Worried about 17 R3, need advice

Hello everybody.

I've had an Alienware M17x R4 (late 2012 version) for three years now, three years of three gpus frying for no reason, and after all this time i thought i'd do an extended warranty to cut costs, but to my surprize Dell offered to swap my machine for a new one free of charge after they had failed to fix the old one, and their promise was to give me a machine of EQUAL or BETTER performance.

My joy quickly faded into dread and worry when i started reading these threads and comments about the CPU and GPU being BGA and how this sucks, and about CPUs not overclocking, and after i had seen the cooling system (shared heatsink with 2 fans) i started expecting throttling problems.

here are the two specs of the laptops, my old M17x R4 and the new 17 R3

M17 R4


17 R3


It all looks good on paper, and i'm even trying to push Dell to upgrade me to the 970m, however after the reading i've done it seems that the new alienwares are riddled with hidden problems.

So here's my situation:
I do not plan to upgrade anything, nor do i plan to overclock anything through the BIOS, i plan on using the specs at the performance listed in their specs in the picture above, so the CPU will always be 2.6ghz base and 3.5 with turbo, and the GPU will be the same (no OC).

Here are my concerns:
Will the CPU and GPU perform at their advertised speeds and benchmarked performance or will either/both throttle during extended periods of gaming (mainly high end MMOs)? (the figures i relied upon can be seen here http://www.notebookcheck.net/Mobile-Graphics-Cards-Benchmark-List.844.0.html and here http://www.notebookcheck.net/Mobile-Processors-Benchmark-List.2436.0.html ).

note:
Old cpu: 3720QM
Old gpu: GTX 675m
New cpu: 6700HQ
New gpu: 965m 2gb

Do you think this is a fair trade??, and should i take it??, are there any downsides i may have overlooked that i need to know about??

 

hmm,

old M17R4 -> new 17R3

hard drive 2x1TB raid 0 -> 1 TB
display 120Hz 3D FHD -> FHD
optical bd/dvd drive -> no more

 

yes but also 675m -> 965m
no anti glare not IPS -> anti glare IPS
16gb dd3 1600mhz -> 16gb ddr4 2133mhz

also you didn't give me much besides the obvious differences, though i appreciate it.

 

The 965 is better than than the 675 but if you want a real jump go for the 970.

 

that's what i'm trying to push Dell to do, hopefully they agree to upgrade me.

 

well I use the AW15 R1, my CPU clock always stays above 3.1ghz and I have no throttling issues whatsoever. After 4 months using this machine I am very happy with it.

 

Hopefully you can get that haha. I'd definitely take the upgraded machine. DDR4 at 2133 is pretty awesome, and the fact that you don't plan to do any overclocking or future upgrades makes it simple to choose a machine like this one.
We haven't had any reports about throttle on this machine, if anything I'll post back.

 

I have (am currently trying to sell on eBay) an M17xR4 that I just replaced with a new 17 R3. The specs I purchased are different from yours, as I have the UHD screen, and it came with a 3GB 970m, the 965m wasn't even an option. If you don't plan on upgrading, and you have no problems with the loss of 3D and built-in BD-ROM, then heck yeah! The Skylake series of CPUs are a great upgrade form the Ivy Bridge series, with an approximate 10-20% IPS increase clock-for-clock from the older CPUs. You can't upgrade the onboard CPU or GPU, but you can add PCIe SSD drives, and even add a graphics amplifier later on. I think it is a good deal