Alienware 14 A07 Bios Posted

Not sure how I missed the update. Came out February 7th. I don't recall seeing any posts about it in the Alienware 14 forum. The typical post on Dell's website with no real information about what is fixed or added. I just updated mine anyway for the heck of it. Everything seems fine so far.

Driver Details | Dell US

 

Interesting - especially as I've just acquired a 14. Thanks for posting! +1 :thumbsup:

 

Yes Sir... I like my little beast, gets the job done when I need it.

 

Thanks for the info pathfindercod, will try in in a few minutes.

@Steviejones, welcome to the little side of the AW! (but you will enjoy it!)

 

Cheers, Bro! - must say, I am looking forward to it when she arrives in the next day or so - bought it off Ebay for a song. It will be interesting to see how the GT750m 1gb performs......

 

Of that i'm curious too. Seems like AW14 nbr members are a little shine about benching (jk) with my setup i'm getting around P5200 in 3dmark11 and high playability in games, wich is what matter most to me. The better improvement i got it from installing an msata ssd as OS drive. Going to install now bios A07, curious about:

1.Dynamic control ASPM for AMD&NV Graphics.
2.BT can't be enabled sometimes via press Fn+F2 after resume from S3/S4.

as stated on the (poor detailed) release note, hoping it referes to the ability to switch between integrated and discrete graphics without the need for a reboot.

 

Oh.. bah... I missed the notes, I browsed briefly but didn't see them. I don't even have the intel GPU drivers installed on mine, i never switch from the 765m..

 

Bah... still needs a reboot in order to switch cards. Anyway, i'm on A07, can't tell the difference from A06. I googled for Dynamic control ASPM without result. Any way, i'm also almost always on the 765m

 

Interesting, AMD graphics.

 

Interesting if you like a load of headaches LOL!

 

Thank you for the update all, if you have additional feedback, please share it here.

 

Well, here's some feedback!

I ran into some problems with updating to A07. My machine was on A03. Downloaded and verified A07 and the checksums were all fine. Closed all programs etc. Connected the power. Ran the update from the desktop. Went well enough, the flashing process....however, upon reboot, it had knocked out some drivers - I got this message right after rebooting from the flash, see below:



Drivers missing in device manager were two bluetooth peripheral devices. No drivers found within Windows Update. Uninstalled and reinstalled the Killer stuff as I have the N1202. No change.

As I had virtually next to nothing on the machine from it's factory state, I ended up just taking the easy out and did a factory recovery from the HDD partition.

Don't know if this is reproducible or if anyone else had similar issues......was certainly not expecting it though.

 

That's weird... I can't even begin to guess why that would have happened. At least a recovery fixed and it didn't cause a hardware issue.

 

Other than that how you liking the little 14 so far?

 

Yeah, it was weird. Totally.

As for the 14, I'm loving it! - Love the IPS panel, love the solid KB, love the great sound/speakers, love the build quality. I've only got a little 1gb GT750m under the hood of this one, but it's pretty good - of course, a bit different coming from my old M18xR1 with 680m SLI, but it seems quite capable of running the majority of games. Skyrim runs on Ultra at a decent frame rate, Crysis 3 I can get 35fps+ at 1080p/low settings.....haven't loaded more titles yet.....just wanted to test out performance before dropping my SSD in.....

All in all, chuffed with her so far!

 

I went from A04 (shipped) to the new A07. I was wishing for long battery life and a more silent fan profile, but that hasn't happened (wishing for to much). Nothing seems to change that I can notice "yet", but will find out later on.

I have found the battery life to be dismal at best, when considering it has a pretty decent size battery, and that is using the laptop conservatively. Actually the battery life is really poor, as I have to run it on Power Saving which locks it down to 800MHz, that in turn makes it a very slow system. I had an HP piece of junk with a i7-4702MQ that had to drive a 15 inch display on a smaller battery, and could leave the performance options on when using battery, it out does the Alienware. Makes me feel kind of sad with the Alienware 14 to be honest. Really was hoping that something could of been done in the BIOS to allow decent performance on battery, and I done mean gaming on the battery or anything like that, just normal usage.

Why is this thing make so much damm fan noise, the HP had just ok cooling for the junk it was, the Alienware 14 is way better product, but the fan is crazy. Was expecting this to be fixed up in the BIOS to something more justifiable when just cruising along on battery. Seems that I am back on using Power Saver battery mode once again with poor performance just to keep this thing from going flat to quickly and the noise from the fan in check, with plain sucks!

 

I haven't encountered any issue with fan noise on my 14. I'm typing this now plugged in and just browsing with power set to high performance. The only thing I can hear is the spinning HDD that I haven't swapped out yet in favour of my 512gb SSD. There is absolutely zero fan activity at all. Maybe there are other contributing factors to your fan activity - maybe ambient temperature is higher where you are, maybe the machine needs a re-pasting if you are experiencing high idle temps or maybe the heatsinks could do with a clean - all speculation on my part.

I just read through your review of the HP Envy you had (very good, by the way....+rep!) and it does suck that the battery life is nowhere near as good. Having a lower TDP processor probably helped out a bit there....also, typically, the 14.1" Full HD IPS panel of the AW is likely to suck more juice than that of the HP's 1366x768 15" 'brightview' display regardless of size - IPS panels consume more power than TN panels by their design, anywhere from 15% upwards or more. Then there is the FX lights - I imagine that the Tron lighting and the illuminated touchpad all contribute their fair share in depleting the battery - unless you have AlienFX turned off that is.

There are probably other factors that will contribute to the AW's poor battery life when compared to the HP, such as GDDR5 vs GDDR3 etc. and other subtle differences, so it's not exactly an 'apples to apples' comparison, is it? - still, I agree that more could and should have been done to enable longer battery life on the 14 given its supposed portable form factor.....doesn't seem to make much sense to have a 14" notebook that will only go for 3 hours without having to be thethered to the wall outlet.

 

same here. bios updates have actually decreased the fan noise for me :thumbsup:

 

a little OT, but... i am the only one that actually use a more aggressive fan profile? (thanks to HWinfo) Usually while gaming either i use dr.dre studio or anyway, the sound will cover the fan noise

 

I have the M14x r2 with GT 650m which is pretty much a GT 750m. I have the 1600 x 900 screen and can't imagine what the same video card would be like as far as Frame Per Second with 1920 x 1080p screen. I think the 765m is the best choice for the 1080p screen and GT 750m for 900p screen.

GeForce GT 750M vs 650M

 

Well, I haven't done a huge amount of testing thus far, but Skyrim auto-detects Ultra settings (x8 antialiasing and x16 Anisotrophic, no FXAA or object fade) and runs at native resolution at a solid 60fps indoors and around 30-45fps outdoors. Crysis 3 at default settings was pretty taxing to say the least - ~20fps on high @1080p with default game settings. Dropping down obviously bumps things up and I think it can be played fluently @1080p on low/medium settings with maybe a few tweaks here and there.

I haven't tested any other titles just yet, but you are right - a 765m with 2gb GDDR5 would be much better for gaming at higher resolutions vs. my 750m with 1gb GDDR5. It'd be interesting to hear what kind of FPS you are getting.......

 

I will have to report back with FPS at another time since I am in the process of re-imaging my m14x r2 and getting it setup. It has been a solid month since I have even used it and my wifey was using it for the longest time. Nice to have my m14x r2 back and reminds me how much I missed the little BEAST.

 

I hear ya - I've missed my 18 for best part of a year now, this little 14 is a little monster......just wished that the Ebayer that I bought it off was selling the 765m version at the same price tag of £500gbp - obviously, I couldn't pass it up at that price when new price in the UK was about £1,200 gbp!

 

Just thinking out loud and if I was in the same situation. I would purchase this 765m motherboard for $299 and install it in my system and try to sell my motherboard for $250. Something to think about down the road if you keep the system for a while and need some more JUICE.

New SEALED Alienware M14x R3 Motherboard 2 GB NVIDIA GTX 765M 2KVD5 | eBay

 

Great minds think alike.......that's already crossed my mind . Ideally, I'd need to find one in the UK to avoid customs @ 20% or find a US seller who would ship (reasonably) to the UK. That seems like a good price, though......

 

I ordered the motherboard from the seller on ebay. He had a "best offer" button so I "offered" him $250.00, he counter offered with $275.00, so I purchased it. It should be here in a few days, as well as the FHD 14" screen I ordered from Alienware(Dell).
My Alienware 14 came with the 750m and the 1366x768 screen (all I could afford at the time, and the place I went through to order my Alienware only had one configuration available.
I'll take pictures as I disassemble the beast and put it back together.

 

I wondered who bought it!! - I contacted him about shipping to the UK but he said it'd be about $50usd which made it a bit too expensive for me with customs fees etc. I was gonna offer him $250 as well, but if he'd only accept $275, that most certainly would have been more than I would have paid. Actually, I contacted Dell also - they wanted over £600 (around $1,000usd) for the board LOL.....so you've got a good deal!

I'll look forward to your pictures etc - congrats on the upgrade!!, hope it all goes well....

 

Nice... I almost bought the MB of ebay just to have a new spare. Yes please do take pics and notes on tear down.

 

Thanks. I thought $275 was reasonable, and I know about Dell's prices. They quoted me over $500 (USD) for the Blu-Ray drive!!! I can get one on ebay for about $80
The display was not quite as bad, came to under $300 for the new FHD LCD and the cable, free overnight shipping.
Everything should be in by this weekend (I'm hoping). It will make a good weekend project.

 

Well, here i can be of some help. Picture of the mobo while i was repasting and before adding the msata ssd, is a little bit out of focus, i didn't realize it until i downloaded the pic on the pc. Sorry for that.

Any way, with the 765m as per config in my sign, (thanks to Svl7 bios) i scores around P5300 on 3dmark11 (i don't have a screenshot here, i'm on my work laptop but i will add a screenshot tomorrow) and it plays averything at native resolution, on high/very high (some ultra) settings even with FXAA or TXAA active. I'm really, really happy about this little beast!


Sorry yesterday i didn't had the time to even scratch my b...s so to say. A lot of work.

here is a quick 3Dmark11 run screenshot

 

Pictures of a progressive teardown would be great and any problems and tips/tricks along the way.

 

same thing happened to mine...was running A04 and have a bunch of stuff
lucky that it's only the driver of the ethernet port which i never use....
but problem is problem and still need to be fixed!

 

True. Updating BIOS should not result in such issues.

 

Thanks for the pic. I've had my "14" for less than a year, but I plan on doing a repaste while I've got it torn down. (Would have to anyway since the MB is going to be replaced )

 

Does anyone have the Dell Part # for the current Alienware 14 (non X) model Motherboard (current revision) with i7-4700MQ and 2GB GTX 765M?

 

Copied from the Alienware 14 Owner's Lounge thread...

Motherboards
RKXK1 Motherboard, Windows 8 Pro, N14E-GE2G with CPU and VGA Thermal pad (2KVD5,1DR29,F1RJC)
NVDHW Motherboard, Windows 8 Home, N14E-GE2G with CPU and VGA Thermal pad (2KVD5,1DR29,F1RJC)
NN83G Motherboard, Windows 7, N14E-GE2G with CPU and VGA Thermal pad (2KVD5,1DR29,F1RJC)
6M3P0 Motherboard, Windows 8 Pro, N14P-GE1G with CPU and VGA Thermal pad (TY1XH,1DR29,F1RJC)
188MJ Motherboard, Windows 8 Home, N14P-GE1G with CPU and VGA Thermal pad (TY1XH,1DR29,F1RJC)
MFMGR Motherboard, Windows 7, N14P-GE1G with CPU and VGA Thermal pad (TY1XH,1DR29,F1RJC)

looks like "E" and "P" mean two version of board (with 765m and 750m)

NA Discrete Nvidia GeForce GT750m N14P-GT
NA Discrete Nvidia GeForce GTX765m N14E-GE

seems like "E" is the version with 765m

 

^^^

Thank you, not sure how I missed it there..

#NN83G appears to be the Part # for what I asked for..

Had the same issue (Win 7 here).

What I did is went to Dell's driver downloads for my Tag, Selected ' All related drivers for your Product' and under ' Network' downloaded and installed:

Qualcomm LAN Killer E2201 Driver.

It has a 7/15/2013 date but apparently wasn't included in the Factory image.

Also installs the Killer Network Manager (for both the NIC and Wireless) and Diagnostics.

 

One tip: be carefull when you disconnect the DVD/BD. the little clip that hold the flat cable is in a tight spot, i actually broke mine. Not a big issue, but the little thing is fragile. In order to fix it, i cut a little piece of neoprene i had that fit between the flat cable and the ram module, so the flat cable doesn't move at all and it make perfect contact.

 

Thanks for the tip! I'm well versed in computer repair, so should not be a problem, and I have NO issues with taking is slow and easy.
Looks like I won't be doing this as my "weekend project" this weekend. :-(
Everything came in except the FHD display, it has not even shipped yet.
Motherboard arrived yesterday, Display cable arrived two days ago, display is only thing left. That and some new
thermal paste. I'll pick that up today at the local computer store.
I could just forge ahead and replace the motherboard now, but I'd rather wait and do it all at once.
No sense in taking things apart twice when I can just wait and do it one time and have less risk of breaking something.

 

Anyone here knows if the Alienware 14 can output via HDMI or Displayport to a 4K UHD TV?

Thanks in advance.

 

I answered in your other thread...