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

As long as the PSU is the same voltage (19,5v) try it and see if laptop can utilize all the power. If it does... Honk and run

 

Basically, its useless. Want a job done properly? Do it yourself!!

Dell Alienware 15R2/17R3 System BIOS
Fixes & Enhancements
[BIOS]
-Update ePSA 4300.21
-Set Standard Charge as setup menu default

How would one have a look at the bios file to see what "actual" changes have been made, particularly the fan table?

 

Are there any BIOS editing/viewing tools for Alienware 17 R3?

 

No idea, from what I can tell it would appear not.

The older machines could have the bios modded as they used a Phoenix Bios' but these newer models seem to have a different bios.

 

You can mod bios in Aw Echo models but you need the knowledge. The problematic bios is for the 2013 models of Alienware who have InsydeH20 bios.

 

Oooh that's promising though, while I'm no stranger to the odd bios mod, I wouldn't go so far as to say I have the "skills". Is there a specific tool or editor to use just so I can have a peek?

 

Pm @Lord Zog I know he modded early Echo models. If I remember correctly also the last model.

 

Will do, thanks.

 

You're welcome!!

 

Does that mean people with Alienware 17 (MQ/MX 2014) have trouble with modding their bios?

 

Dell crippling everything they touch http://forum.notebookreview.com/threads/alienware-18-unlocking.776956/#post-10037721

 

lmao

 

A post I wrote on Reddit SuggestALaptop:

Hello,

so I may fall foul of the rules here.... but this is more I think that I have chosen a laptop, but I am not entirely comfortable with it and would like opinions.

So... I have been trying to reconcile all the differing elements that should be considered when upgrading to a high power gaming laptop (heat, battery life, GPU power, etc).

I had largely settled on a MSI GT72S Dominator Dragon Edition. It has a desktop GTX980 GPU... and it is also £2600.

Now... I have wanted to avoid the Mobile processors as I think that there life cycle is... limited. However before I bought a MSI laptop I went to Dell Outlet and looked at the 17 R3... the specs are variations of this:

Alienware 17 - R3
Processor: Intel® Core™ i7-6820HK (8M Cache,up to 4.1GHz, 4C)
Windows 10 Home (64bit)
16GB (2x8GB) 2133MHz DDR4 Non-ECC
1 TB SATA Hard Drive (7200 RPM)
512GB PCIe Solid State Drive
No Optical Device
8 GB GDDR5 Nvidia® GeForce® GTX 980M
Intel 8260 2x2 802.11ac 2.4/5GHz + Bluetooth 4.1
8 Cell 92W Hour Battery
17.3inch UHD (3840 x 2160) IGZO IPS Anti-Glare 400-nits Display
Alienware 6 programmable Macro module keys
Internal Qwerty Backlit Keyboard

The price of the above is £1268.93 with 20% tax on top.

What attracts me to this is that I can then buy, for about £200.00, the Alienware Graphics Amplifier, which I could then put in a GTX980/980ti/Titan. Depending on what card I go I could save £400-700 (including the purchasing of the GPU).

Great.... so what is the problem?

Well.... the stories, the nightmare stories of "Dell Alienware".

Trustpilot rate them 0.9 out of 10:

https://uk.trustpilot.com/review/www.dell.co.uk

Google Reviews have a similar bleek score, with many users posting their nightmares.

Therefore I want opinions, from owners, people who have had good and bad experiences... Is it that bad?

Also I wonder if this first iteration of the amplifier might be improved on again next year... version 1.0 are rarely the complete and trouble free versions.

 

@Loosetooh: I ordered my 17R3 from Dell's web site on Black Friday. Took 3+ weeks to receive my laptop, and it had a dead pixel and a faulty nVidia GPU. Dell support remoted into my laptop and lobotomized it trying to diagnose the issue (which is fine because I knew it was a lost cause). It took another 2 weeks to work through the process of figuring out that my best option was getting it replaced, and then making sure the replacement was satisfactory (to Dell's credit, they gave me an upgrade in the end, so I now have the best 17R3 CPU in addition to the best GPU, plus a useless slow 128GB m.1 SSD and a wireless XBox360 controller). It took another 3+ weeks for the replacement laptop to arrive. Only complaint about the replacement is some backlight bleed at the bottom corners of the screen.

Overall I'm happy, mostly because I got a good deal on it plus an upgrade as part of the replacement.

My brother recently purchased a 17R3 from Amazon. He encountered BSoD's and called Dell support. They remotely lobotomized his laptop in order to "fix" the problem, messing with Windows Update settings and such. He seems to be happy with it now, but I told him to bring it by my place so that I can actually update the drivers and tune Windows 10 properly.

 

I ordered mine from the refurb Outlet, it arrived about a week later and has been perfect ever since.

 

Ordered from the outlet as well. I had an issue but they replaced the entire laptop and gave me a free ssd upgrade. No complaints since. Between that and the unheard of deal I got on the price, I'm happy.

 

Yeah, price was a factor for me too. I got an employer discount on top of the Black Friday sale price. Took some work to figure out which path to take to the site to make that happen though.

 

Hiya,

many thanks for response.... now I think that you represent an interesting case, because obviously your stories are far from ideal... but I am getting the vibe that now you are through the troubles you are not that phased and would recommend the hardware itself?

The whole point of buying from Dell Outlet is the money saved... and whilst you should also get good service, I am willing to risk a little... pfaff? if it saves me in the region of £1000.

 

Actually your spec is what I am looking at... I notice your SSD is 250gb 950PRO... did you order the laptop with HDD only and install your own SSD?

 

Thanks for your response... I hope that I get from your first point, to your final outcome, without the middle issue

 

Yes, the hardware is good. Alienware support is also good, but slow. If you're willing to potentially work through some issues up front, I think you'll end up happy.

 

It was really painless actually... I called and they overnighted me the replacement. I know that was just probably good fortune on my part but I was willing to wait a week or so to get things right. Refurbs and scratch and dents are other people's returns, so there's bound to be issues.

 

I ordered it with 120GB SSD (the lite-on) and the 1TB HDD. I kept the lite-on as the boot drive as it's more than fast enough to load Windows/Apps, and installed the 950 for games. Later I saw a sale on the 1TB 850 and grabbed one.

It boots in about 10 seconds or so. I oddly don't see much improvement in games loading speed with the 950 over the HDD. It's quicker, but nothing more than a few couple of seconds, the 950 benchmarks fine so I'm getting the correct speeds out of it, it's just not translating to much in actual usage. Not the gain I was expecting.

 

This is what I hope.

I think that people forget that. That they want the refurb prices without admitting the potential risks. I always wish for the laptop/mobile phone that does not exist... I would love the MSI GT72S 6QF with upgradeable GPU/CPU and some kind of external desktop amplification system... but I bet that comes out next year (with latest CPU and Pascal GPU) with a similar price point to what I spend this year :/

 

Yeah... I mean when I last bought a gaming laptop you could, if you knew what you were doing, insert more RAM and maybe change the HDD... neither of which I have ever done. Obviously this is changing (fast) and most chassis these days offer multiple 2.5" drives... so I am not too bothered to get the Dell with an SSD if the one they provide is poor... But the difference, on the Dell Outlet, between a laptop with a 1TB SSD and no SSD can be as little as £40-50 (inlcuding other significant upgrades like a UHD screen or 8gb 980m over 4gb 980m).

I also have a ton of questions about your Surface Pro 4, as obviously I ditched portability on the gaming laptop (too many compromises to get portability)... the main one is do you find that the SSD on the Pro 4 is large enough? Can you easily run desktop applications like, for instance, Photoshop? Is battery life okay?

Sorry to be so involving but you look to have gone through (to the very end) the purchase decisions that I am now facing.

 

I have about 200+ GB free on my SP4 and I have installed:

Windows 10 Pro
Office 2016
Manga Studio
+ Skype and a few other small utilities

Quite a few artists have done reviews on it and given it positive reviews. I just do some light sketching as I'm trying to learn to draw.

The SSD is a Samsung 951 which is only about as fast as a SATA3 SSD, so it's not blazing speeds, but it's more than fast enough for what I do. Watching streaming movies from sites that use Shockwave/flash in Chrome via WiFi I get about 5hrs out of it. I do that regularly as I watch movies and TV shows while doing my wash every weekend. I could probably get a bit more if I used Edge instead.

My Surface I take everywhere with me, my R3 only moves around the house and only leaves the house if I'm going someplace that I can game or use it for a long time plugged in at a table, like on a vacation.

 

After the last BIOS update I cant OC over 3.6GHz, anyone else having this issue? I flashed it twice.

 

Open up XTU and change the multipliers there to 40x on all four cores...it should stick.

 

Running latest BIOS. I set OC Level 3 in BIOS and am running at 3.9+ GHz. I think it's using 41x,40x,40x,39x.

Edit: Confirmed - both BIOS and XTU show 41,40,40,39.

 

XTU already shows
40x
40x
39x
39x

but it and CPU-Z show it capping at 3.58

 

Any thermal throttling? Did you give it enough voltage?

 

no throttleing and its the exact same setting i had before the update, even the BIOS default OC's dont change anything.


Flashing again and resetting the BIOS back to defaults a few times solved it. Strange.

 

The MSI GT72 Dominator is indeed a great machine! But if I were you I would not let the so called " horror stories" sway you from purchasing an Alieware for 1/2 the price. There are many satisfied owners and I am one of them. I use my 17 r3 daily and I love it. It is slim and lightweight and has an awesome keyboard with zero flex! The screen is beautiful and bright, and the thermals are great even with long sessions of gaming. I would stay away from the 4k screen as it impacts performance and the mobile cards are not able to do 4k gaming. Why stress out the system pushing such huge amounts of pixels?

 

Have MSI GT72S6QF upgradeable CPU? All mobile processors are BGA now if I remember correctly

 

Well I decided to opt for the 4k screen as it makes little monetary difference on the Outlet site. Also the UHD screen is supposedly one of the best laptop screens out there with 99.5% Adobe RGB (I will use for photo editing... the MSI GT72S screen is 100% Adobe RGB). The battery life of the R3 with the UHD screen is better than most other gaming laptops with "normal" 1080 HD screens and, with an 8gb GT980m and the graphics amplifier (with either a 980ti/Titan or.. eventually... a Pascal GPU in) I think that the 4k screen will see use and realise its potential.

I realise every year we think that hardware is at a tipping point... but this year feels different. If I could delay a year for some hardware I would... because Skylake will develop, Pascal will be released, DX12 will become standard, VR will come to the consumer market and 1440/144Mhz will become standard. The hardware we can buy now, well we have never had it so good, but it also means a 2016 high spec machine can be quickly left behind... and that is a worry.

I am always happy to read of happy customers, I really am, for the savings I will make I am thankful for the Dell Outlet and the product specs are not too shabby (I am also thinking about making my desktop a Outlet Area 51 tri-sli beast which come up £1500-2000 below rrp).... but I just see this sort of thing:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Alienware/comments/4918e9/im_sorry_alienware_i_really_am/

far more commonly for Dell/Alienware than other producers... it still feels like a risk.

 

I am not sure... I may be wrong about the CPU. Obvs the GPU can be upgraded. I think that the reason that I thought it may be possible is becuase PCSpecialist sell the same chassis with a i7-6700k installed and you can, I believe, removed and replace that CPU... although, again, I may be mistaken.

Edit: I confused a laptop chassis from PCSpecialist with the CyberpowerPC Fangbook SK-X17 (which uses the same chassis as the MSI)... so I have no basis for thinking the MSI laptop CPU can be upgraded.

 

I have to disagree with you about the mobile cpu or gpu not lasting. I have yet to have an Intel CPU fail and almost the same luck with Nvidia or Amd GPU! I been through several laptops over the years! I don't know the situation in the UK but why are you buying from an Outlet rather then the Alienware website? Why not customize your machine exactly the way you want. This is my second Alienware. Here is pic of my previous and current and I have nothing but praise for both machines!

 

You misunderstand my english... when I talk about the CPU or GPU not lasting I do not mean that they will fail... I mean that they will become all but obsolete very quickly as the software grows to take advantage of the new power of incoming technologies. The R3 is, now, an adequate laptop... but going forward the 980m will (in my estimation) be left behind very quickly.

I, too, have had many, many laptops... and my present one is a good illustration. It is 5 years old. Both the CPU and GPU are still functioning, I have no fear that they are going to fail, but at this point it is little more than a glorified netbook, ie they have, to all intense purposes completed their life cycle. I believe that the gains that will be made in the next few years, coupled with the demands of emerging technologies will speed that obsolescence cycle. I would rather not buy a laptop with a 980m GPU... however it is palatable because of the graphics amplifier, which is up-gradable and a good (though not elegant) solution to the problem.

The difference in price between buying my specification Alienware laptop from the Outlet and configuring it new is £1000 or $1500 (using today's conversion rates). I should also point out that I am buying it from the Alienware Outlet... ie I am still buying direct, just either a laptop that has been refurbished or has minor cosmetic damage. I think that the reasons I am doing that is self-evident.

 

I'm not so worried:

PC hardware is driven by gaming, and gaming specs are boat-anchored by consoles. The PS4 and XBone hitting the market caused a noticeable jump in specs for PC games over the past 2 years, but this is likely to be followed by only a very gradual increase over the next 5+ years.

The fact that AMD is doing rather poorly also means that Intel and nVidia may stagnate a bit on CPU and GPU improvements, concentrating more on things like improving power efficiency versus cutting-edge performance.

The only big performance driver I see coming is 4K and VR. These may drive higher-performance GPUs to market, but they're not likely to be needed for 1080p non-VR gaming (which will remain moderated by current-generation console specs).

I should mention that my gaming desktop was built at the end of 2009 (4 years before the current generation of consoles were released) with cutting-edge parts (Intel P55 / Lynnfield, which was not the top-performer but was new to market and decently overclockable, and HD5870 1GB, which was brand new and the top-performing single-GPU card at the time), and it *still* runs AAA games on medium quality (e.g. Fallout 4). It's main limiting factor is VRAM, as games like Rage (followed later by the new consoles) opened the door to using bigger/higher-resolution textures.

I was also still playing older and indie titles on my mid-2008 XPS M1730 laptop before it died late last year, even though it had a quite obsolete nVidia 8700M GT SLI GPU. Unlike my M1730 (for which I skimped on GPU because the upgrade price to the 9800M GTX was insane at the time), my 17 R3 has the max CPU and GPU available, so I'm hoping it will also last at least 7-8 years (with AAA games being playable at at least High settings for at least 3-4, at which point I hope to be able to consider a desktop upgrade).

It's also worth considering that the 17 R3 supports external GPUs, so you may be able to keep playing AAA games at Ultra past the 3-4 year mark by going that route. I don't think CPU is going to be an issue for a LONG time, as my 2.8GHz (o/c'd to 4.2) 2009 P55 Lynnfield Core i7-860 is *still* not CPU-limited, and the current generation of consoles has weak AMD processors!

 

Well I should clarify.... I am not worried. What I am is money conscious. High end machines are going to cost in the region of £2000-4000.... When I drop money on to one I want to get the maximum time out of that machine before it is obsolete. I do not want to spend that amount of money on a machine so that I can play games on "medium".

I think that it is difficult to compare hardware at the moment... consoles, low/medium end gamers (like average desktops and Steam Machines) show that gaming can be done on a tight budget... but at the cutting edge (the Battlefield 4/Tomb Raider/GTA V/etc) end things are quickly developing and I do not see console gamers being satisfied to continue spending money on machines that do not adequately deal with the major releases of the day. So I think that that is something that the hardware market will address....

4K gaming and VR are coming... and I do not think that the majority of the machines today (laptops, consoles or desktops) cater to it... the question is will these standards become the norm or will they sink without a trace (we used to say like Betamax and HDCD, but now, I suppose like 3D TVs have). However should they get taken up... I will not be able to afford to replace my laptop for another 5 years... and so it is a concern that I will be slightly hamstrung by the modern mobile GPU...

The other thing (that you did not pick up on & have not considered) that will drive the market is the new capacity of the upcoming hardware and the future softwa. If Pascal & Volta is as powerful as nVidia claim... and if Skylake and its successor continue to deliver more performance and more power saving potential then games and software will be written to take advantage of that extra capacity. It is those titles that our current hardware will not be able to adequately deal with. Those titles might be 12-24 months away depending on how much the next gen improves by and how quickly VR/4K is picked up upon.

I think, also, that you underestimate how good AMD GPU will be (I cannot comment on the CPU) but reports swirling around AMD at the moment is that they perform just as well as NVidia and their next releases might out perform (of course it is all hearsay at the moment) and it was AMD catching which forced NVidia to release the 980ti... so NVidia are already looking over their shoulder, it points to the fact that there is movement and competition NOT stagnation.

I think that hoping your R3 will last 7-8 years is wildly optimistic. Wildly.

 

We'll see.

I think you're underestimating how much PC game specs are hampered by consoles. AAA developers don't usually put a ton of effort into supporting extra specs of latest-generation hardware in cross-ported games, both because it adds development costs for a limited market segment and limits their potential customer base. It's usually smaller developers that make games like Crysis that push support for the latest PC tech because it gets them noticed (and if that's part of your interest area, then, yeah, you're going to start feeling it in as little as 2-3 years - but that will *always* be true no matter when you build!).

I should also clarify that I have no expectation of being able to run AAA titles on higher than medium in 6 years. As I said, I hope to have a desktop upgrade before then to keep playing the newer games, and would use my laptop for older and indie games with lower system requirements (just as I did with my mid-2008 laptop and late-2009 desktop).

I've definitely learned that you want to go all-out on GPU purchase though. I started feeling obsolete in my 8700M by 2011 at the latest (and was weaker than the Intel GPU in my 17 R3!), while my HD5870 did great until the new generation of consoles took hold.

 

I see what you mean! Sounds like you expect too much out of a laptop! Now if you buy a desktop which you can swap out the CPU and the GPU to newer and more powerful models then it should suit your needs! Most of us have to be money conscious and I am up to $2000 already invested in my laptop. I agree with you that it has to last for a few years but I can't worry about this current technology going obsolete! I just enjoy the moment and the fact that I own a superior machine to 98% of the laptops out on the market!

 

I agree, games are only gonna get more demanding on hardware as they improve graphically to take advantage of imminent new hardware releases, see Pascal & Polaris launching this year. That's why I think buying a laptop right now is a bit of a mistake, end of this year with a Pascal GPU would be the way to go I think - although the Graphics Amplifier is a definite bonus allowing the ability to upgrade with desktop cards, I think that's the only saving grace for buying now. The Graphics Amplifier will allow you to keep gaming on Ultra for a good many years until the CPU is obsolete (which isn't going to be anytime soon!), and 980M will be good for on-the-go gaming at reduced quality settings for the next 3 years I'd say, (don't forget the 980M is quite an old GPU now, it was released all the way back in October 2014!).

 

This may be true. My effective knowledge of the games market stops with games developed 12-18 months ago as my current 5 year old laptop (Asus G74sx w/ 560m GPU) can no longer play them to any degree - meaning my current laptop stopped being an effective gamer after 3-4 years service (that is what informed my refutation of "R3 will last for 7-8 years").

However I will also point out that the console/PC gaming experience is diverging. Games are already on the market that can be played on consoles but cannot realise their full potential and the introduction of VR and 4K will only speed that divergence up. I think that games manufacturers will have to either develop games that can cover both ends of the market (and that will be games where the graphics and gameplay can be turned up and down, as we see already) or they will have to pick a side... and although there will be game manufacturers that play to the middle to maximise profits the envelope will be pushed by those who want to challenge the software, challenge the hardware and create the best.

Well yes and no. I am coming at this from a point of poverty... I have to buy hardware and then use it beyond its useful life... so I want to go all out on the GPU purchase TODAY as that is where my budget point is and then, hopefully, it will last a year or two more at the other end. People only end up buying mediocre crap because it is there in front of them, they have the money and they cannot be bothered to check if the purchase they are making is the best £/$ for £/$ purchase they can make. What feeds the mainstream is peoples reticence and laziness when deciding how to research the market and spend their money.

 

Well yes and no. I think that it is very hard, for a consumer, to second guess how things will be in the market in a years time, or two years time. But the point is that right now, today, we could go and spend money on a plethora of high powered GPU laptops... it might be the dual SLI Aorus X7 (970m), it might be the desktop 980 (which 3 off the shelf manufacturers MSI/Aorus/Clevo) whilst the more specialist PC/laptop manufacturers (Schenker/Pcspecialist/CyberpowerPC/Origin etc) will build you a laptop with a overclocked desktop CPU and GPU, MSI will even sell you an 18" dual SLI GT80s with dual desktop GPU.

Now these laptops might, over time, prove to run too hot. Or maybe will be out performed by mobile pascal (which claims to the 10x more powerful than Maxwell). So they represent risks as well... But I do not think that they way I am thinking about laptops is expecting too much. I dunno if we will ever reach the hallowed ground of there being no descernible penalty for running desktop hardware in a laptop but that it what they are working on, and we are closer to that now than at any other time... with mobile GPU/CPU becoming more powerful and using less power and the same process, applied to desktop hardware, allowing it to be used in laptops for the first time.

Whenever I go to buy a new gaming laptop I always think... you know I want something that will not limit me in the games I want to play... and is truly portable. That is my expectation. However once I get into it I always eject the portability. Because you always have to chose. Performance or portable? Well the primary purpose of this machine is to game. I am not willing to pay the performance, heat and battery penalties to have a smaller form laptop... so my expectation of the gaming laptop is to be, for the price, the highest performing thing it can be, that is the only way to maximise the return, because all laptops, after 5 years, are effectively worth £0.00. The depreciation is a killer. If you start your expectations low, in the mid-level, you are giving money to the manufacturers.

I should get a desktop. The reason I do not is because I have always had laptops and also I game in stupid places... in bed, sitting on my head on the sofa, etc. And so I worry that buying a desktop will, kinda, ruin gaming for me... because I will HAVE to go and sit at the desk... which I rarely do.

 

Yeah... reckon we are on the same page, eh?

The only reason that I am buying a laptop this year is because my own has become so woeful. Cannot even play Borderlands on it with a decent fps... which is how I de-stress from life.

I would wait for Pascal but we now have an effective time line... announced in April, released in June... we will not see the first laptops with those GPU available until October/November... most will be released December/February '17. Were that I could buy a graphics amplifier for my Asus and wait it out!!!! I know buying a two year old 980m at this stage in its product life cycle is a silly mistake... but what can I do?

 

After the razer core comes out, I'm hoping to ditch my desktop for good. I'm really hoping it is compatible with the TB3 port on the r3. I want to try and avoid the aw graphics amplifier, since it's proprietary.

Honestly, I've never been CPU limited and see little reason to be able to upgrade it in my laptop. I still use an ivy bridge i5 for my desktop and an able to play most games over 60fps. I've always just kept my gpu up to date.

The main perk about the AW is the external gpu, which should hold me over for many years. Heck, the 980m alone should hold me over 4 years by itself.

 

I looked at the current Razer and was too suspicious of its build quality. It is ambitious, and whilst that is good, I have learned to wait until the second or third versions of such hardware to see the kinks ironed out.

I agree with everything that you are saying... but I just think that people are too ambitious with considering how long the hardware will last. Everytime I have bought a laptop I have dropped a good amount of money on it... and I have always thought "right... I have spend £1000's, I have the latest tech, I am going to get 7 years out of this!". I have never had a laptop that went over 5 years and it really was a creeking and ineffective machine 3-3.5 years after I bought it. It is a hard thing to admit that such an expensive piece of hardware is so disposable. But that is the reality.

The Iphone 3 was released in 2009... could you imagine using one today? The Iphone 4s was released in 2011... Apple no longer support that product and my wife's was virtually a useless machine over one year ago (when she had to replace).

Now I know that using Apple phones to illustrate my point might be divisive but it is also illustrative. We may all get 5 years out of an R3... but the last 1-2 years we will be nursing a machine that no longer will be a pleasure to use. The effective life of modern computer hardware is 3 years. We, because of poverty or not being able to reconcile the disposability of such expensive pieces of tech, might get 4/5 years out of it... but the last year will be like pulling teeth and if most of us do have an upgrade path we will take it.

 

That's true. That's when price plays the major role in my decisions though. I actually only had my GS60 for 18 months before updating to this one but it's only because I could sell it for the price I paid for this one. And if I decide to sell this one in a year or so, I'm almost guaranteed to break even or make a small profit.

Not sure how deals like that or the reselling market is in your area. In the US, it's certainly possible though - you just have to be patient(and use Slickdeals).

 

I guess we just have different expectations out of our hardware and/or tolerance levels for game performance/settings.

I was able to find a ton of older and indie games that ran adequately on my XPS M1730 (a model originally released in 2007) right up through last year, although I wished for a new laptop so I could play newer games on the couch at 60FPS. My desktop didn't start to feel it's age for me for at least 5 years, which is after the new consoles came out and leapfrogged my GPU, and I was still able to tolerate Fallout 4 on it with settings varying between Medium and High.

If you want to be able to consistently run AAA games at top settings, however, I do agree that you're looking at a likely 3 year upgrade cycle. If you're willing to tolerate bumping settings down a notch or two, however, I've found that top-end hardware (at time of purchase) can do well for closer to 5 years (especially when not bridging two console generations).