*OFFICIAL* Alienware 17 Ranger (2013) Owner's Lounge Thread

Things are blowing everywhere with this Win10, It's a genocide to the PC...
Nvidia and M$ god this is awful, Need team RED to blow team Green to hell...

I's very sad & unfortunate to see things like these happen to the AW17...
Oh God why dont the dell update a simple BIOS for us, if it's impossible atleast release the secure flash @AW Khan , Please if you see this help us..

EDIT :
here's the issue, that you already know.

 

Would be nice if they did.

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I wouldn't count on that. They're too busy "perfecting" their latest Fisher Price soldered laptops. Why would they spend time fixing 3/4 years old laptops from the Golden Age of AW ?

 

Aw17 were sold throughout whole 2014. The modern crippled AwBook came early 2015. Not once two years ago these become EOL. If only there had been one year since these last real Aw models were sold, Dellienware would not do a damn thing... DEllienware is DEAD. The new Skylake AWbooks lose even in benchmarks vs new ACER Dell has more than enough to design even more fragile low powered gaming laptops. If tis is possible. Yeah

 

Hi all I need to downgrade from win 8.1 to win 7 with a 980m installed. Which would be the proper procedure? I mean I would have to install the legacy option ROM first right?

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is it even possible cos i heard it uses a different video mode.

 

Officially it is no possible or at least I couldn't make it work.

980m no compatible with Legacy Option Rom and Windows 7 can not work "without" it so this makes it imposible to.

 

Oops.......... Alienware M17xR4 NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980M Intel Core i7-3940XM

 

Windows 7 and 980M
OMG !!

I knew it, I still remember back in 2015 you managed to get Win7 + Maxwell but I couldn't find the post.
Can we Alienware 17 owners run the same ??

 

there's a big difference between the M17XR4 and the AW17R1 so i doubt it.

 

I thought the A17 could run Windows 7 and a 980M as long as it was in Optimus mode?

 

I still believe that but it's useless since I have a 120hz panel.

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Ah yes, it was Nomad who originally had the question, but now I notice he has a 120Hz panel too. Well, Win10 is not too bad, I like it anyway!

 

Okay a bit old but Did anyone has the AW OSD icons show up in Win8+ ??
And these nospheratu Icon mods at T|I do they work with the Win8.1.1 or Win10 ?

EDIT : Tried and doesn't work.

 

Just barely squeezed in! not bad for a 2 year old laptop with a GPU upgrade

 

Did you get your 980M yet? So sorry to hear your 860M died...

 

Yes got the 980M, I tried to install on Tuesday and the clevo X brace was lacking the height that Dell X brace has (the 4 bars where the heatsink fits) So I couldn't pull it off, ghosts and darcoder said that's how the Clevo Xbrace is in Alienwares (Requires high pressure to screw the heatsink down, even with the other screws) Had an exam today, was busy since then... I'll get the job done soon now....

It's okay man ! About the 860M I don't get how the core GPU got chipped, Re-paste was done long back and I didn't even touch the heatsinks, Some unusual thing happened with the GPU..
https://imgur.com/uk1EHl1

Notice the lower left corner.

 

Hey guys, how's your battery life on the 2013 AW17? Mine lasts about 1 hour these days, I think it was about three at first. Have you replaced? Tried to get it replaced by Dell even though the warranty doesn't cover it?

 

I have my A17 R1 since 1 year ago and the main problem that I have is that the battery saving mode does not work properly, having severe battery wearing. It jumped from 7 to 25 to 25 and even 32%. Now it went down to a battery wear of 28%. Meaning I have a capacity 28% less than the original.
Frankly I don't what to do anymore besides buying some extra new battery in eBay in the near future.

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http://www.howtogeek.com/172271/how...-battery-for-accurate-battery-life-estimates/

 

Hi thanks for the link. I'll implement that process more frequent.

Besides that, did somebody could make work the battery protection wearing Dell program? I don't remember the name right and I'm on my desktop at the moment.

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Can the Alienware 17 boot with 1866MHz RAM ?

 

http://www.3dmark.com/3dm/11120741?
https://imgur.com/SXNKuDX

@Papusan , @thegh0sts .
Ran a quick test without any GPU-Z, with Steam. Will do a stand alone test and all monitoring soon..forgot to run RTSS

 

Congrats with a new toy. You bench with stock fan profile? Maybe the gpu temp is in the upper end ?
I shall look more on the results later as I'm on my phone. Old man need glasses, LOL
For the ram chips I think 1866MHz should work. They work in AW18, so why shouldn't they work in "Elitist"?

 

You should be able to overclock it quite easily.

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Do you have any tests that @Ashtrix can compare with?

 

You should be able to hit 11k with my oc in 3d mark 11. I am not at my laptop as I am on a month long trip overseas and the thing is too heavy to carry.

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Back home to Australia?

 

I'm in the land of the rising sun at the moment. South Korea is next.... Then Taiwan before heading back to sydney.

Man, I really liked it in Canada. Will have to find out how I can get PR.

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Maybe marry a Canadian girl? Easy fix, HaHa
Not nice to break up if you liked you there.

 

That run is on the 1.74CFM Fan, now run with the new GPU Fan (M17x R4) is pending, I didn't yet replace the CPU fan (M17x R3)...I need VirtualMachines and the 8GB is giving me headaches, So thinking to get new RAM, I'll go for quadchannel later. For now I'm looking onto Corsair Vengeance 1600MHz CL9 or Kingston HyperX 1866MHz CL10 (8x2 kits for either of them).

Sure, I'll start looking onto nvinspector...

 

A 3 year old AW17 "Elitist" upgraded with mmx Gtx980m vs latest AW15/17 EchoBooks in 3DM Firestrike graphics. Latest toy from Dellienware are eaten by Dell's EOL Alienware 17 from early 2013 with stock clock speed( Even in 3DM Firestrike total score)... Gtx980M should give the same performance, clock for clock... Do not know what to say anymore, LOL. This isn't the first time. @rinneh @Mr. Fox @TBoneSan @woodzstack @TomJGX
AW EchoBooks VS EOL AW17 "Elitist"

 

No surprise there. Wanna bet it's the same story next refresh too? New throttled console boy Alienware's get their a$$ handed to them again by their pure blood ancestors.

 

I've read that some (will not say names) said you got a much better display when you buy newest of laptop model's. Those who had an older Aw model and upgrade their graphics, still had an old screens.... Now it turns out that a lot of people who bought the latest AWBOOK are upgrading the screen, because it is rotten... LOL. Talk about shooting himself in the head

 

Yeah, well I'd take even the old M17x r4's 120hz panel over anything that's been on offer since. Even a 4k screen.

 

Don't forget the M17x R2's RGB LED panel

 

You have your way of making grand statements based on just 1 piece of data you knwo that right? Look in the AW15/17 benchmark threads and check the scores there. Also still a light higher point count with the exact same GPU on systems where the CPU will never be a bottleneck for the GPU comparing it to benchmarks with a stock dell image. Most users reinstall their systems and have better performance. But now show me the rest of the details and running bios (prema?).

You can say my name I am standing behind my statement. Older Alienwares all have TN panels and I actually owned the Sony Vaio Z13 which has the BEST TN panel in the business with a high srgb and adobe rgb rating and still a mediocre ips panel looks better, viewing angles but also the color intensity itself. You guys care too much about the numbers on a specsheet but now the hard to measure qualities. Its true the FHD IPS panels used in the AW15R3 are not great, I actually got lucky and received one with an LG 156WF6 and according to my calibration tool a brightness of around 250nits. This is still better than any pre-echo Alienware screen out there in terms of viewing angles and general colors. But the AW17R3 has superior panels, the 4K panels are nothing other than great. But you guys only care about your benchmark numbers Not how an image looks in photoshop or the colors in a videogame.

 

Personally I care about achieving the highest and smoothest frame rate possible at max settings. So whatever is needed (within budget) to get me there is what I want.
A 4k screen is no good to me if my CPU and GPU is going to give me a paltry 40fps.
Monitors are highly subjective. IPS is so very overated from my experiences. Good if you get a panel that doesn't bleed but far and few between and nothing to write home about.
Viewing angles on a monitor are pretty meaningless to me as I plan on sitting in front of the screen

OLED - now there's something that gets me a little giddy, but not before the panel is atleast above 100hz.

Benchmarking is indicative of gaming performance, so should never be dismissed.
What 3DMark and 3dmark11 don't tell us here is how inept the new Alienware's are at sustaining high CPU overclocks. My old 3920xm (2012!)would run a 4.5ghz all day long without temperature or power throttling. More than I can say about newer AW machines. I don't understand the resistance with wanting a machine that totally outstrips the previous model. Why should anyone interested in performance be happy with less?

I'd like to see some Vantage comparisons actually. I'm sure that's more telling.

 

There is no laptop on this planet that can run a steady 120fps for modern game. Hell you better bring the Geforce 980ti or at least 2 980s for a desktop to be able to do that on FHD. So Myself personally I dont care for above 60hz screens on a laptop. I do care about 4K, I like my interfaces crisp and the 4K panels available for some laptops now are the best regarding color accuracy.

Viewing angles imo are not overrated, I hate the slight gradient from slight angles on TN panels, especially vertical gradients because they suffer from vertical viewing angles the most.

My 3dmark firestrike scores after a fresh Windows install and stock clocks. Nothing wrong with this score. People should turn on maximum performance mode in their power profiles ofcourse.

 

It is quite possible that I will make a nice BGA thread where I would gather up all stock benchmark scores from all early and late version of these AW Echobooks models Maybe all bench scores is wrong also in3Dmark.com?
When it comes to screens, the person who will use the screen need to determine what is suitable for their use. But it is too early for 4K and gaming on laptops.
4K does not fit all (I'm too old aka poorer vision now, maybe I need glasses LOL). So for me it's better with G-Sync/1080P in the new machine and my 120Hz 3D screen look still beautiful in "Elitist".
Half the 2015 was the big topic Throttle Gate and the famous hybrid bios/180w psu craziness. Late 2015/16 was the topic screen Gate. Can this be worse? We have to wait for part 3 of this horror story early/middle this year Ps.. I will never say names

Edit: On previous Echo models was the mantra you should use balanced performance. Time changes, LOL

 

Damn dude you are definitely overreacting, Throttle gate? Hybrid bios gate? They replaced 180watt PSU's with 240watts on request and its very rare that any AW echo model would surpass the 180watt and its not like they sold millions of these laptops. Only under maximum load of a graphic benchmark and prime running at the same time would surpass the 180watt limit.

What are you talking about with all benchmark scores on 3dmark are wrong? I see a large variety of scores for every laptop out there. Hell even driver variations which can add up to 500 more or less points and last but not least, I see a large variety of clockspeeds because a lot of them are tuning the **** out of their laptops for best performance. I am also running the Prema vid bios which did improve the performance of my gpu, thank you @Prema ! But you always just pick one bad example and compare it with a good example and always neglecting for example the others results I give you.

You are right about the screens, it is personal. But I dont want any TN panel in my laptops, they are always 6bit by design instead of the possilbility of 8bit or even 10bit nowadays thus larger color palette.

 

I can gather up a lots of posting from Many unhappy Echo owners who was denied change of their flimsy pretty weak PSU. Also many Aw reps in forum + Dell's tech team said you can't get a 240w psu more, because the Hybrid bios fixed everything. And you need too give Dell support a lots of prof that you have Throttle problems before they will consider to send you the 240w. If you don't thrust me on this, I would give you the advice to use Google. I can tell you so much... A lot of Aw Echo owners will never ever receive the promised PSU from Dell. Thanks to the famous First ever created Hybrid bios including in the DELL gaming laptop package.

 

again you just disregard the rest that I have posted but come complaining about the same subject in other topics again.

A lot means hundreds or thousands. Not under 10 users on this forum. The biggest flaw of Dell support is that not all regions are equal. Techsupport in Europe is for example great. But in India it is total rubbish.

 

EDIT : FireStrike 10K GPU score that should be Win10 OS, this new Win8+ boost FS scores but less physics performance compared to Win7...

Almost there without win10 garbage...
http://www.3dmark.com/fs/7835474

Gotta buy the 3DMark 11, that's a better benchmark than this FS & the PC benchmark is not like the stupid mobile versions, PC one offers highest scaling of the performance possible with monitoring of voltages / clock variations / custom settings in total- A balls to walls type and helps users to check the system properly, So It's not a thing to dismiss and care only about the visual quality...

 

Do you have any proof that win10 spoofs the FS score. As far as i always knew win 8 and 10 are just more efficient.

 

Oh yeah this world works on solid proofs right ?
http://forum.notebookreview.com/threads/windows-10-and-nvidia-980m-gtx-m17x-r4-without-optimus-working-great.777145/page

Before you jumpstart and do any counter argument, Head to clevo lounges and you'll notice the same..Every enthusiast installs Win8.x+ for FS scores and 3DM11 on Win7 plus as main OS.

 

I dont really get your point to be honest. Some game just perform better under Windows 10, BF4 is one for example, some worse like Project cars. Whats the deal about that. It's just a more efficient OS when it comes to performance ( http://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/windows-10-review-gaming-performance/)

It performs at its performs, want a bit more? Install Windows 10 (also much better battery performance, NVME performance etc), Dont want it? Than do not install it. 3Dmark 11 isnt even a good measure anymore, It cant take full advantage of modern hardware. Even Firestrike is becoming old and a DX12 3dmark will soon arrive.

 

@rinneh l think you're on blueberry picking now. The whole worlds Overclockers and Hwboot mean the new pastel tiled junk should be banned from posting Firestrike scores... More efficient, LOL. Maybe you should take you time to talk to serious OVERCLOCKERS????

 

Serious overclockers dont use laptops

Blueberry picking? You can find tons of videos that show just minor differences between OS'es with modern games often performing a bit better on Windows 10 and older ones better on 8 or 7.

http://www.maximumpc.com/windows-10-but-what-about-performance/ < performance in 3dmark are most of the time within a 100points for every source that I check. Thats nothng and even doing multiple runs on the same pc with no changes after eachother can show this variation. A

Its pretty much a fact that Win10 requires less ram to run, support newer harddrive interfaces better, has better battery runtimes etc. Windows 7 was nice but it doesnt support all the new bells and whistles that PC's come with.

Come talking to me when you talk real serious overclocking by the way. Liquid cooling, peltier cooling and even liquid nitrogen cooling. The overclocking scene isnt using laptops for overclocking competitions. I was a mod of a wellknown Dutch overclock forum for years.

 

LOL. Wellknown OC forum for years, Yeah. I can see the results in your hardware sig and your statement about performance... Maybe you should start up again in that forum and read you up? I think it's time for that
Edit: Please crank up your absolutely maximum OC on processor and gpu for Firestrike. Of course with volt mod and run Benc. Do the same afterwards with 3DM11. What will happen?