*OFFICIAL* Alienware Area-51M R1 Owner's Lounge

didn't think about that... does anybody know that?

 

Would you still recommend going for the i7 if another main use case for this laptop would be running networked VMs demoing enterprise level security software?

 

I'd recommend the i7-8700K for that.

 

I'm about 80% sure it is controlled by GPU.

By far the biggest Jump (on paper) in TDP is from GPU to GPU.

Both i7s and i9 share the same TDP (again on paper) without overclocking

 

Since some reviews have started rolling in what’s the early verdict?
Does M51 come close to a true Desktop?
Temps and fan noise?
I’m at work for the next 12hours so it’ll be a while until I can read reviews.
Thanks

 

Only 1 review from a useless mainstream site. Did not even give sensor temps. Only heat gun on outside chasis

 

Tom's Guide checking out the Area 51m now:

https://www.tomsguide.com/us/alienware-area-51m-benchmarks,news-29265.html

No new info. Is this site and LaptopMag owned by the same people? It's like a high schooler copied the first review and jazzed it up a bit to make it their own.

EDIT: Yeah, I guess they are. Weird.

 

None of these CPUs will ever be a bottleneck in virtualization. You are much more likely to run out of disk space and RAM, heh. My 6 year old 3740QM paired with 32GB RAM can handle a couple dozen loaded server VMs without a hiccup.

 

The one piece of information I thought useful from the review was the brightness measurement which was 284 nits.

As someone who totes an X1 carbon 6th gen with a 500 nit HDR screen around daily and a surface studio 2 with it's 500 nit screen as my desktop at work, seeing that 284 nit number makes my heart sink as I'd like my TBD future desktop replacement at home to be something with a similar screen...

My dream which I know is unrealistic for laptops is to have multiple screens that you can easily swap depending on what your doing. I'm imagining something similar to the surface book where if I'm in a viewing media content mood, I have my 4K HDR connected and when I want to game, within a few seconds I can have my 1080p 240HZ screen connected.

 

If all you're doing is playing games then the 9900k is a complete waste of money. In a system that has the same specs and you just swap the 9700k and 9900k they will leap frog one another in different games. If not just match one another. So for gaming it has close to no benefit.

Unless you have a real reason to get it or just want the bragging rights, then I'd pass on it. I'm going with the 9700k in my setup.

 

Or just buy the 9900k and disable hyper-threading , and you have yourself a 9700k without the need for 2 cpus. This way we can all get along,

 

Unfortunately, it seems the bios is rather locked down; this may not be possible, then your stuck with a burning hot chip with a ton of useless threads heating it up and raising the Watt consumption.

 

You probably get an options from Dell to disable HT. But not much more.

 

Man I went from not interested to hyper interested real quick with this laptop after seeing reviews of the others. The laptop variants of RTX are struggling and many of the models are hamstrung with gross MaxQ performance. I'll be watching reviews for this closely.

My only issue is the base model at $2549 has hilarious shortcomings in so many places (8gb ram, duh is that). I ended up over $3000 just picking out obvious upgrades (108p60 in 2019 lol no). Also the Lunar Light looks great. Straight up.

 

At least if it was 8GBx1 you could upgrade it, but it comes with 4GBx2 which is just sad

 

The Area 51m has 4 SODIMM slots, so just plug in two more for 40 GB of RAM.

That's not really a problem in my eyes.

 

it's mostly gaming and audio recordings plus (but really not a lot only like twice/year) video editing...

still don't know which way to go

 

Ah cool, but it's really wasteful since you can buy a 16GB sodimm kit for less that the upgrade from 4GBx2 to 8GBx2 but you're stuck with that ram
Would it still run in dual channel with different capacity dimm pairs? I always thought 2 sticks were preferable over 2 for stability but that was years ago

 

Does it still run in dual cahnnel though? (i don't really know a lot about ram)

 

Oh no guys. . .I'm border line ready to cancel my order. I can get a Clevo with and RTX 2080 and 9900K for a few hundred less than my current Area 51m configuration with a 2080 and 9700K.

Someone talk some sense into me!

 

How much is build quality worth to you? Clevo and MSi always disappoint greatly here. I did like my MSi though. Seeing real numbers from people who know what we want to see would help for the performance comparison.

 

It's been a looooong time since Ive touched a Clevo. Back then everyone had plastic builds pretty crappy keyboards. So it's hard to say. But my old M17x R2 was a tank. It came with two 4670 in crossfire and had 6990 in crossfire by the time I sold it. Point being that thing just kept going and going.

So that is a good point on build quality. I was at a local bestbuy a few months ago and played around with the out going 15 r4 and liked the keyboard. So if the Area 51m has equal or better I'd be very happy with that.

 

well they call it the same and it has the same amount of travel (2.2mm) so i'd say it's the same. and in that hypereview on laptopmag they say it's great

 

Well, it's not just the exterior build quality you have to worry about. Some Clevo's are pretty nicely built even though they aren't made of brushed aluminum or rubberized carbon. But what about the cooling system? If the Area M51 is lacking in this respect, I'd rather choose a Clevo. What's the point in having an overheating tank?

Next question is the warranty. Dell has the better support for sure, but if your Clevo is designed and built well, you may never ever need to replace anything at all. I've had both great and terrible experience with AW and Clevo in the past, so there's no absolute winner in my opinion. I'd check the reviews, make sure the cooling is adequate and only then maybe pull the trigger.

 

Wait for quality reviews and/or for NBR owner's benchmarks. You are also likely score some good discounts.

 

Wow, I've just noticed that the newest Clevo P750TM1 comes with the same 9900 CPU, 2080, 4 RAM slots + 144Hz screen, and it's a 15" laptop! Guess there's one more thread I'm gonna be watching closely in upcoming weeks! What a great time to be looking for a powerful laptop!

 

Hmm. . .all good points. Cooling shouldn't be an issue so long as I can undervolt it and do a repaste and call it a day. I know dell has had a pretty poor track record for using bad thermal paste stamps in the past. I'm sure they're doing so again here.

That's the problem! I'm supposed to be one of the first NBR members to get one from dell to let the Forum's know how temps and performance are so others can make an educated choice!

 

Y'all should wait until someone credible reviews these. So far I haven't seen a single good review.

Would have reviewed one myself and return it but by the time I'd get one I'm sure a good review will come out.

 

The RTX GPU preview from notebookcheck doesnt tell the whole story. Even though using clevo laptops is CPU wise comparable, the 2080 in it might not be the same.

Nvidia stated the TDP for 2080 is 150W+ and alienware OC their 2080 to 180W. I wonder how does this translate into real world performance since 180W is a lot closer to 215W desktop. the review from laptopmag is a joke. tested basically nothing that we wanted to see.

 

Tom’s hardware has it getting 92fps on 1080p ultra for Tomb Raider. The 2080 desktop version they reviewed a couple months back has it hitting 172fps. Is the Alienware 2080 that much less powerful?

 

The AW RTX 2080 in the Area 51M has been stated to also be 180W by dell. It "should" perform identical to the Clevo assuming the same i7-9700K CPU +/- 5% with proper cooling modifications (Re-paste and undervolt)

 

I disagree. for what we know, the clevo ones are maybe 150W 2080 while alienware 2080 is confirmed 180W. 30W extra headroom can be a big difference. so i'm still hopeful area-51m 2080 will perform much better than other competitors out there. come on, where are the REAL reviews??

 

now that the NDA is lifted, we finally know the truth why Ngreedia decided to cool things off when they "paper launched" laptop rtx. other than 2060, the performance uplift is just MINIMAL at best. 2070 for example is not even faster than 1080. dont get me started on those max q jokes. those are just horrific, 2080MQ barely faster than 2060 in port royal test. what a joke. and the price you pay for it? if those MQ parts are priced accordingly, i have nothing to say. but at what they are charging us?? no thanks.

even the top of the line 2080 is just slightly faster than 1080. if Jensen launched RTX laptops with performance figures at CES, the crowd would have BOOOOOOOOED at him and even throw rotten eggs at him. this is not the kind of performance uplift we should be expecting after nearly 3 years of waiting. no wonder their sales figure dropped and their stocks dropped. totally not impressed!

my last hope is on area-51m 180W 2080. if that too is not impressive... oh well...

 

Agreed wholeheartedly. A full fledged 1080 for under 2k$ is looking like a better purchase than this 4k+ 2080 RTX nonsense especially for those of us who are not located in the US. We already pay hefty premium overseas anyways. Also, a 2080 chip paired with a 60hz 1080p panel is like a daylight robbery for unsuspecting customers because that's what we get overseas in UAE and India where I live. I haven't seen even one reseller with a 1440 120Hz screen even in the older models.
I think AW wants to get as many pre orders as they can before the "true" performance benchmarks of these systems can be accessed in the public domain.

Sent from my SM-G965F using Tapatalk

 

My undervolted 1080 won't produce more than 140 watts @1800Mhz 0.900 Mv. 30 watts is much but Turing has set of extra RTX cores making it harder to use a full 180 watts for the GPU. I think that that 180 watts is being split so nvidia still can justify the RTX price and "feature" set. Turing is all about raytracing and DLSS neural networks. Not rasterazation performance.

 

Just watched the Battlefield V demo with RTX on and off. What a joke... Those mirror reflections feel so artificial and out of place. The fire rendering is pure garbage. The idea sounds good on paper, but the reality is a stubborn thing. Just like tessellation - overhyped and underwhelming? Guess it's shame on us for being so easily played by NGreedia second time in a row...

 

Could I just get an M15 with the graphics amp and the desktop 2080 with almost twice the performance of this laptop? Serious question. The desktop 2080 seems to be getting twice the performance in game benchmarks

 

The worst part about all these laptops is the 2080 is not designed for 1080p. Go watch Bob of All Trades video on the GT75 Titan with a 2080 and the 8950HK. The GPU never gets above the mid 60's temp wise, but it is only at about 80-85% utilization. The cards should 0nly be used at 1440p and 4k. Not gonna order anything until someone puts out 1440p 120hz screen. Would love to see these reviewers hook these laptops up to external 1440 and 4k monitors so we can see exactly what these cards can do.

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If you want faster ram and with better timings, I can’t see many will buy your used 4GIG ram-sticks.

Yeah, I really hope Dell will let you get better performance than +-23250 in graphics. When was last time Dell launced products who perform better than it's competitors?

 

I hope you realize that firestrike score is using an overclocked i9-9900K and overclocked RTX 2080, at least from what I can see.

I also don't see any good review for the Area-51M with proper benchmarks so I'm not going to judge anything until we see something from a member here or a site like notebookcheck.

 

I talk about the graphics score. Not the total score. And Cpu doesn't make the huge differences in 3Dmark benchmarks as Fire Strike. It's mainly a graphics benchmark test.

 

Yes...graphics score of an overclocked GPU. Look at the GPU-Z screen capture it's not running the "1590Mhz Boost" of the RTX 2080.

Factory Clevo 2080 clocks:



Factory Clevo Graphics score:

 

I expect Turing also is colored by the heat as Pascal. The bench above from Notebookcheck is from laptop with 15 inch chassis. Not exactly favorable.

From Msi and weaker Cpu if this is any better.

 

Yes it seems 23K-25K is the scores so far. As more laptops are benchmarked we'll see how much it expands.

Desktop 2080 gets over 27k I believe. So they have some catching up to do. Maybe with voltage tuning in Afterburner they can hopefully at least match 2080.

Looks like 2080 in P870TM1 can be overclocked to desktop 2080 level. Maybe it also has TDP increased.

150W TDP is very limiting. Even AW 180W is limiting. I'm sure everyone will find a way to flash with a programmer to increase TDP again.

 

until we can see what a real Area-51m can unleash reviewed by people who actually knows what they are doing, it's not a fair competition @Papusan . the clevo example you cherry picked is from a pro who knows what he is doing. also, clevo might or might not have a slight performance advantage, but the build quality is no where near alienware. even though i've considered clevo over the years, i never wanted to own one due to the build quality and support.

 

Here is a video comparing clevos 15" DTR with a 1080 vs the new 17" DTR with a 2080. I've been watching this guy for awhile and he's one of the best laptop reviewer's out there.

 

Everyone also is forgetting that RTX drivers are still very immature. I suspect at least 9 months before mature drivers

 

No GPU has a boost clock that matches GPU-Z unless it is overheating or broken. All are much higher when everything is working correctly. Pascal was the same way. My GPU-Z shows 1770 and the actual boost is 2070. That is stock, no overclock. If you look at the second row from the bottom, if the far right cell shows a core boost clock greater that the cell in the bottom row, then the GPU is overclocked, but you cannot tell what the actual boost clock is by looking at that number.

Here is a render test example. You have to look at the sensors tab to see the actual boost clock.



The TGP (aka "TDP") can also be misleading. What actually matters is how much the power slider moves and if the voltage scales correctly in unison. If the voltage doesn't increase, the higher available TGP is absolutely worthless. If Alienware is advertising 180W and you can only add +15% that won't be any more relevant or beneficial than 150W with a +25-30% slider unless it holds higher voltage under load. This is controlled by the firmware.

With Pascal and Turing, it's a smoke and mirrors game, and until you actually put it to the test you can have no real idea what the results are going to look like. Desktop Pascal and Turing GPUs are also all over the board when it comes to real world results. Throw in the wild card for temperatures and room temperature thermal throttling algorithms and it gets even more silly.

The firmware is also inconsistent. I have been testing all of the 2080 Ti vBIOSes I can get my hands on and having a higher TGP doesn't necessarily provide any benefit. The Galax HOF 450W vBIOS produces poor results compared to my stock XC2 Ultra, FTW3 and Aorus Extreme firmware, all of which have much lower TGP. What matters more is how well it will hold the maximum voltage. If it does not hold max voltage the boost clocks will be erratic and lower even if the TGP rating is much higher. As I said, it's all smoke and mirrors nonense and the only thing that actually matters is the test results.

In the screen shot below, same load test with 122% power limit with zero improvement in the benchmark result. In both cases, voltage (not TGP) was the limiting factor.



Now, in this third example, exactly the same load test, except for I manually selected the maximum voltage. Notice boost clock goes from 2070 to 2220 and the voltage to 1.093V and the VRel (blue bar) performance limit is gone. The watts increased because more voltage was available, but it still didn't exhaust the power limit. There are no GPU-Z PerfCap reasons because the higher voltage limit gave the GPU what it needed and the boost clock was able to go much higher. This is why it is important to have a system not crippled by cancerous firmware. The power limit doesn't matter until it becomes a limiting factor. Voltage control is far more important. If you don't take control of the voltage, you won't be able to take advantage of, or see any actual benefit from, a higher power limit.



In both of these full benchmark runs (below) I am using the Gigabyte Aorus Extreme vBIOS with a 380W power limit and the score is MUCH higher than I can achieve using the Galax HOF OC Labs 450W vBIOS simply because the Galax HOF OC Labs vBIOS won't let me lock the voltage at the max 1.093V like the Aorus Extreme, XC2 and FTW3 vBIOS firmware does. The Galax 450W TGP firmware is utterly worthless and there is no point in even having it because of that. The same problem (sucky voltage control) exists when using the MSI Lightning Z vBIOS.

TL;DR - don't get too caught up in the TDP. It matters only when it is too low, but it can be a very misleading specification. This situation is exactly the same for CPUs. You always want the power limit maxed out so you don't have to think about it being a limiting factor, then you can focus your attention on voltage control... that's where you should burn the most calories.




Edit: please ignore the 238.1W reading in GPU-Z. This value is not accurate because my GPU has been shunt-modded to prevent the vBIOS and driver from recognizing how many watts are being pulled by the GPU. It's actually around 500W (860W including the CPU) judging from my Kill-A-Watt meter.

 

Yeah, I never saw any GPU sticking to the rated boost clocks as long if they where cooled well.

 

See also stock results from MSI in my post #593. Too early with final judgement I know that, but the first results as they are doesn't look very appealing.