*OFFICIAL* Alienware m15 R4 / m17 R4 Owner's Lounge

Good bye R3. Hello R4.
The new m15 R4 and m17 R4 sports Intel Comet Lake CPUs, RTX 3000 graphics, and new display options. It still looks like an R3, which looked like an R2. And yes, it still has the Graphics Amplifier port. Anyways, have fun discussing about them here.

m15 R4 ( Support, Manual, USA Link)

m17 R4 ( Support, Manual, USA Link)

Pre-release links:
NBC
Engadget
HotHardware

 

Safe bet the soldered RAM and WiFi are still there.

Also, it's strange they've kept the AGA port, given they've EOLed the actual AGA and it doesn't really work with RTX 3000 series.

Disappointed.

 

Nice! Appreciate the info. Wonder what is going to happen tonthe Area-51M R2? Also wonder if the RAM is going to be soldered in again?

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No AMD CPUs?? My Disappointment Is Immeasurable And My Day Is Ruined

 

This was Alienware's last chance to get me to buy their overpriced overheating garbage.

Oh well, they'll have another chance in 2-3 years when the system I buy this year needs upgrading lmao

 

The new MSI GE66 Raider is looking attractive at this point with their excellent battery, cooling, and specs

 

Last chance to get you to buy Alienware garbage? If it's garbage why would you consider buying it lol? Buy the current Area-51M R2, it's the best one ever and doesn't overheat.

MSI makes some interesting laptops, but their thrown together carelessly and their support is absolutely terrible.

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Some people potentially interested in the m15/m17 models could be looking for a portable laptop with decent battery life, not a DTR like A51M. They might also like upgradable RAM and WiFi.

 

Yes I would like to know what is going to happen to the 51M R2 as well. I am debating whether I should purchase a 51M R2 now or wait for the R3 + 3000 series cards.

 

I just purchased one about 5 days ago. It is a new order to replace the one I received with dead pixels. The prices are good right now. Personally, I wasn't going to wait. You won't see any gain on the new cards as there still isn't a game out that can tax the current 20 series. Your call of course.

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I agree about the QC issues, as I just had the dead pixels on a brand new machine. However, to say the best gaming laptops made are garbage, is far fetched. Alienware consistently scores higher on all benchmarks than systems with the exact same hardware. So they put a lot of effort into the performance of the machine.

They do need to revamp their QC for sure.

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I have no interest in carrying around a 51 pound laptop. /s

 

I didn't see where you specified which one you wanted. Yea I understand, most millennials don't possess the physical strength to carry a man's laptop. They do make 11" MacBook and mini purses they will fit in.

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BTW It's also about dimensions, I just prefer 15 inch on a laptop that's meant to be used on the go. It's just more portable and convenient. Well, then there is battery life

 

sorry about your tiny dick dude, no need to go showing it off here in front of every one though.

 

Yea I get it. If you're using an external monitor and keyboard for home, it really doesn't matter what size you get. But from a true laptop perspective, I get it. I just beebr understood buying a gaming laptop for portability or office use. They get hot, loud, etc.

If someone needs it for engineering, they would be much better off to get the Quatro series of video cards.

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Precisions are more expensive, and Quadro cards in particular offer fairly poor performance per price. The 15 inch models have limited GPU options. Those systems are actually designed more for content creators/architects I think.

 

It is incredible that Razer, Alienware, Gigabyte, all of them went with Intel. Those new ROG Zephyrus are starting to look like the way to go.
I wanted to upgrade my m15r1 (9750 + 2060 + AGA 1080Ti) but given the current situation I think I will squeeze a bit more out of it and wait for next year. After this demonstration of market control by Intel, our only hope is that they actually produce a good chip next year.

 

AMD has always been the bastard child since the early 2000s. I don't ever remember them being mainstream and their graphics cards are nothing close to Nvidia. Eicne everything is gsync and made for Nvidia cards, I don't see those ever becoming anything.

AMD always comes out with a processor to beat Intel in the benchmarks, it just never translated to real world usage. AMD always had an advantage in gaming CPU wise, but again, just like graphics cards, you won't notice because there aren't any games to stress any of the current CPUs or GPUs.

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You are comingling AMD GPUs with CPUs:

https://www.tomshardware.com/news/cyberpunk-2077-cpu-scaling-benchmarks

 

The coming Tiger Lake H is having 8 cores same as AMD 5900hx. I believe their performance should be similar this round? The only difference is the thermal and price. There is an advantage about Tiger Lake H - PCIe 4.0 20 lanes, which I hope Alienware will take this advantage for next gen of AGA. It could be the reason why Alienware not jumping to AMD? We will see what gonna happen in Q2.

 

AMD motherboards will also support PCIe 4.0, right?

 

For desktop, Yes. For mobile, I'm not sure...waiting for more details now. Mostly yes but can't guarantee whether there is extra lane allocate for AGA.

 

Well, as we have been told, AGA is EOL and Dell had zero internal discussions about a new one.

 

I don’t see why they do this soldered stuff and crappy internal design. For once Alienware needs to learn from the XPS team. I like my xps17 way more than all the bga alienwares I’ve had. I can upgrade ram, WiFi, storage and the build is Insane...

 

So 2 FPS difference is worth all the trouble to obtain an AMD? How did my statement comingle?

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This is just a real game benchmark to illustrate succesful usage of AMD CPUs,. You started off by trashing AMD graphics cards and segwayed to a claim of poor real world usage of the CPUs. If you meant popularity, AMD hardware is used massively in the consoles for example, but of course it's hard to beat the monopolist. I'm not that excited about AMD graphics cards either, but CPUs are another story - I wouldn't generally mix the two.

Whether it's worth it or not depends on your budget and applications. AMD offers better value, and beats Intel soundly in multithreaded applications. Rememeber: competition is good for us, consumers.

 

AMD 5xxx mobiles only support pci-e 3.0. Since the boost isn't huge for GPU, just expect storage to be much slower on the AMD notebooks. That's ok for many given the AMD advantages. For others the 4.0 pcie is important.

AGA is a big question mark. Someone talked with a rep who saw a part # for a V2 AGA, but no stock so it could not be ordered. Vague and who can trust this kind of thing but the fact that they included the port on the R4's is curious. The port would be pointless if discontinued and since you had to order a new mobo to get the 3xxx GPU's why include the AGA port if it was a dead item? However, the mux chip that enables the port directs straight off the CPU which would mean if it got used in Tiger Lake it would be pcie 4 based. If that were true, the cabling might well have to be different to accomodate the higher speed signals. The PSU is also a bit low for what 3xxx desktop GPU's are using on the high end. So there is potential that some updated version of the AGA might be coming but wouldn't be useful until we get to Tiger Lake thus no reason to let it out now. If it does 4.0 x4 speeds that would be x8 equivalent in 3.0 and you'd get pretty effective performance from it, even from 3xxx chips.
Alternatively remember that the TB port comes direct from the CPU with Tiger Lake so TB boxes used on Alienware's would be pcie 3, but with good direct connect performance. Call it a "make do" if you were determined to figure out a go forward. Someone out there has connected a 51M R2 using TB to a Core X running a 3090. So some kinds of options exist if the AGAv2 or next gen doesn't go live.

 

Forgot to mention temps will be on amd side as they draw way less power. Plus battery life is another thing to consider on amd side

 

I have 0 idea where you came up with I was trashing AMD, no I wasn't. I'm stating facts. AMD was never taken seriously. Do you see any major retail computer company using AMD exclusively? Have you ever since the early 2000's? No, they were always the lower end of the spectrum. They fought valiantly for some time in the GPU arena only to be overwhelmed by Nvidia.

AMD was plagued with out of date drivers and just poor craftsmanship. The CPUs could not handle business processing nearly at the speed of Intel. So AMD focused on gaming. Normally that would have been a great idea. Only Intel had the share of the market and annihilated them.

I think it's good that they are still competing, but let's all be honest. They will never be what Intel is. Their latest 5000 series of GPUs is laughable.

Trashing them? It's easy to trash a subpar product and company by simply stating truth.

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Well, while it's true that AMD only became viable fairly recently, their desktop CPUs are certainly solid contenders now, and some have taken the performance crown from Intel, which was unthinkable previously, all the while still offering great value. Doesn't really matter what was happening in the early 2000s. BTW Still unclear why you keep mixing their GPUs into this CPU-related conversation, other than to try to reinforce your opinion of AMD in general.

 

I'm really confused by your statement. I just can't make sense of it. AMD does in fact make CPUs and GPUs correct? So if we're talking about the history of the company, wouldn't it be common sense that we would speak about their two main offerings?

I speak about both of them because it has direct correlation with AMDs history and their business road map. 8 speak about dates spanning from the last 21 years because that's how long they have been trying to over throw Intel and take over the CPU and GPU market. Simple business economics.

At any rate eternl, you get the idea. I was a user of their CPUs and GPUs. I still have a CPU in a tower. Some of their offerings were good like the latest 5950X series.

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Well, true - AMD do make CPUs and GPUs. I would agree that the latter are not great (despite the massive adoption in the consoles), whereas the former are actually great, especially the desktop variants - therefore people are wondering why these CPUs are not used more by OEMs in their laptops. Monopolistic practices by Intel could be a concern. In contrast, we see very few people complain about the dearth of AMD GPUs in laptops? The two product lines deserve separate consideration. Hope that make sense.

 

Soooo.... this is more of the same BGA + soldered garbage right? I only wanted a non-4K OLED display with decent non-selfdestructive hardware...

 

Yes BGA but since you can't honestly upgrade the cpu on the 51m series outside of the current generation it's not like BGA cuts off your wings or something I mean that kindly - both are machines with a slightly different intended audience. Until the 51m R3 comes (and the R2 owners find out they can't upgrade), the R4's are the only models with the ampere GPU's. So frankly, the gaming performance will swing to the R4's favors because the CPU matters less than the GPU. Now this is assuming you see a 51m R3. Not sure yet why that hasn't been introduced given the 11th gen desktop CPU's have been detailed and demoed.

Anyway also remember that 11th gen Tiger Lake mobile will have different heat profiles, but I can't yet say whether they will be same/worse/better than 10th.

 

Not from what I have seen. Even the so called " Worlds fastest gaming notebook" failed that task.

See also my older post in BGA Venting Thread

Doesn't really matter. They will still use same 100C temp target.


And don't think they will make an exception for AMD SKU's if those will be used later.

See... The cooling will be engineered around max allowed hardware temp. If there is still cooling headroom, they will instead continue shrink down on the chassis size. Slim design sell very well as you should know. Remember the design and thinnes was the main reason to go for soldered ram and soldered wifi.

 

Good point, previously they announced 51M, the flagship, ahead of m15. Not this year.

 

Given that we already see 11th gen RL models and are coming on release, it's odd. But sometimes vendors are just playing the cards close.

 

Oh yeah, they've been keeping their cards close alright.

 

Alienware m15 R4 = https://www.dell.com/en-us/shop/cty/pdp/spd/alienware-m15-r4-laptop?~ck=mn

Alienware m17 R4 = https://www.dell.com/en-us/shop/del...laptop/spd/alienware-m17-r4-laptop/wnm17r410h

What a shame they are still using 10th Gen Intel CPUs

 

THIN OUT THE COMPETITION SOLDER!

 

Couple of

There are also a couple of reviews already released on the M15 R4 and M17 R4.

Alienware m17 R4 (2021) review | TechRadar

3DMark: Night Raid: 55,324; Fire Strike: 24,292; Time Spy: 12,150
Cinebench R23 Multi-core: 8,992 points
GeekBench 5: 1,256 (single-core); 7,766 (multi-core)
PCMark 10 (Home Test): 6,716 points
PCMark 10 Battery Life: 2 hours and 21 minutes
Battery Life (TechRadar movie test): 2 hours and 28 minutes
Total War: Three Kingdoms (1080p, Ultra): 92 fps; (1080p, Low): 249 fps
Metro Exodus (1080p, Ultra): 90 fps; (1080p, Low): 160 fps

Given that the 3080 GPU in the M17 is the 16GB model, the Time Spy result seems pretty low at 12,150. I currently own an Area 51m R2 (2080 Super, 10700k, 32GB 2933, 144hz) and I'm getting around 11,600 for the same test. I assumed that the 3080 would bring about around 25% improvement in performance hence around the 14,000 mark would've been expected for the Time Spy test.

 

The review leaves something to be desired. Specs don't include TGP or battery capacity. No word on whether RAM and WiFi are soldered.

 

Service manual and User Guide if any one is interested.
Alienware m17 R4 Service Manual (dell.com)
Alienware m17 R4 Setup and Specifications (dell.com)



Image of disected M17 R4
https://ibb.co/hYnGyv4

 

Image of disected M17 R4


https://ibb.co/hYnGyv4

 

Yep, the RAM is soldered and runs at 2933MHz.

 

They've kept the AGA Port though. What for?

 

I want to know the Graphics score more than the overall timespy score. The garbage intel processor will bring down the overall score anyway.

 

https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/alienware-m15-r4-rtx-30-series
A review of the m15 R4 with an RTX 3070 Mobile.

 

"The Razer Blade 15 Advanced Model (RTX 2070) and MSI GE66 Raider (RTX 2080) were about 10% slower."