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

It always depends on what you wanna do with the system.

As far as I know, the 970m is a decent step up compared to the 960m.

If you're okay with playing your games with medium settings (maybe low in the future) the Lenovo should be fine.

 

Well, youre gonna have to give us the price if you want advice on choosing between the two, pal.

Honestly, I would go with the 970m. If youre buying the rig for gaming, and I dont know why you would be otherwise, the 970m is great, not the best available by one card, but it will go further than the 960m.

 

Indeed one of my favs. So far you are the only one who noticed!

You should check out Star Citizen from Chris Roberts.

 

Having owned both Alienware and Lenovo I would lean toward the Alienware if you can afford it. The Killer WiFi vs the Intel for gaming and the whitelist crap Lenovo makes you put up with for some components is annoying. Also, don't know whether the Lenovo comes with Thunderbolt and USB-C (both included on the Alienware). These newer connectivity options may not be relevant to most today but could provide nice upgrade options in the future.

Also, as has already been mentioned the 970m (equal to the older 880m on some benchmarks) is a nice bump up from the 960m.

 

Also 970M will support DX12. 960M is just overclocked 860M with Maxwell v1 chip so no 100% DX12 support. I was at the same decision when I was buying my AW15. The quality, display (I have 300nits IPS), warranty and cooling is better in AW. Lenovo is much cheaper. In the same price range you can buy even 1TB SSD to it. You must ask yourself what you want to play, how long you want to use this machine and how much many you want to spend

 

I dont like the quality of Lenovo laptops, they screen panels are rubbish by the way, but the R2 fhd panel is kinda bad too though. The R1 panel is great.

 

Hi everyone, just bought mine on Black Friday:

Alienware 15 R2
Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-6700HQ (Quad-Core, 6MB Cache, up to 3.5GHz w/ Turbo Boost)
16GB ram
256GB PCIe SSD (Boot) + 1TB 7200RPM SATA 6Gb/s (Storage)
NVIDIA(R) GeForce(R) GTX 970M with 3GB GDDR5
15.6 inch UHD (3840 x 2160) IGZO IPS Anti-Glare 300-nits Display


My order went from Order Processing to In-Production in less than 24 hours. Today I got a text message that my laptop's status went from In-Production to Shipped. (My heart was racing and I suddenly got an adrenaline rush when I saw this) lol. It's going to arrive tomorrow

 

Nice config. I got mine that weekend as well but did not go for the SSD (I have an existing M.2 - not the new PCIe type) nor the fancy display. Mine shipped yesterday and is supposed to arrive tomorrow as well. I bet the screen will be awesome. I'm going to try and connect mine to my iMac Display via the TB connection.

 

Thanks brother. I saw your post about your Black Friday purchase too. I went with the SSD and 4k display since I'll be using the laptop for photo and video editing. I'm sure you're very excited to get yours. I just checked my order details apparently I'm getting three different packages. 1 will arrive tomorrow, the other 2 is on monday one of which weighs a whopping 12lbs. so that's definitely the laptop. I think its because of the freebies that came with the laptop when I bought it (Xbox controller, games, etc)

 

I'd like to hear how that works out for you when you get a chance. My girlfriend has a 27" retina display that I've been thinking about tapping into.

 

Hi all! I am waiting to get me Alienware 15 R2, which will arrive tomorrow, fastest shipping yet, ordered on 11/28 and it will be here 12/4. My specs are as follows:

Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-6700HQ (Quad-Core, 6MB Cache, up to 3.5GHz w/ Turbo Boost)
8GB Dual Channel DDR4 2133MHz (4GBx2)
NVIDIA(R) GeForce(R) GTX 970M with 3GB GDDR5
128GB M.2 SATA 6Gb/s SSD (Boot) + 1TB 7200RPM SATA 6Gb/s (Storage)
15.6 inch FHD (1920 x 1080) IPS Anti-Glare 220-nits Display

All for $1,350 plus tax. My question is regarding the RAM being DDR4. I have founded roaming the forums that there was an incompatibility with any DDR4 RAM module when people were trying to upgrade. There was no solution found, one user stated that the BIOS has been updated and now we can easily upgrade the RAM without blue-screening the laptop, however no one has confirmed this. Can someone confirm this for me and possibly suggest a good 2x8 module set that I can upgrade my Alienware 15 R2 with?

 

I sure will. Can't wait to try it out. Of course Apple says not supported but it sure would be awesome if it worked.

I saw a bunch of posts on newegg.com about people having issues finding decent 3rd party RAM upgrades for the AW 15 R2. Almost made me wish I'd ordered 16GB. I'll let you know if I find something that works.

 

A BIOS update fixed the RAM problem. I'm going to eventually upgrade to 32GB when timings get better.

 

Hi guys I ordered
Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-6820HK (Quad-Core, 8MB Cache, Dynamically Overclocked up to 4.1GHz)
16 GB Dual Channel DDR4 2133MHz (8GBx2)
NVIDIA(R) GeForce(R) GTX 980M with 4 GB GDDR5
128GB M.2 SATA 6Gb/s SSD (Boot) + 1TB 7200RPM SATA 6Gb/s (Storage)
5.6 inch UHD (3840 x 2160) IGZO IPS Anti-Glare 300-nits Display
in 12/2 it sounds like it will take week for them to cook it for me right?
an other question dose any one test 980M 8GB i got 4BG dose that 4GB extra really make difference ?

 

Well, I received the system but there's no adapter included to breakout the USB-C to Thunderbolt, displayport etc. SMH

 

So I received my laptop today and everything is great except one thing, and its not an Alienware issue, its a Microsoft one. Windows 10 will not allow me to choose my 1tb HDD as my default drive and if a program does not allow me to do custom installation then I am stuck with said program on my 128gb SSD. This is somewhat annoying, has anyone found a solution to this yet?

 

I noticed this, too, but figured you could change the environment variables as you could in previous versions. Are you sure you cant modify then in windows 10?

 

Change the following registry keys:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\ProgramFilesDir
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\ProgramFilesDir (x86)
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\ProgramFilesDir
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\ProgramFilesDir (x86)

 

How long do you reckon the 15 with a 970M will last me if I wish to play my games at least at the level of graphic detail the PS4 offers today?

Sent from my A0001 using Tapatalk

 

Hey guys, i get the error your battery has experienced a permanent failure
if i unplug it, it turns off straight away
is there something i should try beforehand or just give dell a call since i have warranty

 

Sounds like a battery failure. Call Dell and see what they will do. Some manufacturers have shorter warranties on the battery.

 

Just ordered a new 15 with a 980m an a UHD screen to replace my aging m17x r3. Excited to see how it performs!!!

 

How old is your system? Is it in warranty? Did this happen automatically or did you perhaps try to tweak something which resulted in this

Sent from my A0001 using Tapatalk

 

The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt On an Alienware 15! 4K FPS TEST!

 

Has anyone had issues updating to Windows 10? I'm hesitant to upgrade due to some other forums with people losing sound, etc, on the Alienware 15 when doing the free windows 10 update. Thanks

 

Is it possible to switch off the led on the power button or make it dimmer?

 

Dimming one would dim all the leds together, but you can definitely turn it off from the AlienFX control panel. Just choose black as the color.

 

My alienware 15 R2 is in production so I'll be joining you all soon. Questions : 1. Is there a way to disable optimus or will the 980m always pass through the igpu? 2. Doss optimus mean I must rely on Dell for drivers or can I install drivers directly from nvidia?

 

Just received my Alienware 15 R2, and the screen has good color saturation, not sure if it has slight yellow/greenish tint. I have the 4K screen.

 

Can't disable optimus . You can install drivers directly from nvidia

 

So, the anomalies on the screen are noticeable, after all. I saw them on the loading screen of fallout. Aso, everyone I boot I have to unplug and replug my USB mouse as it isn't even powered (no light on mouse).

I tried to email tech support and I was informed that I don't have email support. Wtf kind of ******** is that? 1600 dollars and I cant email. Great.

 

What exactly does it say when you have your mouse plugged in? Is it a string of 3 lines on the screen to a black background... something about media found? If so, my AW17 does that and I just noticed it does it when I have my USB hub plugged in with my mouse and keyboard. I also noticed that it does not do it on different USB ports. There is 1 port that makes it happen almost all times though.

 

No, the mouse just wouldn't be detected and had to be unplugged then plugged back in. The issue was solved by reinstalling the chips et drivers and uninstallibf the USB extensible controller, rebooting and allowing windows to add them again. As for the screen...

Sent pics to alienware support. The replied within minutes agreeing the screen was broken and set up a unit replacement since my system is less than a week old.

So in 3 weeks I'll have a new laptop, and can use this in the meantime. So I guess I'm happy with the outcome here.

 

Looks like my dell UK UHD /16gb/6820hk/980mgtx8gb/512ssd/1tb hdd order shipped this morning! Anyone know how long typically it takes to get from China to London?

 

Got my 15 R2 last week, I didn't opt for the top of the line model I got the i7 6700HQ 970 with the 1080 screen. 1TB spinning disk.

So far it's fantastic, I have the HDMI out to my HP Z24i and it runs great, Arma3/Dayz no problem Battlefront/Fallout 4 (older engines) flawless. So far no real issues. I will be swapping in my 512 2.5 SSD this evening to get some more speed out of the disk performance.

Surprisingly the screen is bright and vibrant, I am not seeing the same issues that others have reported with washout and low colors.

I have noticed when booting after it's been off overnight that I get a burst of gaming audio at power up, almost as if the audio buffer is dumping.

 

So I recently got my Alienware 15 R2 a few days ago. Really awesome so far. Specs:

I7 6700 HQ
8 GB RAM
GTX 970M
1TB 7200RPM SATA 6Gb/s
FHD Anti-glare screen

Ok, so, the screen is not bad. Of course, that is my opinion, and users with color sensitive work will disagree with me. The colors are fine, and may seem just a little washed out if compared to a higher quality panel. In my case, I use this pc for programming, CAD, gaming, and general purpose work. For me, its completely fine. The screen is definitely bright enough. I never used it at 100%, and I use this thing both at school where the lighting is super bright, and at home literally right next to an open window.

If you guys have any questions or requests just ask. So far I am amazed with this machine

 

I'm glad you like yours. I just received mine with the UHD screen and the verdict is... backlight bleeding. Lots of it. I also bought a Clevo P650RE recently and that one also had light bleeding.

Maybe I'm just cursed...

 

Your going to get some bleed with IPS screens. That's just how they are to get brighter colors. I've seen a lot of TN displays that have the same thing.

 

Wow, that sucks. I've heard many good things about that screen. Dell has gotta replace that for you.

 

For well over $1000 that would be unacceptable. Not sure how bad it is for punisher.

 

I'll try getting a replacement, see if this issue is inherent. I read plenty of reports that specifically mention no light bleed problems. My current TN panel on the MSI GE60 is pretty much flawless.

 

Should bleeding be noticeable at any angle? I can only see it sitting about 3-5 feet away from the center of the screen, as soon as I move around it goes away...

EDIT: I'm a bit confused about backlight bleeding vs IPS glow. As I move positions/angles looking at the screen it turns to a whiter tint all over. That looks like glow to me but I'm not sure if there should also be spots of light on the screen, specifically one on the left side and another in the top right corner... The spots are there mostly if I sit dead center of the screen.

 

*Adrian

 

Not sure... Could you post a picture or a video so we could see how bad it is?

 

Excuse the quality and size, looks like my resizing failed... That's taken three feet away from the screen, where it's the most noticeable. Also, the bottom bleed doesn't seem to appear in pictures...

 

Does the camera make it look worse than it actually is?

Based on what I see on the picture, thats definitely not okay. I get very little to no light bleed on my display, full brightness, black background. You should definitely get it replaced. If they tell you to send it to some dell repair shop decline and say you want an actual replacement, or else you might have to wait another week just to get the laptop back. Good luck.

 

The image is pretty accurate, maybe 10% worse.

 

Requested a replacement, they said it will take 2-3 weeks... Seems odd since my laptop took a week from the moment I placed the order to when I received it. Also, will the 30 day return policy start again with the new system?

 

Its idneed a bit excessive screen bleed. also because it is not very uniform.