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

I dont think pcie works i believe it has to be sata3 m.2

 

Anyone having problem with the battery? First time I booted comp (couple days ago) it said 7 hours for battery time 100%.. now it say 4 hours 100%. And then today, im looking at 100% charged and its saying 2 hours 30 min, and i'm only watching a stream on twitch

 

It happens to me all of the time as well! I think it just means that whatever your're doing whether it gaming, surfing, watching movies or listening to music or even idle it will tell you how many hours you got left from doing that task.

 

It most likely adjust the time of battery to the task you are doing, watching movies, or web surfing, and makes an estimate (kind of what cars do to gas mileage)

It never happened to me, i guess as long as its Always on while its on Windows its good

 

Fellas, I decided to call Dell UK to get the 240w charger sent out for my system with the 980m.. its HUGE!! not travel size, I am just gonna keep the 180w in my bag for taking to work and the 240w at home on my desk.. fyi, i ended up buying the alienware 14 vindicator backpack from the US as I didnt want to get the 17". here are some pics of the charger if anyone was wondering

 

Dell sales rep are refusing to sent the re-ordered AW15 unit with 240W power adaptor. I even asked for it should I recieve 180W unit. He said the 180W is only one they do and that all you ever get.

If I have something clear to produce to the sales rep then I might actually get it. Does anyone have any offical link about the power adaptor being 240W?

 

Sales rep? Of course not.

Contact the tech support and they will send you one.

I got the 240w psu for the hell of it. I like the blue light off of the power connector

 

My laptop was delivered yesterday (GTX 970M and 1080p). Huge upgrade from my old XPS 15 L502X (GT 540M). Games look so good and smooth. I am surprised by many people complaining about fan noise. If they were near my old laptop they would have run away from it . Anyway, I just have a question. Does anyone know how to change the alienfx lightning to white colour. I could not find the white colour in alienfx theme. And how to turn off all the lights, so that it can be discreet in the university . Cheers!

 

I know i've mentioned this before but its very weird to me. I was surfing the web earlier, after charging laptop to 100% and unplugging, said 7 hours battery life remaining. I did the same thing a couple hours later, and now 2 hours 30 mins. Wtf? Is something wrong here? exact same task and process, complete different battery life

 

ok will try my regions tech support. I don't like my chances. Looks like US buyer are ok, although in Australian off shore call centre that is based in Malaysia they like will not give a toss, unless I have some proof. Does anyone have anything official I can quote (official dell link) to the tech support person therefore I can backup my claim?

I am guessing the noise is from trying to cool 100W TDP 980M compared to a 81W TDP 970M which no doubt will run cooler with less power draw and lower temps.

 

I'm also interested to know how to set alienfx lightning to white colour, if possible.
You can turn off alienfx with keyboard function fn+ something F.. key I don't remember now (maybe F10 or F11)

 

Its Fn+F12. My bad I didnt see the keyboard.

 

Here you go mate, I am in the UK, I sent the tech support this link and they sent me the new adapter the next day.

http://www.dell.com/support/article/us/en/19/SLN295814

 

FYI i am an Australian, and i just moved to uk, in Aus, the call center is in malaysia but level2 is in sydney

 

Brilliant! this is just what I need. I had to cancel and re-order when I realised really want at least 980M to go with 4K panel, then found out about the throttling. Now I can go ahead and re-order. Hopefully a new BIOS isn't released while I am waiting for the unit to arrive. New BIOS can only mean slowing the clock speeds down somewhere else to compensate, cant generate free power from the original 180W.

That is awesome, I have only ever end up the Malaysia center, which they never help. Hopefully it is the same for NZ, pretty much falls under the same serviceable region.

 

Well I am happy, cause now I have 2, one for the road, and the big one for the desk! Fyi I have the 980m and 4k monitor and I can play BF4 on 4k settings with graphics on medium to high and I get about 45-55 fps depending on the map. its awsome.. very very playable

 

Says "For USA & Canada customers only", basically Dell have said "no way, you cannot have it, only the sales rep can give me that, and said I wont get it as it is For USA & Canada customers only"

Yeah I got through to level 2 support in Australia, as above they said no. You will have to wait for a BIOS update to fix it. How the hell can a BIOS fix a power delivery issue if the machine draws more than 180W!

I don't want to have to cancel my order, but what else can I do?

 

Battery Boost 2.0 is an incredible feature. On playing civ 5 under optimum settings 30 fps, the laptop lasted for 2h 35min, which is not quite bad for gaming laptops. Day to Day activities like surfing, word processing, video watching lasts around 5 - 5:30h. If alienfx is disabled, battery life might further increase. BTW, was Chrome scrolling fixed? It is still buggy as hell for me., with that annoying square popping up. Screen ghostly is faintly visible, but not worth splitting hairs over. On the whole, I am satisfied with the product. Finally, there is one cool or cheesy feature, where alienfx light can synchronize with the music track playing on iTunes or Windows Media Player. Cheers!
Alienware 15, Core i7, GTX 970M, 1080p screen.

 

Nice one, I too have the L502x and it sounds like it's going to take off, or blow up, or both when gaming!! I'm going to get the GTX 970M 1080p AW 15 soon and can't wait!

I'm glad to hear you're happy with the upgrade, good luck with it!

 

Thanks! The waiting was definitely the hardest. It took a week for it to be shipped from China to Netherlands. And I missed collecting the package twice, owing to work. Thank god, on second day afternoon, I was lucky enough to spot the UPS truck while returning home, nabbed the package from him and cycled all the way home with excitement . Anyway, the L502X is still a good multimedia laptop and the inbuilt JBL speaker is still worth its salt today and better than alienware 15.

 

I just now noticed that the HDD in my laptop is Toshiba MQ01ABD100. I though dell used Samsung HDD. I am a little bit apprehensive about Toshiba's reliability. I had three of their products, which failed on me, so quickly. My old laptop one failed within a year, the one in PS3 failed after 1.5 years and the portable HDD failed after a year. All the three were replaced with WD drives, which run fine after three years. Should I ask Dell for clarification, regarding the change in HDD?

 

Hey folks, so I have a bunch of credit with Dell (long story) and have been eagerly following most of their new releases to see if/when I should get a new machine. When I saw both the specs on the new 15 (and heck, the fact they even made a 15 again finally!) and the Graph. Amp., I thought, awesome, this is almost perfectly what I wanted!

Anyway, came on here as usual to read reviews, and here's the sense I have of what to be aware of before purchase. Please tell me if I'm missing anything major. (Also, worth noting, I have so much credit I can max this thing out and intend to if I purchase it. 980M, etc.)

Screen
--------------
I still haven't seen a good break down between 4K glossy and regular HD matte. (Though admittedly I haven't looked in a week or two.) It seems most are getting the matte. I'd love to ideally have a 4K matte, but this isn't fantasy land. I know with the HD screen there are issues of light bleeding. Anything I'm missing here? I'm still leaning 4K, wanted to hear the latest.

Also,

AC unit
---------------
I should request a 240 instead of a 180, that much is clear.

Graphics Amplifier
---------------
I'm a rare case where this does make financial sense to purchase, because A) again, I have the credit for it and B) I can get a 980GTX or Titan X gratis, thanks to work. So it's effectively a free boost for me.

That said, are people only actually getting 60-70% performance with this thing?

Networking
---------------
This seems to be a perpetual bugbear with Alienwares, right? Network cards not performing up to snuff, etc. Anything I should know?

Lastly, if it makes a difference, I will be going Win 7 without question. Also, I intend to get this thing and run it out of the box, don't feel like going the extra step of personally upgrading the SSD, etc. once received, as I know some people do.

Okay! That's all of it. What else should I know, be on the lookout for, any systemic problems people seem to be experiencing, etc.?

Thanks!!!

 

There would only be a 5 to 10% (closer to 7 to 8%) drop in desktop GPU performance when paired with the i7-4710HQ due to the bandwidth and, well, the CPU not being a desktop CPU. In higher resolutions, the GPU drop would be less noticeable. The fact that you can get a TITAN X for no charge is great, but if you get it before Alienware sells the GPU, you might run into some problems.
As for the network, there haven't been much complaints about it other than the obnoxious bandwidth control, which can be disabled easily.

 

Hey everyone, I'm pretty much sold on this laptop and thinking of buying it soon for university (and gaming of course). Just wondering how other people's experiences have been with it since there aren't that many reviews out there yet. Are there any serious issues that haven't been fixed yet?
It's my first laptop (well, personnal laptop) and don't really wanna spend 2000$ on something I dont know much about. I've heard about ghosting on the screen, backlight bleed, and a bunch of other stuff.
The model I want is the 970m, 128gb SSD with 1TB HDD, 1080p matte IPS display with Windows 8.1. Just wanna hear some personnal experiences. I've read mixed feelings all over the place, even on this forum...

 

Why would you be looking to spend 2000 dollars on it? I posted how much I spent on my AW15 before. I'm sure you can do something similar.

My spec is i5, 970m, 1080p, came with Win 8.1, 8gb RAM, and 1tb HDD. This was for 875 dollars with tax.
Of course, I purchased 16gb RAM and a 500GB SSD separately, both for about 245 dollars. Total came out about 1100 dollars.
The only downside is the CPU, but I honestly don't need an i7. You might not either. It was not worth the extra money for me. My rig is surviving anything at ultra settings with the latest games.

There are good and bad experiences with the computer. I do not have any ghosting issues. I personally had no bad experience except the goddamn palm rest area that is sooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo oil/fingerprint magnet. The screen is beautiful and backlight is minimal, but... really... you need to expect some backlight bleeding. That's how it works! For 1100 dollars, I cannot ask for a better system.

Buy it and if you don't like it, return it in 30 days hassle free. They won't give you a hard time with the return (unless you count that they try to give you additional discounts when you attempt to return it).

 

also do your self a fav and go for the 4k screen

 

Lol I live in Canada, prices here are absolute ******** compared to what you get in the US (correct me if I'm wrong but I assume you are from the States). I'll definitely be upgrading in the future so I'll look out for good prices. Can't find your post about getting that price though, could you send a link please? I should also be getting a discount through me school so I'll wait for that too.

I'm actually gonna need the i7 cause this is gonna be my work laptop too, and im going to be using some intense applications that could benifit from the extra cores.

 

I would, but too many applications I will be using are gonna suffer from the horrible scaling issues in Windows (I know that as a fact).

 

My 1080p screen is great and shows no signs of ghosting. There also is a very minor amount of visible backlighting.

 

I'm in Canada too and the prices are ridiculous all right! I'm not sure if buying in the US is even a good idea with the exchange rate at the moment.

The best I could do with Dell chat was $1549 + tax for the i7, 1080p, 970M, 8GB & 1TB HDD.

I found this one in future shop which is a better deal than any of the pre-configured options on the dell website: $1799 + tax for the i7, 1080p, 970M, 16GB, 128GB SSD & 1TB HDD.
The benefit is that you can walk into a store and pick it up right away and you can take advantage of Future Shop's 14 day return policy if you are not happy with it, or have any ghosting or other issues!!!

http://www.futureshop.ca/en-CA/prod...spx?path=e40480491f1d4d6cbf2783b8aafa3d4cen02

I'm saving for this bad boy and I'm gonna walk in and pick one up as soon as I have the cash!!

 

Has *anyone* done a side by side of the two screens? Would love to see one, otherwise may just buy both and return one (not kidding )

 

Can anyone confirm if Shadowplay works on the 970M/980M?

Has anyone been able to record gameplay using Shadowplay?

 

Is the 4k screen really worth the extra $350? TrueLife is attractive but touch and 60Hz for that price isn't. For another $100 you can get 27" external 120Hz monitor.

 

Well, it's an Amazing screen, if worthed 350$ is up to personal matters, i carry mine around a lot, i dont want to buy an external monitor (and you cant compare a 27" if its not 4k for the 100$, 4k monitors will be more expensive)
If you are going to leave it on your desk, and want to have an external monitor stay with 1080p, if not, at least to me, 4k was worthed

 

For those still deciding, take a look at the attached photos and ask yourself if the mirror-like glare is worth it. It would drive me insane to have to look at those reflections, on a daily basis. The power button and the first row or two of the keyboard also reflect themselves on the screen. I really hope someone is working on a 4k matte display, for future laptop releases.............

 

I found another photo that displays the keyboard screen reflections, that I mentioned above. Imagine how bad those illuminated keys must reflect in dark lighting use.

 

Zachary let me tell you its not as bad as it looks on pictures, i keep my laptop with the screen facing a window, and it doesnt bother me at al, once you stand in front of it its not as reflective, you will have to try in person.
At first when i opened the laptop i was like, damn, its gonna be hard to see, but once you power it, the 4k blows anything away and looking at it is no problem. (just look at your last pic, who uses a Laptop from that angle? cmonn)
To each their own preference, but if you will try it in person you would be impressed.

 

I am with Drebkb on this one, I am now using my machine in the office, and it does not bother me at all, once you play bf4 at 4k with the 980m you will be sold!

the 4K screen is brilliant, and the blacks are very deep imo. GL making a choice though.

 

I don't see how you guys are gaming at 4k. What's your FPS? Like 10-20? Must lag quite a bit. The GTX 980 barely handles 4k. If you're turning down the settings, then I suppose that makes sense... But how much?

@drebkb, I was referring to the new ASUS ROG monitors coming out soon. They start around $500 and go up.

Can you guys select 1080p in BF4 settings and play without issues? Or is it stuck at 4k? Nobody has done a good video review of the laptop and showed this.

 

I play BF4 on auto settings at 4k, this puts most settings on medium to high, and i get 45-55 fps on every map. if I run it in ultra i get 20-30 fps.. so I just run it in auto.

Cheers

Oh also its stuck on 4k

 

i can play with the gtx970m, i dont care about having 120fps, i can play just fine, with gtx980m you can def play really good, i think its better than ppl expected. I played with high settings Dying Light, and its okay, i lowered them to medium textures and background and it plays good!
Assetto Corsa, the racing simulator is just mind blowing at 4k and i keep settings high, you dont need high fps like on games such as BF4 for racing games.
@J.Dre, i think 500 for an external monitor is more than 350 for the laptop 4k, but as i said, probably if u play at home and stuff is better an external, bigger and 120hz

 

Was hoping you could turn the resolution down. Maybe it will work if you change the resolution to 1080p before opening BF4? It should.

Anyway, the 4k screen is definitely better. No doubt. I'm just trying to justify the decreased FPS and $350 price tag considering the laptop is not upgradeable and new games are only going to become more demanding.

If you're already playing on "Auto" (which is probably Medium & High mixed), then I imagine next year you'll be playing at Medium & Low with newer games. You're basically spending $2k~ now on something that nobody will want to *game* with in less than two years. Not sure I can justify that even though I need a laptop.

I do appreciate the feedback and rapid responses. Thanks.

 

actually u can turn it down, but you have to drop the res on ur desktop first, then you can run the game in 1080

 

That's good to know. So now you have a TrueLife 1080p and 4k display (sort of).

 

Thanks for all the input, from the 4k crowd. As stated above, there hasn't been a lot of input on frame rates/game settings/downscaling so this will help those who are still looking to buy. I do hope the high end laptops will continue to offer matte displays, along with the glossy variety. It is getting to the point where nearly every consumer laptop is released with only a glossy option. I bring mine to work, daily, and the fluorescent lighting is a real buzz kill with glass covered displays.

I am a tad skeptical, echoing J.Dre, concerning the near-future feasibility of 4k gaming. The Battlefield titles aren't very demanding, as I'm running Hardline completely maxed out without any sub 60 fps drops. With the 1080p and 980m setup, I can't utilize some of the advanced anti-aliasing options found in AAA games. Have any of the 4k guys played Assassin's Creed Unity with AA turned on? There is one AA option, I believe it was MSAA (could be wrong), that lowered my framerates from 50-60 fps down to 20 fps. That's concerning as future releases will only push the envelope even further. When Witcher 3 comes out, I would love some feedback from the 4k owners as that title should really shine on PC (and be pretty demanding at that resolution).

Speaking on 4k, have any of you guys tried out the Windows 10 preview version? I have heard that the scaling issues will be fixed or at least be less pronounced with 10.

 

J.Dre, I thought you already bought one of the new models? I could swear that I remember one of forum veterans critiquing you for "jumping to the Dark Side (soldered gpu/cpu)"

 

Does Assetto Corso have a developed "career mode," ala Grand Turismo/Forza, or is it strictly single races/multiplayer at this point?

 

I'm actually debating selling my 18 for a 4k 15. That way I could use the matte 1080 for work and the glossy for my darkened bedroom.

 

My point was at the time of purchase: do i buy the 4k now and i will need a more demanding GPU in 1/2 years, or buy 1080p and buy a 4k laptop in 1/2 years? well as i dont need external monitor, i play mostly away from home, i figured the GA from Alienware could be a middle way, i can play lowered res games when i am away, and when i am home i could buy a GA for 250/300 plus the GPU, which in my case will be relatively cheaper than buying a new 4k laptop. I can't bring an external 4k monitor in a Bus or Plane and watch movies, but now i can with my 4k screen, or see my pics from my Canon dslr, and its a completely other thing. Also gaming isnt my main concern, well now i do game more that i got this beast lol. The point is , in 1 or 2 years, GA or External Monitors will both stay home, buy a 4k laptop will Always come with me .

I honestly havent played much, it does have a career mode but for now i just played a little just to see the graphics and such, its the only game i had a lil to work with the settings as at first was really small the Menu, now seems i fixed it and its a beauty, i need to check it out for u tonight when i have more time.

Hard decision man! Wouldnt know what to do there!

 

do it! the gloss screen in the dark is amazing!