*OFFICIAL* Alienware 15 R1/R2 Owner's Lounge

I'm pretty sure you are on point with the touch/glass analysis. My 18 has a glossy display, yet doesn't have bad reflections due to the lack of a touch panel glass overlay. I'm excited for Windows 10, as well, especially with Xbox One - PC streaming capabilities.

 

Thanks! I really appreciate this very much.

 

agreed. i'm still torn between the 1080p or qhd+ of the Blade. if it was just 2160p, i would easily go with the higher res, but at this point, i'm still considering the 1080p version, just so i can max games at native res. i currently own a 13" retina macbook pro tho, and having the AW15 (1080p) for a few days before returning it, kind of made me lean more towards the higher res. and like you said.. i wish the 1080p version wasn't limited to 8/256 config. it's ridiculous for these companies to charge you these prices for these specs.. that 128 config is a bigger joke.

 

Yea, they really could have capitalized with the full 4k or at least user replaceable ram for the 1080p model. How did your 1080p 15 compare to the retina screen?

 

For curiosity's sake, is 8gb ram enough for current and near future AAA games (1080 razer)?

 

honestly, i liked the AW15. it kept fairly cool, and it wasn't loud when gaming.. but overall quality was disappointing. the 1st AW15 had light bleeding, and yellow blotchiness to it. it was noticeable when i was playing games with darker backgrounds. image quality was fairly nice, but yea that backlighting was not good. i also had keys that got stuck on the left side, and a trackpad that sometimes had a mind of its own. the replacement i got after had a separated bezel from the display.. the plastic bezel seemed like it was a bit curved on the left side... it was so disappointing. i thought about going for a 3rd replacement, but at that point, i just kind of gave up on AW.

i heard that the 1080p Blade has an aluminum bezel, so hopefully none of that kind of issue. i hope that they use a better quality panel also.

edit: here's the first vid i found of the 1080p Blade:

 

It is definitely enough for gaming but it's precarious for productivity. It's not ideal for VMs, modelling stoftware or video editing. I can't imagine games asking for more than 8 GB RAM to be honest. That would be ridiculous.

 

Here : https://imageshack.com/a/CPaz/1

 

i know Witcher 3 has min at 6gb and 8gb recommended

 

FPS averaged between 50 and 60.

 

Looks good. What's the 5 seconds of tweaking you need to do?

 

Changing the resolution from 3200x1800 to 1600x900 or whatever resolution you want to play at

 

Thanks! I'm actually thinking about getting the Blade with QHD+ and 512GB. I'm going to hope that I get the refund soon.

 

Yea, the socketed gtx 980m has 8gb alone, much less system ram.

 

I'm pretty sure the backlighting and yellow discoloration is a symptom of most IPS panels (to a degree). Every one of the IPS/LCD display that I have owned, including TVs, has some backlighting. My 15 has a little bit of yellow, visible on those dark scenes. I can live with it, as is, as long as it doesn't spread. My 14, 18, HP Spectre 15xt, and XPS 13 all have some highlighting. The last Alienware 17 owners found that some of that backlighting could be alleviated by loosening the screws on the display. The tightened screws were actually pressing on the display, causing the effect. I might fiddle with the 15's, down the road, but I don't currently want to jinx it.

 

Took me a while to figure this out ,and this might seem out of place.
Between 95% to 100% (the lower end could be 96%), the battery stops charging to maintain the amount of charging cycles. In other words, preventing the battery to lose charge early on and is normal.

 

Does anyone know, is it necessary to keep unplugging the laptop when fully charged to conserve overall battery life? When I did this with my other laptops, gaming performance went down because I unplugged

 

Cool, thanks.

 

not at all. it is completely fine to leave plugged in.

 

It does, in fact, kill the battery faster when it is plugged in all the time. It's always better to drain the battery (NEVER TO 0%!) then recharge once every few days, for the longevity of the battery.

 

You sure? I have this HP dv6 from 2011 and I've been keeping it plugged in pretty much all the time. The battery has slowly deteriorated, and now it is impossible to use without having it plugged in. Battery life is like 5 minutes now.

 

Hard to recharge onces every few days when you are gaming though, and probably have to charge after 2 hours.. lol

 

TLDR.. newer batteries are fine to keep plugged in. just discharge once in a while to cycle. plenty of info out there about this.

 

Hey guys, i have a quick question, Dying Light doesn t recognize the gamepad i have (xeox pro analog wireless). i must be missing something for sure cant figure out what
on the computer all the gamepad drivers are working and its fully recognized. Thanks

 

Hi Guys I have sandisk extreme II SSD on my Alineware and it is very fast .Do you think installing M.2 SDD on it make it faster or dose it worth to add one of SSD card to it too?

 

I wipe and install original windows that download from Microsoft you wont believe after fresh install how fast and responsive the laptop became but keep in mind you have to deal with driver issues and windows key issues after solve all of problem your battery life will be better too.

 

Adding an M.2 wont make it faster than your ssd currently, adding a m.2 would just allow you to add more space, you could either slave the m.2 or add it to the pool, so your m.2 and ssd look like one drive

 

has anyone noticed dell used to sell alienware headphones and the tactx mouse, but doesn't look like they have them anymore.

the mice were junk, the click button goes bad in them, they were complete junk!! and the headphones were not too far off, they worked great for games but were horrible for music and movies

 

The beauty of English language...

I meant - You drain the battery and then recharge, once every few days.

 

Hey guys, anyone know whats up with the yellow tint? I have the A15. I didnt realize how much of a yellow tint there is until I turned on my BENQ 24".. I heard IPS screens have this issue, but I was wondering how much is acceptable and if there is anyway how to calibrate it a bit.. Thanks!

I have the A15 1080p

 

part of why i returned mine. it was very noticeable when next to my MacBook.

 

ledzepp14 - Yea, I am considering it, its a really nice laptop overall... so its tough...

NEW PROBLEM?

So I was transferring files to the computer via my at-home network, when I decided to run speedfan to see the temps, well my mouse and all my USB ports went dead. I was copying a lot of files so I decided to let it finish (I was able to still navigate windows using keyboard commands).

When I reset the computer, I got the error message of "The amount of system memory has changed. If you did not change your memory... To resolve this issue, try to re-seat the memory. Strike the F1 key to continue, F2 to run the Setup utility."

When I got into windows I checked and it was still stating I had 16GB of Ram (factory ordered). Did 2 restarts and it gave the same error.. Third time it vanished. Should I be worried? I am not to confident in opening the bottom to actual try and re-seat them.. But if I have to I would... Just wondering if anyone has got a similar problem (I should note windows still loaded just fine even with the err messages..)

 

lol I was lookin to wipe out the palm oil not the OS

 

I use these. Don't be deterred by price as that listing comes with two full boxes of 200 wipes each.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0030HG054/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o03_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

 

I grabbed one of these gadgets and calibrated all five laptops. The calibration is a tad warmer than stock, but the shadow detail and color depth is noticeably better (more photo realistic). It is nearly plug and play, as far as difficulty of use.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B006TF37H8/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o02_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

 

Hey guys had mine since the 25th and I'm now selling my Asus g751jy with the GTX 980m because I love everything about this Alienware 15 with the GTX 970. That is, everything but the keyboard. It's just a bit awkward playing WoW on this keyboard since the space bar is so far to the right. idle temps are high but fans are extremely quite at idle as well as under load. Highly recommend this configuration to anyone on the fence for this especially with the GTX 970m since the graphics amplifier is now only $199. I will be doing a teardown with high res pictures tomorrow for your enjoyment as well as mine.

 

Awesome, I haven't' seen a breakdown done yet. If you feel especially helpful, a youtube would be great for future cpu/gpu repasting.

 

Hello again guys. Just wanted to ask if its normal for the system to say that my GPU driver is up to date even though I am running the stock driver? Is it not recognizing the GPU?

 

I get this message when detecting my gpu.
GeForce GTX 980M
This product has been detected as your primary device
Your product manufacturer requires you to download a driver for your device from their website
Does this mean the drivers are locked and I have to wait for dells extremely slow driver page to update with new ones?

 

You can install Nvidia drivers (from Nvidia) just fine.
If you got that message form device manager, I would ignore it.

 

Ah, thanks. Hope you don't mind answering some more questions for a newbie. Will forcefully installing a driver anyways be detrimental to the system whatsoever? And while searching for drivers on Nvidia I find it confusing that driver 345.20 was released on February 24th while driver 347.52 was released on February 10th so I don't know which one would be considered the latest one. Shouldn't the 347.52 be the latest even if it was released first? Thanks.

 

Only if you install a driver wrong (which is rare) will there be a problem.
The 347.52 is the latest despite the 345.20 recently coming out.

 

Another good review...
http://www.trustedreviews.com/alienware-15-review

 

Thanks so much for the info. Should I uninstall the previous Nvidia drivers before installing the new one or will just checking clean installation during the update be enough?

 

It is safer to uninstall the current drivers (using DDU), but updating them is fine. You usually uninstall when there's a problem or if you want to do something more complicated than installing a new version (more here doesn't mean very).

 

New AW15 owner here and first time AW user.

How do I keep my AW specific applications up to date? Is there any automated way to check for updates for ALL AW software?

 

To everyone who has the AW15: Is it true that it gets warm during idle? This is kind of annoying for me. I would expect a laptop like this to be cool as ice, especially on idle or light browsing.

 

I noticed the keyboard getting warm during idle when I had it, not sure about the bottom.

 

When you had it? Did you return the laptop?

 

Yep, mine came with a vibrating fan.