Cast your vote or opinion on the new Alienware 2015 model line up!!

Honestly, I think that's exactly what we need. It doesn't really matter to me how it is accomplished. If someone comes here to compare an AW 2015 model with a competitor's and mentions that they bought the competitor's over AW's then I think that's something that AW needs to see, as well as other AW owners who were considering to upgrade.

I just made a NBR account to post on the forums about how disappointed I am with AW's current direction. As a long time Dell/AW owner, I can say that I will no longer purchase anything from them until their direction has moved away from soldered components and well as the newly discovered overclock locks they are putting on the Nvidia mobile GPUs.

So in my opinion, if you have a valid reason to add fuel to the fire then please do! AW needs to see that they will lose many customers.

 

Given that comparable systems also use a 180w supply, I don't think the performance issues are due to that (not with the 970M, anyway). It is very likely a BIOS issue. And since AW admitted they had a BIOS issue and are looking to fix it, I think that's a safe assumption.

My AW17 R2 should be here in the next few days. I'll run some tests, but if its benchmark scores are less than my previous Clevo (with identical specs and 180w PSU), the AW is going back.

 

Are you going to run the tests both with pre and post BIOS update?

 

You must buy a kill-a-watt so you can control the maximum wattage during benchmark tests for your new Alienware. These are very cheap to buy .. Run 3DMark Sky Diver benchmark test. This bench test uses more watts than 3Dmark11 and 3DMark Fire Strike. Also run 3DMark Vantage. Benchmark Test for the processor can you use Wprime 1024 (8 threads) to check if the processor is throttled. As said buy you a kill-a-watt.

 

I'll try and do that. I'll also take some comparative pictures, as I still have the AW 17 Ranger here.