. Mind you they were much more powerful though. I'm happy with the tradeoff though.

Cheers.

 

Thanks CapitalPrince!

The screen is not reflective at all as the option I went for was the IPS 1080p screen. It is a matte finish and sitting outside in direct sunlight it works pretty darn great. Also colours are great and I haven't really seen graininess however I probably am not the best judge of that kinda stuff. To me the screen looks as good as the Alienware 14 IPS 1080p panel that I had last time.

I'm going to look at trying to get me a 2nd M2 SSD now for more storage capacity.
That 256GB is just not going to cut it.

 

thanks for the quick reply reborn

well this just makes my decision even harder. i just bought a lenovo thinkpad yoga 14. Pretty great laptop with 840m and 1080p IPS touch display. I'm a college student so i hate the ridiculously glossy screen. will probably return the laptop. also wonderful to hear the great battery life.

looks like they used a great quality IPS matte display. I'm curious how the 1366x768 TN 200nit antiglare panel is, particular the sRGB and adobeRGB (probably not good). Im okay with 1366x768 on 13.3 inch. Man buying a laptop these days............

 

so i know with HP if you call customer service and with some tact and haggling (bluffing to return laptop/complaining about things you don't like/pretend you have an issue) they offer you $50-$100 off. Does this work for Dell?

 

@reborn2002 A few things I really want to know about the laptop.

Can you show a screenshot of Nvidia inspector or any overclocking tool? I want to see what the cap is to overclock it without a custom bios.
Also do you happen to play Tera and or Diablo 3? I want to see how well those games play on the alienware 13.

 

On this point I think the decision to go with ULV left them very little in the way of choices to match it with... had they instead say put a 765m which would have both brought the price down without a change in performance people would have complained worse about it's age but in reality the pairing would have made more sense with the i5 (and knocked off easily $150 USD from the price). It seems obvious to me though they planned on the i7-Broadwell ULV part being the perfect pairing, if it's overall 20% or so higher performing than the i5 then it might be just right paired with the 860m.... then it makes perfect sense that the current i5 is bottle-necking. That being said, if the preliminary testing before release is correct though GPU-bound games still benefit with the use of the G/A, which means bottle-necking with the on-board GPU is not the end of the story...

I think they had to put in a higher level graphics card than the CPU could deliver on just for appearances and unfortunately inflated margins at sticker price... this was/is pretty much true for the M11x's as well.

Given all that though, the AW 13 as it stands right now still is a respectably capable machine at the price (considering build quality, warranty support, etc).

I have heard of them spinning up rewards money, not sure about direct adjustments to your price though... be curious what anyone has heard on this as well.

 

Looking at 3Dmark, it is the only laptop that has this weird combo (i5 ULV + GTX 860m). Had Alienware gone with something like the GTX 850m, they would lose more sales because that combo already exists (and the GPU isn't as good).
I think for the R2, there will be a GPU upgrade option. Hopefully GTX 960m -> GTX 965m, but ti most likely be GT 950m -> GTX 960m. CPU wise, we're stuck with the i7-5500U as the highest pre-Skylake.

 

Just thought I'd put some of the pics together in an album.

Alienware 13 - Imgur

Cheers.

 

Thanks! Great to see the pics of it side-by-side with the m11x!

 

So you can only overclock when the GA is attached? Have you disabled the feature to check if I can be wrong?
Also, that thing is almost the size of the m11x. I've viewed one up in person for a brief moment and thought that was too small. Oh what fun I'll have next year.

 

Man in 5 min u guys beat me to it, I'm happy im not the only one excited about my new 13 coming in, 1/14/15 ship date...whyyyy!!!!, hopefully there will be a way to overclock the cpu using the 860 in a future bios revision. Otherwise cheers and if anyone get the qhd display post some opinions bc I can wait to see that display.

Ps the one thing I will miss is that solid piece of glass/plastic over the display of the m11x I think it's a sharper looking display style, no plastic protruding bezel

 

Yup it seems there is no way to OC via the system BIOS atm.

 

So you can enable iGPU turbo boost (I think that is what the overclock thing means for the Intel Graphics) and overclock RAM, but you have to be connected to the GA?
Ugh... let's hope Intel XTU can offer at least something. No doubt the GPU can be overclocked through Inspector or Afterburner.

 

I'm strongly considering buying one of these. Debating between 1080p and 720p screens. I will primarily be using external displays (Dell U2414H), and I'm just not sure that a 1080p screen at 13" will be usable without serious desktop scaling. Any input?

 

Yep. The 13 is ~0.231" (5.58mm) thinner, 0.062" (1.7mm) deeper, and 1.663" (42.3mm) wider...and roughly the same weight. Sounds great to me!

 

The low-res 1366x768 screen on my m11x is one of the primary reasons I'm upgrading to the 13. I'm going to get at least the 1080p screen; possibly the 1440 though that may be a bit much for a 13" IMO.

 

I owned and m11x R2 and an m11x R3 and I can't imagine being able to read text at 1080p on a screen that small.

 

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 860M video card benchmark result - Intel Core i5-4210U Processor,Alienware 0VMGD7

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 860M video card benchmark result - Intel Core i5-4210U Processor,Alienware 0VMGD7



14k lol http://www.3dmark.com/3dmv/5172743 +135 CORE and +300 MEM

 

Stock versus overclocked 3D Mark.
Stock versus overclocked 3D Vantage.
(GPU is overclocked, not CPU).
300 and 600 (Mark and Vantage) score boost from an overclocked GPU. Not bad.
How are the temps?

 

Is 1080p a real issue with scaling? I never hear people really complain about it on 1080p...

 

Temps are pretty good!

 

I have the TPY 14 with 1080p 14 inches. its way too small sitting at a distance of 60-80cm away from computer with no scaling, with scaling its not a problem. sometimes i ran my computer at 1600x900 instead of 1080p and i think thats better. I also own an HP envy radiance (from 2010) and it has 1600x900 on a 14.5 inch screen and thats the perfect resolution.
The alienware 13 should have a 1600x900 option like they did in the alienware 14.

 

This is what I really wanted to see. ~70 C is really good to me.

Well with the higher res. panels, you can lower to 900p. Also, the 14 did not have a 900p panel. The m14x R2 and R1 did, but the 14 had a 1080p panel.

 

I would like to know what FPS that the alienware 13 will get on BF4 maxed out 1080p. I know that a regular gtx 860m with a quadcore cpu can max it out with 50 fps. Also, on Nvidia's new drivers release, they mentioned compatible video cards, gtx 960m and gtx 965m. So it seems their release is soon.

 

a i5 4210u+gtx 860m will get you <25 FPS with 1080p max settings.On notebookcheck.com a i7 4700mq+gtx 860m got 26.2 fps. for a game like BF4 you would need to lower the settings or play at 768p or 900p.