*OFFICIAL* Alienware 17 R2/R3 Benchmark Thread

Now I'm really struggling with what to do with my systems. I had to order a new gfx card for my m17xR3 and got a 7970m. I've overclocked it to 950/1400 and I'm really pleased with how it has brought new life from the 6990m it had. I'm playing far cry 4 at about 40ish fps at ultra settings without aa. So is it worth around 2000 dollars for 20 fps more? I'm starting to think this new 17 isn't worth the hassle of getting them to send the 240 watt psu for and just return it.

 

That's still a great card as is my 680m, so for the current games it's easily powerful enough. Maybe wait it out and see where it goes before investing?

I'll be posting whether it goes back after I get my hands on one. If they haven't come up with a 240w PSU 'to order' by the time I receive mine (2/10) it's just going to be a fun exercise that results in a return..
.

 

I did some legwork for us this morning and called Alienware tech support. I pretty much told the guy that I had a system on order and saw it was shipping with a 180 watt PSU. I told him there are benchmarks already out showing the comparison between the 180 and a 240, and the 180 was definitely causing some throttling and holding the system back. He asked for my order number, confirmed it was shipping with a 180 watt and was shocked. He placed me on a brief hold (2-3 minutes), came back and told me that the 980m should definitely not be shipping with a 180 and he has no idea why or how it happened. He also said that would definitely cause issues with the system.

He created a case for me, and also added notes to my order number, and lastly gave me the phone number to his department. He said as soon as I receive the system, all I need to do is call back the number he provided, give them the case number and my service tag from the system and they would have a 240 watt PSU in my hands in 2 days.

I know...shocking they were not only helpful, but in full agreement! The tech was genuinely shocked lol. But yeah, I didn't have to get hateful, bring the thunder or anything. Hell, I don't even have the system in hand yet to experience the problems...he knew what would happen and is going to fix it.

So there's some silver lining at least. So call now or after it arrives. Seems like they're going to take care of us on that either way. Oh, and he actually thanked me for bringing that to their attention. He said they had no idea this was happening lol.

 

That is totally awesome information. You managed to get a smart tech, they do exist at AW. I'll be emailing my rep in the morning and linking him here. It sounds like dell plan to fix this fast.

+rep .

 

I'm going to try this later today then. I hope they also say the same thing. Will update the result.

 

Yeah hopefully the info helps some more of our community. Keep us posted also on results from your phone calls.

 

I can tell you that my experience was not as immediate as the results the above posters have had. I spent the last hour and 20 minutes on the phone with dell alienware tech support, expressing the problems I have had with the system running with the 180watt psu. While I think initially he was sticking to the company line that the 180w was sufficient, we would do some benchmarking and escalate the issue to the engineering team. So we proceed to run the heaven benchmark with the 180 watt psu and he was quite impressed with the fps and trying to convince me that these were positive results. I indicated that while they may seem ok, they aren't even close to what they should be based on my expectations. Upon rerunning the test lets just say he changed his stance. Here are the benchmarks that he recorded during our lengthy phone conversation:
180w psu: 62.4 fps, Score 1571. Min fps 13.3 Max fps 94.8
240w psu: 86.1 fps, Score 2168. Min fps 24.7 Max fps 146.7
Even through this proof, they are unable to send me a 240 watt psu even though they clearly believe my report, and I have to wait 3-4 days for them to escalate the case to the engineering department. If someone has a contact that can move faster than mine I would greatly appreciate it, because this is has been a hassle.

 

You might have to be a little patient. I would hope that this info about needing the 240w PSU will quickly get passed around the support jockeys but unless you get a keen one they can only refer up at this point. The admission from a dell rep that it is a mistake is good to hear but there's going to be a whole load of work dell are going to have to do to fix this so everyone knows. If the engineering dept is on the ball they will bounce it back with the part number you need quickly.

Frustrating for sure, I think I am going to have to wait for delivery and then call in for a replacement so that's going to be a couple of days at best.

 

Needless to say, the more we spread the word around here, and the more people we have call in regarding the PSU issue, the quicker this is going to escalate up the ranks at dell.

 

What a shame. I can't believe Alienware had overlooked this PSU fiasco. Kind of paint the picture where Alienware is going. On the contrary, Alienware screwed up order and gave me a 240w psu instead of a 180w that supposed to come with the 860m gtx.

 

I called alienware, the tech support guy seemed to be concerned and interested. He told me he would escalate this to people to get it benchmarked and escalated it to the engineering team as well as his manager. I gave him a link to this site and thread also and he looked over it. He told me to call back when I get my laptop and tell them I want a 240W power supply and they should send me one.

He did tell me he was surprised that all the laptops would ship with a 180W power supply though when they first revealed it.

 

Good deal! So it's pretty similar to my case then. I like the fact that he also was going to escalate it. We're 2/2 on tech support taking care of us properly!

 

Thanks for the information. I'm really appreciate that!
I will raise up this issue to my rep immediately. I wish they will get me the higher PSU.
My specs are:
i7-4980HQ
GTX 980M
16GB RAM

So the 240W PSU would be sufficient instead of the 330W PSU? Thank You. =)

 

What with all buyers who have already submitted their New Alienware laptop with 180w and who do not know about the problem? They may be happy with what they have without knowing about throttling issue. Anyone can see that inside the manual, the power supply is very good specified as "180w" Dellienware has done a terrible job with the development of this laptop. How could Dellienware(engineering team) have avoided seeing that this Alienware laptop is not working as it should? This is a big shame ..

 

Have not Dellienware technicians read and learned about the new Alienware laptop? They supposed to know everything about the new laptop .. They have certainly learned everything about the new Alienware ..Why was this problem with a weak power a surprise on the technicians?

 

I don't want to mess with you, honorable Alienware owners, but here's a humble Clevo P650SG owner w/980M (my specs are in signature). Reading this thread got me quite concerned, since the P650SG ships with a 180W PSU too. I benched the system and my results are:
Score: P10927
Graphics Score: 12876
Physics Score: 8075
Combined Score: 6809

Soo... I don't know what to say, since my overall it's so much better than the Alienware 17. Compared to the original score by just1tree, which has a similar config (P10102, graphics 12226, physics 7642, and combined score 5553) to me it's quite astonishing that the 17 couldn't keep up with the 980m power requirements.

I'm not here to shoving my result up your -- it's just that I'm quite concerned too. Granted, I'm getting good results, but my combined of 6809 it's a bit lower than the ~7600 that I've read in this thread, and the total is still some hundreds under the Asus ROG G751. So I'm questioning if not only Alienware has underestimated the requirements of the 980m but Clevo too. Won't make you feel better but maybe you're not alone

 

Indeed, that Asus g751jy is quite the impressive machine! I've said it in other posts, but I'd be willing to get one instead of the AW if I found the dh72x for closer to $2500-2600. At that price point, I'd feel comfortable passing on the Alienware warranty and giving Asus a shot.

You've got a great setup there too! I would have considered a clevo also if they had a 17" IPS panel. Seems were both chasing the Asus scores right now lol!

 

I would have went with ASUS however with multiple returns of laptops to their repair centres, I will forever avoid them.

 

A user (weav) ran tests with both 180W and 240W PSU on his P650SG and... well, the 180W PSU is just fine for us. The score is still behind the ASUS but we're testing only with 16GB of RAM instead of 24, and that might affect the final score.

It's just that I don't get why the 180W PSU is fine for us Clevo owners and for the Alienware 17 it's not. Seems nosense to me. Granted, your display is bigger, but... 2 inches should not draw so much power, am I right? Plus, the 17 inch variant of our laptop still ships with a 180W PSU.

 

Dellienware repeat the mistake of the new Alienware .. Previous model Alienware 17 and 18 also had poorer benchmark scores than other laptop manufacturers gaming laptops. Dellienware made a crippled bios With truncated / throttled TDP (throttling hardware). Dellienware never learn ..

 

Well, it may sound crazy, but I'd like to see a bench of an Alienware 17 with a 180W Clevo PSU...

 

My old Clevo (Multicom) 120w power supply managed 150w ..

 

First things first I don't want to start a argument about brand wars, that being said those scores are still low... And no 2 chips are the same so you're cpu may work better then a equivalent cpu of the same brand. Also it doesn't matter dellienware, asus, Clevo, msi a 180w brick is a 180w brick and the 980m requires a 240w or above brick to run at full power plain and simple,

I fully understand some systems use power in different ways and may be a little more efficient in the way it distributes the 180w however it's not enough anyway you slice it to fully power the 980m at the stock boost clocks the minimum is the 240w if you put any type of overclock expect to push that 240 to the max maybe even a330w

If you say you're gpu is not throttling its a 180w then either A, you don't even notice it's throttling, B, you're cpu is getting no power and is over heating at the base clock or lower.

 

Interesting. To note, your processor is 100 mhz faster than the 4710 of the 17s that have been tested so far. I think it's worth accepting that the ROG G751 may have better cooling than the 17 (and Clevo?). However, I much prefer the style of the 17 over the ROG, and I'm willing to accept a small loss of performance over the ROG. I'm just not wiling to accept the performance loss of the inadequate PSU.

 

In the P650SG thread a user benched with better RAM then mine and got over P11100. Remember that the ASUS that made P11300 had 24 GB RAM. Moreover, the same user benched his P650SG with both 180W and 240W PSUs and found out the results did not increase by changing the PSU. FYI with the stock 180W PSU there are users managing to get over 9000 in FireStrike by overclocking the 980m, so I think that no, there's no power limit for us.

I don't want to start a brand war too (mainly because I like Alienware and I'm a satisfied former Dell owner), I'm just showing some data that maybe could help you identify the problem.

For example, we had severe stuttering when we received the first P650SGs; then, a EC/BIOS update fixed everything. The same may happen for this laptop too: a BIOS update could solve this issue.

 

The facts (not opinions, but factual data) observed by the tests run show that the Clevo performs just as well using a 180w PSU vs a 240w PSU. So, for whatever reason, it appears the Clevo P650SG with the GTX 980M doesn't require the 240w supply.

At stock speeds, anyway.

This isn't my opinion - it's the results of the tests run that show this. The 3dmark scores are pretty conclusive - the Clevo scores using the 180w PSU are about on par with the AW17 using the 240w PSU.

How is this possible? I don't know.

 

Could be something simple. Is the Clevo PSU is a higher quality unit and can deliver (safely) above it's maximum rating? Or the dell one is so cheap as to be barely 180w? We'd need someone to check out the actual current draw or a Celvo PSU on an AW before deciding Clevo have just got it designed better at 180w, which they may have.

 

This was put forward as a hypothesis in the Clevo forums. Perhaps the Clevo PSU has a much higher efficiency. Perhaps the Dell PSU is rated "180w at the wall", while the Clevo is "180w delivered", or something like that. Either way, the point being that the Clevo unit actually delivers the 180w, while the Dell unit does not.

 

Exactly, and pretty much only one way to test that, a clevo and AW owner.

More to the point for us AW owners (to be) is that dell replace the current unit, whatever the root cause.

 

What's funny is that it is possible Dell tried to cheap out a bit by providing a lower-quality PSU. The irony is that now, they're being forced to spend more money to provide the 240w PSU in order to adequately supply the power the GTX 980M requires.

This is what happens when you go cheapo on important components. Which, in a laptop, is ALL of them.

 

Yeah, and also having one model reduces stock costs and simplifies ordering - epic fail! There was a time when ALL M17x's came with a 220W adaptor, I can only guess there is a decent saving to be made with a 180w (alongside all the other penny pinching).

 

ASUS ships all their new G751 models with the same 240w PSU. Funny that ASUS chose the quality route, while Dell chose the cheap one. You'd expect it to be the other way around.

I must say, barring the issues the new G751 series has (USB connections, wifi, speakers/sound drivers) it looks like ASUS hit a (relative) home run. All the professional and amateur reviews I've read shower praise on it. Solidly built, nice display, cool, quiet, great performance, good bang for the buck. It also comes with a one-year accidental damage warranty included in the price. I mean, as far as BGA Turds are concerned, this is pretty good.

AND an appropriate PSU. Wow. If only ASUS had the kind of warranty/support Dell has...

 

New Alienware laptop's shall be the flagship of the Dellienwares gaming laptops. How can you accept a poorer perfomance than sundry laptop manufacturers like Asus and MSI or other?
Alienware is now on par with Toshiba and Packard Bell laptops.

 

Alienware have become a mediocre brand. There we see in relation to the Dellienware has delivered earlier. A simple thin sort of gaming laptop. Should Dellienware bring back his faithful perfomance enthusiasts, they must start turning into autumn with a " brand New" gaming laptop .... I wonder what feedback the new Alienware gets in relation to its competitors from test pages. Medium score ?

 

Are you ever going to give it a break? We get you don't like the direction they're taking but you don't have to keep saying it over and over again, man. Take a deep breath, go to clevo/sager and then pretend alienware doesn't exist.

 

I'm just so damn disappointed ..

 

Could it be that the P650SG has a CPU that throttles or runs at reduced clocks in comparison to the A17 R2? That way it would use less power, but still be able to drive the 980M to a good score.

 

That might be the case when using real-world benchmarks like Heaven, Catzilla, PLA, but 3DMark is supposed to test all of the machine. CPU graphics are forced for physics on NV cards. Their word is that this levels the playing field between the OEM's. Me? I call BS, but I am only interested in gaming performance. If NV put a dedicated physics chip that runs better than AMD or manages with a lesser CPU then they win for me.

 

Yep, good point about the CPU score affecting the overall score in relation to my theory about P650SG and possibly lower clocked throttling CPU - but I was thinking maybe an increased GPU score would offset (& more) the lower CPU score. I'm just presuming though, I don't know if P650SG runs a lower turbo boost - but it's a thin & light right, so made some assumptions.

 

Another update to the power supply fiasco:

My laptop went into production today (yay):

I contacted customer service about the power supply issue. I explained it to them and told them about the benchmarks. They agreed to send me a 240W PSU when they get the stock of them in (they're all out of stock even on the website).

I didn't have to fight, I just simply told him and he asked for me to hold for 2 minutes then came back and said he would give approval for me to be sent that part for no charge.




Edit: Out of curiosity how long did anyone wait when their AW17R2 was in production when they had a 980m in it? I just went into production today and was wondering how long I should expect to wait.

 

I regret to inform you that this is not the case. In the test we made temps&clocks were monitored with XTU and the freqs of the 4720 are just fine. I can run mine @4810 freqs in the XTU stress test and the laptop manages to keep it not over 90° C with 4 cores @ 3.4 GHz. Just for information, the laptop is relatively thin & light, but it also comes with 3 fans - 2 for the GPU and one for the CPU, so keeping it cool it's just not a problem. You can check it in the scores I posted - physics and combined scores are just fine.

I keep thinking that a BIOS update may fix many problems of this Alienware. Young products often have problems, my P650SG did as well. This laptop is too bottlenecked even with a 240W PSU to blame only the hardware.

 

You may well be right, but I hope I can get a 220W PSU before they 'fix' it, even if just for overclocking...

 

Well... I plan to get a 240W PSU too. 180 W is fine at stock or with slight overclock, but for the real deal I just nead moar power

 

For those pressing Alienware Support to send them a 240W AC adapter for their shiny new 17r2, feel free to point them to my YouTube video. This should dispel any notion that 180W is "good enough" for a single GTX 980M.

<iframe width='853' height="480" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/mpHOWJUZVdQ?rel=0" frameborder='0' allowfullscreen></iframe>

 

Wow, that is super hot for a wimpy 3.4GHz. My 2920XM and 3920XM and 4930MX all stay below 90°C at 4.3GHz.

In the case of problems, Alienware has not fixed all of the problems with their last generation 17 and 18, so there is every reason to believe they might not fix all of the problems the new ones are having. That they ever thought a 180W AC adapter was good enough for a single GTX 980M was not a graceful way to launch the product.

 

Thank you now hopefully this can stop all the 180w is enough bs because it's not and never was...

Also love your YouTube channel it's very helpful! If you ever have some spare time could you redo the m18x tear down videos since they are low res and you can't really see them so it's a little hard to follow since you basically have to take the entire system apart to get to the good stuff.. ( only thing I hate about the 18)

 

Glad you like it. Thanks for the compliment. Here's another helpful video that I just uploaded. I think you will like it, too. I probably will not do a remake of that video because I do not own a decent video camera and probably will not purchase one. I just used what I had.

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980M video card benchmark result - Intel Core i7,Alienware Alienware 17 R2

 

Anyone know how to get videos to show in tapatalk?

 

im confused here... how did your desktop get a higher combined score THAN THE LAPTOP? when the laptop had higher scores across the board?

 

Congrats on entering production!! When did you order? Also did you get the 4980 or the 4710 processor? I'm still sitting in pre production status. I called last Friday to check on it and they said the processor was causing a delay (parts shortage), but it should move to production by Monday. Well, its the end of Tuesdaynand still in pre-prod. Going to give them a call tomorrow and find out what happened now.