*OFFICIAL* Alienware 13 R3 Owner's Lounge

Damn I must be really really bad at repasting cause my second repaste isnt better than stock. I've been 'trying' to use the X method. Definitely better than my first repaste though for temps. Don't know what to do now but many lessons were learned after a couple of hours, stripped screws, and much frustration.

Maybe I'll try again tomorrow using the pea or line method.

 

Well, after all my assurance that the Killer 1535 NIC in my card was bad, and casuing framerate issues in games. Tonight - I attempted to play some games - and once again I have framerates in the tank. Overwatch running 30-60 FPS max, when yesterday it ran in the 90s (1440P/ultra). Stuttering in Dying Light. The only solution seems to be a restart, but that's ridiculous. And the only thing I can think of was I started my gaming session plugged into an external monitor. I thought after unplugging and playing on the native screen, things would be fine, but the OLED panel was giving me the same result. Stutters in games, and poor framerates.

Anybody else struggling with this? I really loathe the idea of a full windows reset, and I honestly don't know what that's gonna solve. There's no software installed on this machine that I didn't have on my perfectly capable running desktop! Obviously there are many more background processes, but those seem to be Dell/AW related.

UPDATE: New theory - GOG Galaxy is the culprit? I ran Overwatch windowed, and checked all running processes. I noticed GOG Galaxy was taking up a small percentage of CPU resources. I was experiencing major FPS drops/framerate lurches. Without quitting OW, I killed all the GOG Galaxy processes. Suddenly, no more FPS drops/framerate lurches in OW! I didn't realize I had set GOG to run with windows startup. I'm still not quite sure I'm hitting FPS targets consistently, but at least the major FPS drops to the 30s stopped. This "fix" persisted across a few other titles as well.

Jury is still out - but this is ridiculous. Anybody else run GOG Galaxy and experience any issues with it?

 

Hey guys !! I received mine on Monday and it is perfect, just the issue with the battery (I lost 2%). I have good temp, no fans problems ...

I'm happy and I just enjoy it haha.

I will repast it when i will add a ssd and ram.

Have good day


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My email correspondence you could quote;

Hello,

we have to observe this kind of issue on few examples.

My tech manager is currently working on report of these cases (we have 2-3 of them) then we will be able to provide solution.

Thank you for patience. Your issue is logged in our database.


My reply:


Thank you very much for your reply.

I believe there are a few more than 2-3 cases as quite a lot of my fiends have the laptop and are experiencing the same issue.


My battery wear is now at 13% and increasing which is resulting in a top battery charge of around 62000mw/h roughly.


This is far less than the 76000 mw/H that's stated as the batteries capacity.


I Eagerly await your tech managers findings, but a new battery will definitely be the answer.


Many thanks and thank you again for the quick reply.


Kind regards


Dell's reply:

Hello.

I have a result, in this case we will replace your battery.

Please provide us with your address of possible repair, and best phone number for technician.

Possible repair should be done within 2 days if all parts are on stock.

What is most important is you to be available for repair. If you will be not at home, you can provide work address.

Thank you!




Sorry for the long message.

As you can see, no system test was carried out. I just told them my wear and he was great with it.
Managed to get the battery shipped out aswell so I can fit it myself.
Just have to send the old battery back (they will send a package to do this when the new one gets here)

Cheers







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http://www.notebookreview.com/news/new-alienware-13-r3-15-r3-and-17-r4-notebooks/

Hmmm well I'm not too fussed about missing out on Kaby lake, but in addition the new 13s have a redesigned and more efficient cooling system, better speakers, fingerprint resistant material on the palmrest and more lighting zones for the keyboard (8 as opposed to 4).

Those additional upgrades make it more tempting.

Whats the return period? Do you reckon if you called them up and asked they would swap the ones we have just bought for the newer edition? I'm still probably sticking with mine because I love it....but it is tempting....

 

Yesterday I played a few hours of Dragons Dogma, at 1080p max details, 60 rock solid fps.
With the laptop on a wooden desk I hit 70 °C max on cpu and 65 on the GPU. With the laptop on bluelounge feet I got 5 degrees lower on both CPU and GPU. All of this with a -0.175 undervolt.
What left me surprised though is fan management. It doesn't seem to be linear and it seems fans kick in when the system is just starting to approach a certain threshold, but they seem to run at full speed to prevent that threshold to be reached. Not a big problem as long as they keep the system cool, though I can see someone complaining about noise.

What temps did you have before repaste? As I've got those temps just undervolting, so I'm beginning to wonder if repasting is necessary.

I'd also consider whether those simple changes are enough to send back a working unit with the risk of getting one that is worse. New cooling system MIGHT be more efficient, we don't know until someone gets one.

 

Download and run LatencyMon to get a better idea what is responsible. Framerate drops and scattering can be related or not. Scattering is due to a driver interrupting the CPU too often, making DCPs requests and overloading the buffer. Windows isn't a real-time OS, but near-to as everything is handled with a best effort approach. If a driver, i.e. networking, is making too many interrupts each producing a DCP to offload an amount of work. The DPC will run immediately on the CPU, which means other processes will halt until both the ISR and the DPC routines have finished execution. In games, this means you will get a sudden drop of FPS. When on your desktop/other software, you will notice a delay and distortion in the sound.
FPS drop might be as another software is taking too much resources, hardware is throttling, etc etc.

I haven't followed your thread to know if you are still using or not the Killer 1535 card. If you do my best bet is that its drivers are responsible. Across various owners lounges in NBR, it is established that Killer 1535 in Windows 10 is responsible for microsuttering in a variety of laptops with the 1060. Personally, in an MSI GS43VR, I noticed scattering is worse when you are using WiFi card under heavy load. Maybe, GOG Galaxy was downloading (or constantly downloading/uploading some data) and thus responsible?

 

So they sell the killer card telling us it is for gamers and then it causes stutter? That's hilarious

 

For me, it is no longer funny, as I want to slap their engineers. It is quite inconvenient to return the GS43VR and then having to find a new machine (the AW13 and XPS 15 9560 are my "finalists", thus why I hang out in this lounge).

Their Ethernet cards are OK (as long as you don't use that option to keep gaming data in the Ethernet and use the wifi for the rest), but they screw up their WiFi cards with Windows 10. It should be software fixable, but doubt it will happen anytime soon as probably they will have to rewrite most of their drivers. Removing Killer "Performance Suite" kinda helps.

 

For those with battery issues:
Mine was 5% wear out of the box. went down to 14% but bounced back to 11% which is where its been the past week or so. I originally contacted Dell chat about this before Xmas but he was fairly unhelpful but after persistnce they are sending someone next week to replace the battery. In hindsight I should've pushed more for them to send and I'd fit but apparently it is not a consumer replacement part (even though there are consumer instruction on how to repalce it.....). Anyway fairly happy with the outcome and the Dell service, depsite all the gripes etc, was one of the reasons why I chose an AW over the Razer especially for me in the UK.
Will post whether the new battery fairs battery than the original.

 

Hey guys I've finally received my laptop and I love it! Build quality is awsome and as for the screen....WOW

 

For those interested, my battery wear out of the box was 2 percent and it has stayed stable ever since. Guess i received a good one!

 

What are you using to find out the battery wear?

 

Hwinfo

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Is this also used to measure temps, what temps should be classed as decent

 

I don't think there's much difference apart from the cpu which will be a minor improvement anyway. I can't believe people would go through the hassle of changing.

 

I had to do a second repaste as well because I didn't screw in the heatsink correctly. Remember to do it in order of the screw numbers. 1-7 to open, then reverse to close.

 

Yeah I'm almost certainly not going to change. As the other guy says, if you have a solid machine then just stick with it. But it's always tempting to try and get the newest I guess. Will be interesting to see if temps and battery life are much different.

 

Hwinfo will give you temps yes but if you want temps inside a game as an overlay, try MSI afterburner.

I guess clocking in under 85 should be decent, not sure what everyone else thinks. When i got this machine i had a 98 degrees C on OCCT on normal mode!

I changed my mode to CPU which decreased it to the mid 80s and then undervolted to -0.140V which brought to the mid to high 70s and im very happy with the setup.

 

WTF ... I don't know what I can do ...


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What's the best way of knowing that your undervolt is running? I'm not sure if it's active everytime I reboot.

 

I get this sometimes.

I look for the XTU service (think its called that) in task manager, if its running its undervolted.

Otherwise just reopen the XTU software and reapply the undervolt.

To monitor it I use CPUz or just check the XTU software (opens on boot)

 

Dell have just shipped my replacement battery!

When taking her apart to install the new battery, might check the spread of the repaste job (Line & pea method) and reapply.

 

Nice. Mine seems to have settled on 6.3%. I'm OK with that. I look forward to enjoying this little beast for the next few years.

 

Really interested to see the new temps with the kaby lake refresh and also the price. I still have close to a month to return mine and upgrade. Guess we will find out tomorrow!

 

Yeh I've checked that, it is running, but I'm still not sure. Will try CPU-Z to monitor.

 

What is the return period?

 

I think that is a mistake of the article, with text left from the original AW 13 R3 redesign announcement. None of the other websites, i.e.: http://www.theverge.com/circuitbrea...-13-15-17-laptop-kaby-lake-intel-cpu-ces-2017, announced a similar internal redesign. Also, the name model (R3) remains unchanged. Unless, the redesign cooling system is something like "better cooling pads", which should had been there in the first place.

 

I look at the voltage of the cpu in hwinfo64, if it's under 1.000, like 0.9XX I know my undervolt is running.

 

I was also curious about this, as surely an extensive redesign would warrant a name change to R4? But I suppose this is going to fit into the same chassis.

I have the accidental damage bizniz so I suppose if I really want the upgrade further down the line I could prang my motherboard and heatsink and get them to stick one of the newer ones in (/Joking) (/sortof).

Also interested in the return period, I thought it was 14 days in UK but some seem to think its longer.

 

Excellent info! I'll look into this tool should the issue persist.

I did remove the KILLER M.2 Card - waiting to put in an Intel 8260 today when it arrives. In the meantime I was using a cheap USB Wifi Dongle.

Since it (FPS drops/major stutters) rears it's ugly head due to circumstances I haven't 100% sorted - it's hard to say any one thing solves it. I thought my Killer NIC was the culprit, but I still maintain I had a bad card because I would completely drop connection to WIFI with it (red little x in the corner of the sys tray icon) that was only sorted by going into Airplane Mode and coming back out. I also noticed when disabling the WIFI/BT Card in Device Manager, game performance and major FPS drops went away.

The only link between that and GOG Galaxy is as you describe - it must have been doing something in the background (downloading a patch or some other calls). Because upon force closing all the GOG processes that were indeed using CPU resources, the major stutters (FPS drops) in games went away immediately. It would make sense that if I killed the Killer WIFI/BT in device manager, that GOG could no longer tie up network resources and thus the problem went away (temporarily).

I'll have to keep trying over the next few days, especially once I put in the new Intel 8260, to see if the problem pops back up. It has to be software/driver related because of the infrequent nature of it. So on the one hand it gives me hope that Dell/AW still have some work to do dealing with Optimus switching (as others suspected was a cause of stutters) or some other issue. On the other, if some background process is the problem, your tool might help ID it. Right now GOG solved it.

 

Yeh, that's what I thought - 14 days.

 

If you ordered nov or dec, you have till the 15 of Jan or the typical 30 days, whichever comes later. Atleast in north america.

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30 days from date of invoice for US purchasers. Dell is also offering extended holiday returns. Not sure if alienware products qualify or the UK.

http://www.dell.com/learn/us/en/19/campaigns/holiday-shipping-and-extended-returns-us

A rep also mentioned that if you file for a system exchange, your 30 day return period is refreshed upon that invoice (not sure if she is credible).

 

It is 14 days (or until the end of January for holidays purchases), unless you spot a defect (then it becomes 30 days due to a EU law). Beware, in my experience with Dell UK, even if you return the machine, they have to process it first. They check that you send them back the same machine and then issue a refund. It took them a week in a much less busy period of 2013, so it may take 2-3 weeks. Also, if you place a new order, it will be separately from the old one.

IMO it might worth also trying to get a 10% cashback by "blackmailing" them that you will return it otherwise.

 

I got my refund w/in 2-3 days of them receiving their product back

 

Ran LatencyMon, but this was after I played Dying Light at around 80-90FPS (1080/P all max except shadow set to High). But it reported that "my system is not suitable" for handling realtime audio and other tasks without dropouts.

Culprit, a system file running called "dddriver64dcsa.sys". Turns out thats Dell Diagnostic Driver! It had a large impact on DPC routine execution time (put the bar in the red). I promptly found that device in the "system devices" in Device Manager and disabled it. Now Latencymon is giving me a good result, although hard pagefaults are still in the red.

I can see this tool being useful to monitor should my FPS drop occur again!

 

I disagree that Optimus is the real issue. I have been using an XMG P304 with Optimus for 2.5 years and never had scattering. You can try to disable Optimus, by setting your default GPU to the dGPU in the nVidia Control Panel or by using a tool released by Gigabyte to keep the dGPU busy at all times. That may help, as there will be one less thing for your CPU to check. However, people in the MSI forums solved their scattering issues by changing WiFi cards.
Unfortunately, I can't confirm it with my own machine (GS43VR requires you to remove the heatsinks to access the WiFi M.2 card), which partially the reason I am looking into getting the AW13 R3 now. I disabled my WiFi and used Ethernet only, with my computer set to high performance. I was able to maintain ~90fps solid on DOTA2 and no scattering. Just make sure you completely remove Killer drivers (I think there is a tool called "Killer Cleaner" for that).

 

That is good! I guess, if you remove most the Dell bloatware, you will get better and more stable performance!

Good to hear that they improved their return process. At least back then, it was handled by a 3rd party company on behalf of Dell.

 

Hmm, not worth the hassle then. The 12 + 10% discount that I got for this one won't apply either.

 

How did you get a 12% ?

 

Cyber Monday

 

Na its not, if you have a good machine. I was having a read of that press release again and I think theyve just reused bits of one from earlier. I have 8 lighting zones (not all keyboard but 8 zones) and an earlier release also talked about redesigned cooling and finger resistant palm rests etc. So the only think your getting is the Kaby lake, which I cant see being a big upgrade.

I doubt I would have upgraded anyway, I managed to make my last machine last 5 years and it was shat. This one is well good. Was playing Doom last night - oh god that looks good on the OLED, and runs so smoothly. Gonna check out the game Rairch recommended at some point as well.

 

Yeh I'm hoping this will last me around 4-5 years. You're right Doom is amazing on the OLED, loving it so far.

 

What game did Rairch recommend? Too lazy to scroll through the forums.

 

Ori and the Blind Forest

 

Oh right! I actually have that and i would imagine itll look awesome on this panel.

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I can't recommend Limbo enough. On OLED with a 1000000:1 contrast ratio, a pure black and white game that looks amazing.

 

How did you screw in order? Like first screw one really tight and then move on to the next screw? Or more like screwing a car tyre? Evenly apply more torque on all screws and then tightning?

 

Good feedback...I'm not saying it was optimus, just looking at a theory folks posited earlier. I think that the Gigabyte tool was recco'd to prevent optimus from kicking in - but I'd rather avoid hacks and add'l background processes since I think most of my issues are background process related. Reading all these details on the Killer software suite, apparently it tries to prioritize network traffic on a per-app basis, so I can imagine that if GOG galaxy was requesting data, it may have been constantly juggling between it and a game I was playing resulting it piss poor performance. I know that applicaton based QoS can be a real crapshoot. I also have to gather that the TP-Link USB dongle I have wasn't exactly a high performance module since it routed all traffic through the USB hub, thus conflicting with mouse or controller input.

I will install the Intel 8260 card today...the AW13 is very maintenance friendly! No need to remove heatsinks at all. I will also do your recco'd "killer cleaner" to get rid of all Killer traces. We will see how everything runs, and how consistently it runs over the next few days. For now, I've banished GOG galaxy from my system. In the future, since I like GOG, I'll just make sure it only runs when I need it to, and not as a background process when windows starts.