*OFFICIAL* Alienware 13 R1/R2 Owner's Lounge

I've seen as high as 24k IIRC (it was at least over 20k).
Like you said...it's random.

 

Anyone here experience sound skipping or distortion during music or video playback? This is when the laptop is plugged in, playing through built-in speakers.

 

How warm on the bottom does everyone's aw13s get? My temps stay pretty decent (CPU never above 55 while just idling), however the bottom is a bit warm.

Wondering if this is just the design of the metal poking out from the bottom of the laptop to dissipate heat.

 

is this when you first turn on the laptop or in general? I've found the sound drivers to be rock solid (i7 5550u, gtx 960m, win 8.1).

Have you tried re-installing the audio drivers?

 

not sure I use a deep cool N1 cooler when i have the laptop on the bed (which i have nothing but praise for). I've found the bottom fans draw in air and exhaust them out of two vents at the rear (contrary to some reviews). With the cooler at full speed and the system idling I get around 40c on the CPU from memory atm (Autumn/Winter here in Australia)

will check out tonight though

 

In general. Yes. But the one posted online is the same as the shipping version. And there has been only one release for the Realtek driver so far. Similar case for SB XFi software

 

try this: http://en.community.dell.com/owners-club/alienware/f/3746/t/19618460

sounds it could be an issue with dell support assist and the current bios you are using. Are you using A03? Maybe try uninstalling support assist?

also:

"This post just SAVED MY LIFE.

I downloaded the Latency Program from a previous thread, and it basically just scared the crap out of me.

I went into the Device Manager, like it says here, disabled that piece of junk Dell Diag Control whatever-thingy, and BLAMMO. "

YMMV

 

Mine is coming in a weeks time with i7-5500, anything to watch out for?

 

The only issue i can report is the horrible jumping and skipping track pad. Scrolling on chrome i get grey squares every time i use two finger scrolling. Then it decides to jump and scroll right to the end of the page instead of a few paragraphs (as if i've decided to flick the touchpad). So annoying.

 

Do I need to flash BIOS or anything ?

 

Not if it's A04. should be on the bios screen when you press "delete" on startup. Otherwise just flash the bios to whats provided by dell on their website.

 

Is it worth to get the graphics amplifier?

 

Has anyone tried to run Warframe on the base alienware 13, does it seem to run ok and look pretty good

 

depends what you're after. If you need to replace a gaming pc like myself then hell yeah! I was getting about 16-20fps on GTA V on medium settings at 2560x1440 with the gtx 960m. The GA with a 780 ti phantom lets me play gta v at 37-45 fps at Max settings at 2560x1440, 350.12 drivers. (CPU bottleneck at this point)

if you want it for casual gaming then you need to ask yourself is it worth spending 700-800ish for a GA with a 970/980?

 

Check out this link:



if an alienware alpha with an i3 4310t (which is on par or weaker synthetically than an i7 5500u) and similar gpu (the alpha has a gtx 860m, alienware 13 has gtx 860m/960m) on max settings can get 120fps then the alienware 13 should have no problems.

 

Mmm , can a pcs+ r9 290x or msi gtx 970 fit in?

 

the pcs+ R9 290x should fit but the msi 970 may not due to the height of the card. I have a 780 ti phantom which a 2.5 slot card and it is about 1-2mm too thick for the case to close - so im running it with the case ajar. VERY ANNOYING. So remember the card must be a dual slot card!!

 

Around 4 hours on High Performance without plugging in external power source.

You may want to tweak the Power Settings for Balance.

@M666p

Thanks for the GTA V insights.

 

You can get 6-7 but it's a huge pain to do. I've documented some major testing to fix the discharge issue.

 

Was thinking of getting msi gtx970 ...mmm or else gigabyte gtx 970

 

@tg_chris

Such an important documentation warrants a link in your signature, so that more people will be aware of it.

 

saw this on youtube , a msi gtx 970 is unable to totally close.... Is dell gonna fix this?

 

A size constraint problem? Doubtful as they would have to redesign the top of the GA. I don't see the problem with getting the reference GTX 970 or another 970. The GA can house some long GPUs, though. Just not tall ones (or..., well read below).
If you see a heat pipe sticking out like a sore thumb, don't get it.

 

To everyone saying the trackpad is horrible, it is just Google Chrome. The trackpad is flawless in Internet Explorer (yeah, I know...).

For me the trackpad, I never had a problem...however if you use it in Google Chrome...you will have problems such as the mouse skipping or the scrolling goes crazy.

Also for the battery consumption, Google Chrome will consume A LOT of your battery (something about it being coded).

I used chrome and my dissipate rate was around -14000mw, however if I used Internet Explorer...it was around -8,000mw.

On idle on desktop...I would get -6,700mw. This is on battery saver, 1/3 brightness, keyboard light off.

 

This is sad haha

Might look into getting PC's+ amd r9 290x or the gigabyte n970wf30c-4d Can the psu support it? Or must I mod the psu

 

My PC came.... Having key issues ... The ~ and " keys not responsive and when I press once nothing shows but when I pressed the 2nd time it shows twice like ~~

 

cant wait for v2 of this promising laptop 14 nm gpu(2hrs gaming atleast) the tock of intels 14nm tic-tock strategy,better optimized bios(no battery issues),maybe thinner chassis and the 860,960 non-sense is the kicker I know 78mhz isnt that much but its something if I overclock(135+78mhz),
@pokey2014 uninstall dell backup something and alienware respawn also update all drivers

 

Anyone experienced stuttering or skipped frames in Heroes of Storm? Changing graphic settings doesn't appear to solve the issue? I have the i7-5500u gtx 960m 16GB Ram 512GB SSD config

 

Couple things.

First, I've seen, and I've posted myself, about the hate I have for the clickpad (vs an actual touchpad) of the AW13.
While I still really miss the dedicated buttons, while I was going through a reformat procedure I noticed something new I wish i'd known about weeks ago, so I thought I'd share for those like me who haven't poured through all the settings in every menu, and instead just want a computer that behaves.
If you go into the Synaptics touchpad properties, click on Buttons, and look for "Disable navigation in the button zone", you can use the traditional finger-for-navigation-thumb-for-clicking approach, MIMICKING AN ACTUAL TOUCHPAD.
it's not 100%, and that line gets blurred a bit if you roll your thumb up a little too far, but it really helps for me, so I thought I'd post about it. Now at least I don't rage on the stupid thing hourly while my mouse goes flying across the screen.


Second, UHD type screens, Windows 8, & the concept of scaling is new to me. While the screen is at it's 2560x1440 resolution, I've tried moving the scaling from 200% (default) to 100 & everything in between, plus, I've tried changing down the res to 1080p, yet my browsers (IE anyway (again, new install)) is set somewhere to only show it's a 1280x720 resolution. (checked via http://www.whatismyscreenresolution.com amongst others)

As i do the occasional web design, I want this to change on demand, but I can't seem to figure out how. Can anyone who's gone through this shed some light on the subject for me?


P.S. i get having to support a forum financially, but auto-refreshing a page to bump views, and autoplaying ad/videoes is pretty damn lame. (yea yea, ABP, again, new computer install)

 

Has anyone had any luck fixing the battery discharge issue? None of the bios updates or fiddling around with anything seem to resolve this. Anyone got a replacement from Dell?

EDIT: Tested it today, Windows was showing ~3 hours (Batteryinfo showing a discharge of ~16000, however this wasn't the case, as I let my AW13 idle at 33% brightness for 7.5 hours today and came back at ~28% battery.

Anyone had the case where the drain is real and not a display error?

 

There is no rhyme or reason to the battery discharge rate. The best rule of thumb that I have been able to come up with is that the battery life during normal web use is going to be between 4-5 hours.

 

I'm having an issue with my Alienware 13 whenever I play games in battery power. After a few minutes (maybe 10) the screen would dim to the lowest setting and my mouse (wireless usb) would cut out. I went through all the power settings to see if there was any setting I could switch to stop this.

I also called tech support and they stated the laptop is not meant to play games with the battery (which I understand but still should be able to play for a little bit...).

 

Does anyone have audio stuttering ?

 

Ive had the same issue with battery gaming. A custom power plan my help Also battery optimiser in GeForce experience may help.

 

Mine happens only on YouTube , gaming seems fine

 

You have two choices. Start it plugged in and then just unplug you'll get a discharge rate of 6-8k. If you are starting it up on battery, then you need to leave it sitting at the Windows login for about 60 seconds before logging in. Once you do that the discharge rate will be normally 7-9k. If you don't get a good enough one reboot and let it sit there again. It's clearly a software bug that Dell won't acknowledge. I've spent way too much time figuring out a workaround and dealing with their apathetic support.

 

The newest Nvidia driver has released. The OEM 860m ID is in one of the .inf files (nvdmi), so it should install without any modding, but I can't verify as of this moment (on my HP laptop).

 

@Game7a1
can confirm 350.86 installs on mine, no oc though...

 

As expected with the overclock. The OEM 860m and GTX 960m on the AW13 have the overclock-blocked vBIOS. But good to let us know that the newest drivers are able to install on all AW13s.

 

Just tried Witcher 3 before heading out to work this morning. 25-30fps with mostly high + some med settings at 1080p. 1440p about 16-20fps. Gameworks disabled. Shadow Med.

Can't ask for much more i guess considering even desktop GPUs can be brought to their knees ...

http://wccftech.com/witcher-3-initial-benchmarks/

 

The installer fails on Windows 10(Driver fails to install) but the installer doesn't block install at "Verifying System Compatibility" so it should work on Windows 8.1...

 

Doesn't Win10 have its own driver, 352.84? I don't have Win10, so I didn't check its .inf. Most likely, that driver wouldn't have the ID of the OEM 860m because the AW13 is not supported on Win10 yet.

 

Yeah, Windows 10 has its own drivers and it looks like it has the ID of our 860ms...

 

Strange. So all is not well just yet.

 

Never mind ,it installs if you check "Clean install".

 

-_-
Well... back to "all is well".

 

Guys just a quick question: I'm planning on upgrading the HDD to a SSD and I've already created the factory backup to my USB flash drive, so when I turn on the laptop after installing the SSD, do I press F11 or F12 in order to boot and install from my USB flash drive? Thanks in advance!

 

I am unable to solved my audio stutter

 

My audio stutters also happen while playing games like Mafia 2 on same chapters in game

 

Encountered similar problem before but problem seems to "go away" when i choose another power point or go on battery.

Yea, strange ...