*OFFICIAL* Alienware 17 R2/R3 Owner's Lounge

I heard the GPUs are soldered to the motherboard, which is why they gave me a choice of motherboard replacement or full laptop replacement when mine arrived with a bad GPU.

 

you will have to change the whole board, the cpu and gpu are both solderd on the board.

 

Just what I though, from this point of view I could get an ASUS ROG already configured with a GTX 980M for less, which also has a BGA CPU/GPU combo. This MacBook generation really grinds my gears. Thanks guys.

 

It's BGA....it'd be worth just getting one with a 980M from the get go if possible.

 

Thank you for your solution.

Does anybody experience the new Nvidia driver 361.75 is causing Bad_pool_header ? And when I set PTS to High performance Nvidia processor, the software doesn't work anymore. I'm using latest Intel driver from Dell.

 

With the 361.75, I repeatedly got video _TDR_failure BSOD. Reverted back to 361.60 hot fix using Display Driver Uninstaller(DDU).

The earlier version to this also caused (I think 361.58) kernel_security_check_failure. Really wonder if we paid several dollars to get our face smacked with BSOD's

Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk

 

The problem is nGredia. Almost all their drivers after release of the junk Win X is crippled. Put the blame also on M$.

 

Strange, I'm on 361.75 and I've never had any issues yet. Played Diablo 3 in 4k for a couple of hours straight a few times and haven't had a crash. Even have my fans manually turned down so they aren't as loud (which leads to higher temps).

 

No problems here, I'm on 361.75 also. I don't have a 4k panel though.

 

Way to contradict yourself. The problem is nGredia, blame M$? What are you? 13?

 

LOL. So Nvidia and M$ does not have a kind of collaboration on interoperability between hardware vs Os? Ngredia driver problems started right around the new colored Win X trash was released. Maybe you can't see this in your small world home at mama. Interpret this as you want or maybe listen to what plenty others say about this. Perhaps 12 - 13 year old kids know more about this than you apparently do.

 

Every time that a new OS is released there are drive stability issues. it's nothing new. Video stack changed so drivers have to be changed to work with it again and then stability has to be achieved again. AMD has the same issues.

Welcome to every OS upgrade since 1995. You really sound like a kid that has 0 actual knowledge. Hell parts of your post were barely legible.

 

To be fair, I'm pretty sure English is not his first language. That being said, using "M$ and Ngredia" seems somewhat childish words to use, but to each his own. I'm also not really sure what the point of posting that was since it was not really helpful to the original question.

 

You say I'm about 13 years, it's no wonder I can't remember Win95 You are perhaps one of the few on this or other forum who has tremendous knowledge about everything. Wish you had it... But I will not go into this topic. Maybe you should become a little more humble and not talk **** about people who have other opinion than you in the forum. But this is maybe too much to expect.

 

After three failed motherboard replacements, alienware has decided to offer me a system exchange. Do they still have 17 r2's laying around?

 

Maybe Dell has realized that 17R2 is not a good option as a substitute, when you've had so much trouble. Dell has certainly lots of motherboard/parts but not complete laptops from the previous model. You have an great chance to get the latest model.

 

No, I've been running Fallout 4 and other games on it for a while without issues.

Edit: If it matters, I'm using the latest Dell-provided Intel driver instead of the one from Interl's web site.

 

hey guys, i wanna ask for some help about my brand new 17 R3 ( 6820hk + 16gb ram + gtx 980m 8GB). I have a friend who own a MSI GT72 ( 4710hq + 16 gb ram+ gtx 980m 8gb ) and he asked me to run some benchs just to realize if worth upgrade his laptop to the skylake version of MSI GT72. and after the benchs at same config and resolution , his laptop score was very higher than mine....according to the pics :

alienware 17 R3



MSI GT72




I was expecting something very close.... double check and repeat the benchs with the laptops side by side ....both on performance energy mode and plugged to the energy. any ideas ? thanks!

 

EDIT: I have ambient occlusion set to quality, anisotropic filtering set to 16x, antialiasing transparency set to 2x supersample, and triple buffering set to on. This probably lowers my scores. I'll try again tomorrow with default settings.

I get even worse scores for Heaven but better for Valley. Could be that I accidentally left Task Manager running for Heaven.

Heaven:

Valley:

 

Test also with 3DMark 11 and 3DMark Skydiver and compare. You need a better test basis before making an conclusion. All later Aw models have delivered inferior bench scores results vs other brand with similar hardware. This is nothing new.

 

[QUOTE=" All later Aw models have delivered inferior bench scores results vs other brand with similar hardware. This is nothing new.[/QUOTE]

ty for the reply, im new in AW laptops and ive never been noticed about this. I was worried about if my laptop was deffective...

 

Even more info if you use Google http://www.notebookcheck.net/NVIDIA-GeForce-GTX-980M.126692.0.html

 

ty for the reply, im new in AW laptops and ive never been noticed about this. I was worried about if my laptop was deffective...[/QUOTE]

Ya but not like +15% +30% of performance in favor of the msi

Check if you are
-running the very same graphic options in the benchmark
- running at the same clocks frequency than your friends / if your friend did on OC
- running your laptop with a 240W powersupply

 

Review of Gigabyte P35X v3. Test released today... See the result ↓↓↓ Where is newest Aw with Skylake on the rewiew list?
7% lower 3dmark11 score than a hefty down throttled burning hot super slim Gigabyte P35X v5.

 

Sure it is sad.
There is still a bit of weird things with the notebook check tests.
When the guys stated that with the A15 the performance of the 980m dropped from 60 to 30fps under battery... comon it is an option to save battery that can be disable in geforce experience
Same with furemark it is natively recognize by nvidia card and cause throttle.

Regarding the difference of 30% in performance that jabas observed. It sounds like one gpu is OC. I cannot remember what is a normal score for a 980m with valley.

 

Yes it's sad. You think something is weird in their tests? All tests done by Notebook check has shown similar tendency for AW laptops. Always lowest scores. Even former socket Aw models have shown the same... Lower benchmark scores than other brand's similar models. Interpret this as you will.
7% lower benchmark score is nevertheless very much on the same hardware. A driver does not have such big effect.

 

Ya sure it is a tendency.
But a measurement should not be published a without replications and evaluation of the dispersion. What is the relative standard deviation of the score of the benchmark?

 

Check if you are
-running the very same graphic options in the benchmark
- running at the same clocks frequency than your friends / if your friend did on OC
- running your laptop with a 240W powersupply[/QUOTE]

ive double checked the profile and its the same, the clocks were checked with GPUZ , and my laptop came with a 240w power supply.

ran firestrike , and my laptop scores 1000 points less than other 17 R3 with same cpu, gpu, system and cores...im freaking out....i did a clean windows instalation with no better results

 

Also, go into bios and see if you have cpu performance mode turned on.
Also, having owned msi before my aw17r3, msi and especially Asus have dynamic gpu over clocking built in. Makes a big difference.

My thoughts, play a game like cod or something with identical graphic settings, turn on fps monitoring, and compare your 2 laptops 'actual' performance differences. Synthetics aren't a good measure, to many factors come into play.

I'm sure aw will still be below msi. But personally, I'm ok with that. The msi is a very nice and solid machine, but I love my aw 100% better than I did the msi. Other than straight up gaming, I feel the aw has a huge advantage. Battery, look, feel, screen, fact fans turn off while not needed, etc.

Sent from my SM-N910V using Tapatalk

 

it was turned off ....now its on. thanks for the tip... about the difference...i gonna live with that....i love my AW too....

 

I'm not sure the 'actual' difference with that off/on. I've only got the 6700, with the 6820 I'm sure it's a more noticeable difference. I only notice fans kick on quicker.

I use mine as a workstation more than gaming. But at more than $1500 less than the Dell precision (granted 970m vs m3000m). It's a great laptop, and games well. Can only imagine the 6820 and 980m are even better for gaming.

But that UHD screen, sooo nice. Best screen (tv/laptop/monitor/cell) I've ever seen. And I only use it for resolution to see more, haven't used any media above 720p. Still gorgeous.

 

Well for one thing your drivers are out of date.

 

New results on my 17 R3 with stock nVidia settings

Edit: Still lower than the MSI. CPU performance mode is on. Could be due to Dell software, or the fact that the video has to go through the Intel GPU to get to the screen, or the MSI could be tweaked somehow. What GPU temps does your MSI friend get during the test? I get around 71C.

 

correct me if I'm wrong , but doesn't the 6820hk turbo to 3.6 without over locking? Your cpu shows 2.7 which is the stock non turbo clock

 

correct me if I'm wrong , but doesn't the 6820hk turbo to 3.6 without over locking? Your cpu shows 2.7 which is the stock non turbo clock

 

Windows says 2.7 even if I set OC level 3 in the BIOS.

The MSI screenshots show 2.5.

I don't think tools/benchmarks usually report the turbo speed?

With BIOS OC level 3, CPU-Z shows me idling at 3.9-4.0GHz (with a max possible of 4.1). I'll switch back to performance=enabled and OC=disabled and edit my post with the CPU-Z numbers.

Edit: With performance=enabled + OC=disabled, CPU-Z shows 3.6GHz max, with idle at 3.2-3.6.

Edit 2: This is with windows power options set to max CPU performance.

 

Reflash your BIOS, and make sure your machine is in high performance power setting.

 

I don't believe anything is wrong, so I'm not going to re-flash my BIOS until I see someone else post a screenshot showing something higher than 2.7GHz on their Windows system information screen (Win+Fn+Pause).

 

My i7-4910MQ shows 2.9 GHz in that screen, and hwinfo64 tells me it's running at 3.8 GHz. The Windows system information screen shows the stock (non-turbo) speed for your CPU.

 

mine shows the same...... 2.7ghz

mine shows the same even running 4.1ghz on all 4 cores ..... windows never shows new clocks.

and as for the 'CPU performance mode' in the BIOS, it appears to increase the wattage the chip can consume, i was unable to break TDP with it disabled.

 

I wasn't really sure. I remember fires trike shows your turbo clock

 

HI folks...

I placed an order for an alienware 17 r3 after much deliberation, and even after the purchase (as i wait for it to be built and delivered...) I still deliberate. My biggest point of contention is that all I read is how gaming laptops are 'dumb' and aren't logical in the face of building a big desktop PC setup. However, I know there have to be more people like me that don't necessarily want some huge desk setup dominating a corner of their home... something about being able to just take it with me to the couch, or to a table, or wherever is very appealing, and is worth the apparent 'downsides'. Still, I'm a very internalizing person - and others' opinions have a way of making me jaded.

I also was considering waiting for Pascal... but I guess there will always be a new technology coming out? I am tired of waiting to get a rig... Maxwell isn't that bad right?

Anyways, how is this deal?

Alienware 17 r3
i7 6820hk
16gb ddr4
gtx 980m 8gb
1TB pcie-SSD + 1tb 7200 RPM
1080P screen (i didn't want the 4k screen, and the scaling issues that come with it, though it was an option)
3 Years premium support
3 years accidental insurance

Price - $2300.78 USD

I had a number of bad customer experiences, so they gave me some massive discounts... i think?

 

It looks like you did alright, though you guys do generally get better deals in the US.

To put that into perspective, your $2300.78 USD = £1586.09 GBP

If I spec the same machine (including warranty etc..) it comes to £2,560.99 = $3714.97 USD (current exchange rates of 1USD - 0.69GBP)

Like you say, you could always be waiting for the next tech but to say "Maxwell isn't that bad right?" !!!! Apart from the desktop GTX 980 that has been shoved into some laptops, the GTX 980M is currently at the top of the mobile food chain. It lays waste to anything AMD has by quite some margin and is literally cooler doing so..

Make of that what you will.

 

I built a cutting-edge gaming desktop in 2009. It's been great, but I ended up using my older XPS M1730 laptop more because it's hard to find time to hide in the office with kids and such. Thus, when my M1730 died I knew it would be worth it to buy a new gaming laptop.

I don't plan to upgrade my desktop either, except to add an SSD (from the dead M1730).

If you need portability or the ability to do computing stuff on the couch, a laptop makes sense. You can always connect an external monitor+keyboard+mouse to turn it into a desktop too. It's a trade-off: you get portability and versatility in exchange for higher cost and less upgrade-ability.

 

finally updating the intel driver finally fixed the intel display error... Now its the wifi adapter that needs fixing. It randomly disables while your using it, there wont be any connection when you press the wifi logo. anyone experiencing this?

 

If this is on battery, make sure to open Windows power options and disable turning off wifi to save power.

If on AC, try updating to latest drivers from Killer's site. If that doesn't help, try switching to driver-only install without Killer utilities.

 

I just placed an order for the AW 17 R3 too with President day discount pricing, and now I don't feel like I got that great of deal after reading this. My machine specs include the i7 6700 and a 256Gb ssd upgrade with a 2 year premium support and 2 years accidental insurance plans for about the same price as your rig.

Who was your sales rep?

I was literally in a 2.5 hour online chat with my sales rep going over every option before I made the decision to pull the trigger.

 

I got 6820hk it goes to 4.2but rare because its not neded.

 

Yet but stock turbo is 3.6. The 6820hk is unlocked so you can actually overclock to 4.3 or more from what I have seen