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

I have a Razer Blade 15 Advance 4K OLED 60hz screen
i7 9750H processor
32gb ram
RTX 2080 Max-Q

How much of a performance jump graphics and framerate-wise would I see when comparing my Razer to an Area 51m with RTX 2080, Silicon Lottery Delidded Intel i9-9900KS Processor rated to 5.2 GHz? Significant?

 

Very unscientific guess, but just looking at the slight difference between a 2080 Mobile and Max Q its about 15%, processor helps a bit but not that much. The only factor I would think on top might be less throttling frequency for the A51M, but with the BIOS issues, that's probably not true either.

 

When comparing GPU's the MAX Q 80/90 watts vs a 2080 180 watt - your looking at around 30% improvement on GPU performance. This is what made me go for a refurbed 51m versus a m17 with the max Q. FPS would def be much higher on the 51m.

 

I was going by this site: https://gpu.userbenchmark.com/Compa...Nvidia-RTX-2080-Mobile-Max-Q/m700275vsm704710

I am thinking the clocks are the biggest difference, with the power:

https://www.techwalls.com/nvidia-rtx-2080-rtx-2080-max-q-gpu-comparison/

Looks like in some cases its as high as 40%, then others down in the 12-15% range.

This probably will give you the best comparion:

https://www.notebookcheck.net/GeFor...Force-RTX-2080-Laptop_9621_9541.247598.0.html

Varies a good bit, and older/simpler games seem to get more benefit not surprisingly. I think the more GPU-bound a game is the better the difference.

 

I can confirm this. I'm running two Samsung 512GB SSD's in Raid 0 in my 51M and there was minimal to no speed increase. On my AMD desktop rig, I run two 2tb Sabrent PCIE4 in Raid 0 and they show +8GB/s read and write in CrystalMark.

 

Triple confirmation, my previous Area-51m had two 960 PRO 2TB SSDs in RAID 0 and now I am using the POS crappy Hynix SSD that came with this Area-51m. Yes in benchmarks I get destroyed, but as a user, I feel 0 difference. If I ever do RAID again, it's simply for combining the storage to get the max size in a single partition and make my life simple.

 

Never cared for RAID for speed, so the recent posts dissuade me even more LOL. Single partition may be good!!!

Still tho, some risk there if one fails, which dissuades me once again. I’d rather have 2 x 1 TB partitions, than 1 x 2 TB partition with risk of one drive dying and losing ****!

 

This isn't 1990 with HDD RAID! I'm sick and tired of reading the same thing all over the web. News flash, SSDs NEVER fail. Been using them since the first ADATA SSD and had every flagship SSD out there, tortured the heck out of them, continuous benchmarks, copying terabytes worth of data, they just don't unless you physically damage them.
Hint: there is something called "backup" which every one should do no matter what drive they are using.

The best and fastest way to backup your data!

 

I had 2x Samsung 960 evo 500gb in a NAS for read/write cache, both failed within 2 month after one year of use.

 

lol @Spartan , your experience has been great, but there are those who do get failures, as you see!

Personal choice in the end. That’s cool!

 

Me right now........



@Virale

 

All my machines get backed up nightly. I always have old working drives and hardware around and just kludge together backup and storage with that old slow stuff.

I raid 0 like a madman and even use Windows disk management to mix and match dynamic disks to reduce the number of drive letters I need to manage.

That is why my newly built desktop has a 4TB C drive. I've always had a backup strategy that includes having more than one viable and current backup at any given time.

That said, I have never lost a Raid0 due to drive failure, but I know a Raid0 failure for whatever reason, could happen too.

 

Just an update.. Sold my 9900ks for $600 and well... Now I have an extra $400

Sent from my GM1917 using Tapatalk

 

Aren't you now in the wrong forum

 

Not in my eyes I still have much to spit out when it comes to the 51m and I'll always feel like I'm apart of this thread x3 that 51m became a daily chore of my life lmao. But just posting updates is all :3

Sent from my GM1917 using Tapatalk

 

Congrats on the upgrade. You'll probably never look back. I sure didn't. Even $1,500 is way too much to spend on a laptop now (to me anyway). I don't like to say "never" (has a way of coming back to haunt me later) but I'm pretty sure I will never purchase another "high end" laptop. Just not worth it. Too much money for too little in return, unless you enjoy hassles and rigmarole finding fixes for all of the nonsense and dealing with all of the proprietary crap.

My inexpensive BGA turdbook does more than a good enough job for playing games.



I use my desktop for the more serious (overclocking) fun things in life.

 

I dunno guys. Sure, the 51M has a learning curve, but I landed @ 1.5 bios, 180w vbios and only use ACC for OC and UV and am completely satisfied with mine. I have about the same $$$ invested into my new desktop and the two are running neck and neck in both synthetic benchmarks as well as gaming, and in several cases, the 51M outperforms my desktop.

Of course a 9700k cannot compete with a 3950 in Cinebench, but with the 51M running 5.1ghz daily, and the only thing I used to get there is ACC and a repaste, I cannot complain at all. It truly is a DTR in almost every respect.

That said, I can take my computing on the road and not sacrifice anything, and that was my primary goal in getting the 51M. It does that exceptionally well too.

To each his own, I guess.

 

Yes, I thought that way for many, many years as well. So, I can relate. I just got tired of all of the compromises associated with laptops and decided enough of the nonsense and went back to desktops.

• XPS M1730
• M17xR2 (x2)
• M18xR1 (2920XM)
• M18xR2 (3920XM)
• AW18 (4930MX)
• Clevo P570WM (4960X)
• Clevo P750ZM (4790K)
• Clevo P870DM-G (6700)
• Clevo P870DM3 (7700K, 8700K)
• MSI 16L13/Tornado F5 (7700K, 8700K)
• Clevo P870DM-G Frankenmod (8700K)

 

I get it. I think my first "DTR" was a 2 core (maybe it was a quad) Gateway laptop with 3GB of ram. I guess the weight of that PoS was what gained it a DTR title. Had to be! That was all it took to turn me off for many years on the whole concept of DTR laptops until the 51M came out.

I'm glad I missed all of the pain, but I can understand your position.

 

Hello, could you help me advice?
I've downgrade bios from 1.8.1 to 1.7.3 and my area 51m works fine.
But when I've tried to downgrade from 1.7.3 to 1.3.2 some happens wrong.
Notebook start blinking 2 red and 1 blue. I live in Russia and Dell doesnt make maintance here.
There is something what I can do to repair or I must send my area 51m to USA?

 

Looking at the service manual, it might suggest a CPU failure, I'm not 100% certain though. Have you tried resetting the CMOS battery to see if that helps?

Service Manual URL - https://www.dell.com/support/manual...0a87a2-f7de-45c3-8aaa-e6585d53e11b&lang=en-us

 

Yes, I disconnected the CMOS battery for 5 minutes. It did not help.
It seems there is no other way to understand the matter in the processor or not, except to try to install a new one.

 

You know I am pulling your leg right?

 

Oh lol.. Sorrys ><

Sent from my GM1917 using Tapatalk

 

try this:

- Turn the system off and disconnect the AC adapter
- Disconnect CMOS battery and system battery**
- Do a power drain (press and hold power button 30 seconds)
- Remove all memory modules
- Reconnect AC adapter and power system on
- Let laptop beep until it turns itself off
- VERY QUICKLY, WHILE IT IS OFF, BUT BEFORE IT ATTEMPTS TO BOOT AND LIGHTS COME ON AGAIN, INSERT 1 MEMORY MODULE
- System will start to beep 5 times
- Power system off
- Reconnect CMOS battery and system battery
- Replace any panels removed for access to memory modules

Done

Credit goes to @Mr. Fox for these steps.

 

Hey guys! Me again. Been luxuriating in the sensual viscera\ of my Alienware Area 51, but uh.... There is this thing that just happened.

So just now I loaded up Starcraft2 for the first time since I'd gotten all the updates and drivers and set everything right, or so I thought. And when it loaded, the screen flickered like it was changing resolutions.

"Aw, man.." I mutter half to my roommate and half to myself. "This thing's supposed to just properly run at 1080p on fullscreen, but for some darn reason Starcraft 2 wants to run at a LOWER resolution..." As I am saying this I'm clicking through and stuff doesn't look quite the same, but it doesn't look at all bad either and its almost normal - I figure it's at 1600x900 for some weird reason.

So I go back to the desktop with my game still running, and yep - sure enough the taskbar and icons are like twice their normal size and crowding the desktop all of a sudden. We've all seen this sort of thing plenty of times in our own respective PC gaming careers, it's just a near-constant chronic annoyance, and I was not thinking much of it at all when I went to fix it. In retrospect, I'm realizing now, it may have been the first time I every actually looked at the resolution options for this computer!

I mean, I had been through the display settings several times, and I'd always seen the resolution set to 1920x1080 - followed by the telltale "(Recommended)". Now, naturally, since the computer which I bought had repeatedly advertised itself as " FHD IPS 144Hz 1080p G-SYNC TOBII!![ in the formation for the display - I did spring for all the display updates, as display quality has a tremendous effect on the overall quality of the experience you have with your laptop, generally - you're going to be staring at it whenever you use your laptop, so make sure its good!

I am getting way off-topic here. So, I am going to fix the resolution on my desktop, then go into the Starcraft2 settings and change it from like 1024x768 or 1600x900 or whatever the hell the default was set at when it got installed. I am sighing to myself, remembering that this is one of the very annoying parts of getting a new PC, reinstalling your favorite games and getting all the settings right

I open display settings, and have to expand it, and I am immediately confused. What in the...? The resolution is scaled up to 250% of its normal resolution... No wonder everything looks huge! I set the scale back to 100% and.. WHOA!!! The resolution changes but it doesn't go back normal, it goes ultra small, and I can barely read anything! The taskbar is teeny!

I expand the display menu so I can finally see all of it, and there it is - the resolution is set to 3840x2160. What the HECK? I am utterly and totally befuddled.

"How is this...WHAT?!" I exclaim outloud. "This laptop monitor goes to... to 3840x2160! What does that mean???" Luckily, I am not sheltering inside alone during this crisis, and my friend and roommate answered me. "It means you have a really good laptop monitor."


So, uh, guys? What's the deal here. What's going on? The hardware ID for the monitor is CMN175F aaaaaand.... I really was NOT EXPECTING A 4K MONITOR!

Is this a very good and cool thing? Do I have some.... FRANKENSTEIN version of the Area-51M with 4K? That uh... seems to be the case but I can't comprehend that it might be true.

But right now, I'm running Windows at 3840x2160 (scaled up to just 175%) and it looks really fabulous and reminds me of running 1080p at 100% on like a 15-inch monitor, except kinda moreso? 1080p films/TV look STUNNING in this resolution though, so I guess we will see about games? I am still somewhat in shock over this.

This is not a joke, though. This is for real. This really seems to be a 4k screen. I mean..., a 1080 panel cannot just *scale up* out of nowhere based on software, right? I mean it has to be built in a particular way to project pixels that are that fine.... I think?

The weird thing is that I really don't know if I'm super-lucky to have this happening, or unlucky? Is it just gonna be a new feature? I sure as hell wish I'd sprung for the RTX 20080 now, because i had no idea I was gonna get native 4K gaming on my laptop.


TLDR: The Area-51M laptop, which I received on Tuesday of last week (March 24th) seems to have come with a display panel with a native resolution of 3840x2160 and I didn't notice until today.

 

@kaworu876 Here is where you left the tracks..."I did spring for all the display updates, as display quality has a tremendous effect on the overall quality of the experience you have with your laptop, generally - you're going to be staring at it whenever you use your laptop, so make sure its good!"

You apparently grabbed the 4K UHD (3840x2160) screen upgrade and didn't notice it.

Sadly, that is a 60Hz screen, which is fine for videos, but the Full HD (1920x1080) 144Hz would be better for gaming.

 

Uh, no. There were no options or upgrades for UHD available on this model. These are the four display options, and I will bold the one I chose:

No option for UHD. It is mentioned in nearly every single review of the Area-51m that there is no option to upgrade to UHD.

Further to the point, this monitor is running at 144Hz. I just checked my advanced display settings.

So what the heck is going on?

 

https://www.nirsoft.net/utils/monitor_info_view.html

MonitorInfoView is a small utility that displays essential information about your monitor: manufacture week/year, monitor manufacturer, monitor model, supported display modes, and more...

 

https://www.hwinfo.com/ is another good one that will give you the model number. Google for reviews.

Once we know what screen is in it, we will know whether Dell made a mistake, or you have a mystery screen.

 

Must be some kind of Voodoo magic

Hint: there is no 4K display for the Area-51m

1) Download AIDA64 Extreme Portable
Don't forget to unblock the ZIP file before unzipping it otherwise all the extracted files will have a BLOCKED status since this is a file you downloaded from the internet and Windows puts a BLOCKED status on any downloaded file. For how to do this, see:
"Are you sure you want to run this file?" [Yes or No]

2) Extract the ZIP then launch aida64.exe by right clicking on it and choosing Run as Administrator


3) From the left pane, double click on Display, then click on Monitor


4) Your exact screen name/model will appear on the right beside Monitor Name

 

I think everyone wants to see what the hardware utilities that @Papusan, @Donald@HIDevolution and @Spartan suggested show for the "4K" LCD panel.

Here's another one... https://www.entechtaiwan.com/util/moninfo.shtm

Also, what does it show here?

 

I was actually asking the other fellow, but it's good to see what yours shows for comparison. Thank you.

 

I fix it for you. Dell went with a panel design that have almost no options. And don't trust panel specs from Dell. They go own route on this. Hence we saw all the bricked panels around when Win 10 was the big must have.

https://www.notebookcheck.net/Dell-...eview-Making-Core-i9-Worthwhile.454427.0.html

 

OK, well, I took a screenshot of the nvidia settings

The really ODD thing is that the utilities I downloaded to give me info about the monitor from you guys - Aida64 and Monitor Info View - both of thus CLAIMED that the max resolution on this monitor is 1920x1080p when vert demonstrably it is NOT.

Here is this one, I'll post another one with the Aida64 info.... But well, just look at the RESOLUTION of the screenshot...

And here's a screenshot from the Aida64 utility. Interesting. Seems to legitimately think the max resolution is 1080p when I am looking at the utility through a max resolution of 2160p.

Seems to me like I got the type of screen that Alienware shared with MSI, except mine does not seem to be limited to 1080p? I guess?

Should I be psyched/thrilled about this?

 

Your screenshot shows Dynamic Super Resolution. Dynamic Super Resolution is a way for a GPU to offer improved image quality on a lower-resolution display.

Description:

https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforc...improves-your-games-with-4k-quality-graphics/

 

Yeah

There is also this screenshot:

I'd love an explanation for the size of this screenshot and the information therein given that the utilities all say my native resolution is 1080p

 

DSR is a software rendering of images at a higher resolution to enhance image quality. It does not change the resolution of the hardware. If you look at the screen shot of NVIDIA Control panel you can see the (4.00x) that indicates 4x 1920x1080, which is 4K. You have an LCD that is 1K (1920x1080). NVIDIA came out with DSR a number of years ago. It looks better, by design, but it does not change the number of pixels that can be displayed on screen. The enhanced aesthetic quality of the image seen on your screen is real.

 

What I am talking about has NOTHING TO DO WITH DSR!

I am saying that my NATIVE DISPLAY RESOLUTION IS 3840x2160

I cannot make it more clear. I do not know why DSR was on the nvidia control panel there, but it has NOTHING TO DO WITH WHAT'S GOING ON.

The screenshot in THIS POST IS THE PERTINENT THING.


That, plus the utterly bizarre fact that despite using my computer in 4K, two of the utilities you guys linked me claimed that my max resolution was 1920x1080! When you are looking at those utilities *IN 3840x2160 resolution* it's hard to trust them, kind of.

I mean... If a monitor is capable of that high of a resolution, it MUST be the native resolution. I mean like, you CANNOT make pixels smaller than they already are. That defies physics!

Jeez, just look at the SIZE of the screenshot! It's not as if I upscaled or something, I just hit FN+HOME to "PRT SCRN" and pasted it into paint and uploaded it. Not playin' any tricks here, I am truly nonplussed and bewildered and trying to get across what's going on.

 

Windows is confused. It is reporting what NVIDIA Control Panel is telling it.

See where the word "native" appears in your screenshot? Check the specs for your LCD part number if you wish to know what your actual panel is capable of.

 

Dell doesn't have a 17 inch 4K panel with the narrow bezel design. You understand that? You can't have a panel, Dell doestn't have in their shelves.

 

You can't "confuse" windows like that. You can't make a monitor display *smaller* pixels like some sort of mistake.

Again, that is not how monitors work. They are physically incapable of going to a larger resolution than their native pixel size.

Uh, reality begs to differ.

Again, see above post. It is literally IMPOSSIBLE to force a monitor to generate smaller pixels than it is capable of generating!

If I was looking at a 1080p display right now, then I wouldn't be seeing twice as many pixels. Yet I am.

 

My understanding is how this works:
- You specify in NVIDIA driver DSR (3840x2160)
- NVIDIA tells/fakes to Windows 10 and all apps/games that you have now 3840x2160 resolution so that the software will render/draw in the higher resolution
- NVIDIA driver takes the higher resolution rendering and scales it down to your screen resolution, supposedly creating a better image (what you think are twice as many pixels).
- Windows and other apps/games must think that you have a 3840x2160 screen for this to work even though your monitor is only 1920 x 1080.

If you had 3840 x 2160 screen then NVIDIA settings would put "native" at that resolution instead of at 1920 x 1080.

 

Sorry to burst your bubble.

First image is my Acer Predator 2560*1440 monitor at 165Hz. Second image is the same monitor. Windows is reporting a software "spoof" and the screen appears to be the resolution Windows is deceived into believing. But, it's still 2560*1440.

Again, use a free utility to identify the panel and then look up the part number online.



The third image is just for giggles... same monitor. 5120*2880? I don't think so. Windows is even more confused.

 

OK, now this makes sense and I feel like a total idiot. I was not entirely understanding that the software literally has to fool windows into rendering more pixels in order to make your native resolution 'seem' to be bigger. Helps explain why the monitor quality did not truly seem to be *drastically* improved which was part of what was, well, confusing the hell out of me.

Good god. Freaking software fooled me as well as windows. Sorry guys



And no no my bubble is not burst at all, I'm relieved. I was angry that I did not understand the nature of what was going on and what it meant, and in some ways I'm still annoyed that I'm so insanely stupid as to not figure it all out sooner. So. Things are as they should be and I'm no longer absurdly and insanely confused as to just what in the name of... something,... was going on since it made zero sense.

....On a side note, as someone who usually exercises (and is around others who also do so) the full breadth and range of profanity at my workplace, writing posts on here is an extreme exercise in self-restraint.

 

No worries. If I had dime for every time I felt like an idiot I would have retired at age 40 as a millionaire. I learn something new almost every day. The days I don't are only because I wasn't paying attention and missed it.

 

Pick any model and select Resolution and click the 4K UHD box. Do you think Dell found one special for you?

https://www.dell.com/en-us/shop/scc/sc/laptops?~ck=mn

We all have 4K panel bro Fox. It's called... Magic

 

Another fine example of this happening is.

Nvidia Shield in your living room on your 4K tv.

Steaming games via ethernet from your PC - Full HD1080p.

If you check Control Panel from your PC it will also be showing 4k DSR same as Mr Fox has pointed out.

It will leave DSR on this setting even after disconnecting the shield when you finish your streaming session!

Pretty sure this is to allow the PC's dedicated GPU to work past the native 1080p monitor hooked up to it .