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

Let me know what you find!

 

I can't check until I'm home from work in 3 hours

Btw.. Just found the new A03 bios for the AW17 on Dell's site. I just flashed it. Not sure if I should notice any improvements in gaming. The vBios was one of the many changes listed.

 

Windows media player...dude, get VLC

 

I haven't been keeping track, can a couple of owners post turnaround times for these? I'll be going on holiday next month and looking to order one of these then, trying to determine exactly when I should order it. Thanks.

 

It seems Dell has been listening to our complaints and removed the thermal limit on the GTX 780m. I installed the A03 BIOS Exited EVGA and tested the thermal limit in MSI Kombuster. Immediately after I took my screen shot here it throttled. So it seems like they raised the limit to 92 C

 

Great news and pretty fast turnaround from Dell. Someone else who had throttling should test and let us know just to confirm. I understand you didnt run EVGA with your own limit when you ran Furnark?

I cant however seem to find them mentioning higher temperature limit in the BiOS description.
Driver Details | Dell US

 

Yea, I closed EVGA in the system tray. I'm go do a more substantial test tomorrow by uninstalling EVGA and doing the same test + doing Tomb Raider 2013 for about 30 min with GPUz logs (Will block fan periodically to artificially raise temps there as well)

 

Wondering if it's safe to remove the EVGA Precision temp target now assuming we can safely rely on the new vBios taking care of that for us.

 

I did the same test again with EVGA removed from the system and then restarted. I will do the other Tomb Raider test tomorrow. Was too excited to wait for the other one, and yea it seems like it works fine without EVGA installed

 

Excellent news! And there I was thinking it would come in the form of a vBIOS rather than a system BIOS, but if it's fixed, it's fixed! Looks like the community here did make a difference perhaps! (Is this fix working for everybody?)

 

I hope it works for everyone, I encourage everyone to at least try it. In the description: "Update Intel VBIOS 2175" which I find very weird as I thought it would be NVIDIA's they would change. Maybe the BIOS chip itself if from Intel?

 

Hurray, now one can safely buy one unit without having to double check everything if the system is working properly.

Thanks for testing and keeping us updated.

Big kudos to Dell for listening to the complaints this time and making a swift change to the software.:thumbsup:

 

Awesome news about the new bios!

Uhmm.. Not sure if Cyberlink suite was supposed to come pre-installed but it's definitely not on my system and my resource disk didn't have it anywhere.

Any ideas if I should be able to grab it from the Dell site?

 

register on 'my dell downloads' and you get access to the licensed software for your machine:

https://smartsource.dell.com/Web/Welcome.aspx?ReturnUrl=/web/main.aspx

I had to use IE but they may have fixed it now.

Edit: No they haven't. You have to use IE

 

Dammit.. I tried that. My old system still shows up and I tried to register from IE and it said it couldn't use my service tag and failed. .

Any other suggestions??

 

This is great news guys, i was really dissapointed, was going to purchase my first alienware machine. After reading this thread from page 1-57, when the complaints really started to come in about people returning there machines, i got discouraged, closed out and figured this wasn't the machine for me. Just came back and looked at the last two pages and it seems as if they've officially fixed the problem? Is it ok to order one of these beast now!?!?

 

@ThatOldGuy

Thank you for your information.
Did Dell adjust the temperature throttle point for both dedicated and optimus mode? If yes, did you find out the specific limit for modes?

Thx

 

they adjusted their temp limit in Dedicated mode to 92 C. Also I just got Optimus back Before I had a glitch where I got the Intergrated GPU only instead of optimus. One of two things fixed it, the A03 BIOS flash, or the clean instal I ran on the 326 Nvidia drivers (I had not changed out of Dedicated mode for two days). Anyway, I haven't run any tests in Optimus yet.

Some numbers from other users would be nice. I would like to know if 92 C is now the Throttle temp for every machine on both modes. We can't claim Dell fixed anything till more than one user verfies it, no matter how supperspecialawsometothemax that user is

 

Still getting 66C limit in Optimus with A03 + Stock vBIOS

Edit: Also seeing 77C still on non-Optimus with A03 + Stock vBIOS... guess it doesn't fix everyone. Another note, NVIDIA inspector now claims 93C on non-Optimus (66C still on Optimus) but during benchmarks I don't see it exceed 77C.

Edit 2: Here is a screenshot of throttling still in action on A03 + Optimus http://i.imgur.com/I3GK1oP.jpg

 

Same here. Still at 66C with Optimus, and running without Optimus with teh dGPU only, there's throttling at 77 or 78 C, no matter what temperature target you set in NVIDIA Inspect or EVGA Precision.

Basically, the same behaviour as before.

On the other hand, the 780M did not throttle at 81C during a normal gaming session when the target temp was set at 82 C in NVIDIA Inspector, this behaviour seems to be reserved to Furmark. A 3DMark 11 Performance run yielded a 72xx, the GPU went up to 75C, there was no throttling.

Again, it behaves identically as when the bios was A00.

 

Hello,

I am considering an AW 17 and I am a 3D fan from way back. I still have some analglyph comics and books from years ago, lol. Is Dell's TrueLife screen okay? The TrueLife glossy screen sounds like a Retina screen with less resolution, but the AW 17's is physically much bigger. I am not so sure about reflection hassles with the bigger screen. Any AW 17 3D owners please comment.

Also, does the AW 17 support Nvidia's LightBoost? Nvidia's site says AW's M17r3 does not support LightBoost, while the M17xr4 does. However, Nvidia does not mention the new AW 17?

 

Is it easy to flash the bios to a03?

 

yes. Download the file, double click, restart, flash installs automatically- done.

 

I'm not having any issues now that I've flashed my vBIOS back to stock and updated the BIOS to A03. Though my GPU never crosses 72C during normal gaming after a repaste. Only in a few (Metro LL, Crysis 3) does it really get close to 80C. Had a few issues right after the BIOS flash, but that seems more to have been related to the fact that I forgot to turn the PC back to performance mode from power saver.

 

Nice! Did the 3dmark scores went up?

 

I'm having trouble getting a good deal from any of the sales reps on the phone. I'd like to get the $3,000 spec of the 17. If anyone has someone they can connect me to, please PM me

Also, how much sales tax did you pay? The sales tax rates I'm getting quoted seem really high.

 

That's strange - it did take me a couple of tries but I have now got all my dell systems there. Does your tag work when checking the drivers and show you your warranty status? Just wondering if there is some problem with the tag. Maybe try a PM to Luis ( http://forum.notebookreview.com/member.php?u=508846) the Dell/AW rep who helps out here quite a bit?

 

Does Alienware/Dell have a system update application, or do you have to individually check if there's an update for each driver?

 

Looks like we may have jumped the gun on assuming that the throttling issue was fixed by BIOS A03, looks like it doesn't fix it for all users. Sounds like the throttling issue is still open to me.

 

In America is it 200 off on the aw 17 at the minute? Best tactic I have found is to say you have a 10% dell VIP voucher and it doesn't work online (mine actually didn't work so wasn't a lie) then they will call you and apply it to your order. Then you can say its a lot more than you were expecting and you would be willing to pay today if it was lower (by card not buy now pay later). They should then take another 100-200 off. Then just say that is better but is there anything else. They will say no and you can either accept (but ask to throw in free next day delivery) or say would you speak to the manager and see if you can get a little more off.

 

I would also like to know this - especially when it comes to A00 etc. do all machines come with a00 then you just update any that is more?

 

@ThatOldGuy

Could you please tell us how you installed the AO3? What drivers did you have at time of installation. Maybe others are not doing it right because if it worked for you then it should work for everyone else.

 

No automatic, personally I prefer not to have some update thingy running on my machine. What you do is use your service tag on the dell drivers page to filter out your build and then just use 'last 90 days' to see the most recent ones

 

It's just an .exe on the Dell website. No wrong way to do it, no alternative ways to do it! I've never had any throttling issues except in 3dmark (not temperature throttling, just problems with my clocks dropping up and down) so I can't comment whether it has fixed it or not

 

I can still remember about the 3dmark throttling in my R3, the clocks are dropping even when at load, so what I did was to overclock the system by just adding 1Mhz to the core and memory. The clocks stayed the same throughout the whole run. Maybe this can be tried when running 3dmark11 just to gauge the power of the machine.
http://forum.notebookreview.com/ali...rs-reset-after-every-restart.html#post9018462

I still haven't received my unit, but I was told it should arrive by next week. Nearly a month of waiting!

 

Did anyone else receive their AW17 with the wrong info on the plate underneath? Have you managed to get it changed?

I spoke to customer services the day after I received the laptop and they came back to me yesterday telling me theres no way they can send out a replacement as they are made with specific information related to that particular laptop. I am waiting for them to call me back again as I told them I dont feel its acceptable after i've paid close to £2000 for a machine and not have it exactly as it should. If they say a definite no then unfortunately the machine will be returned and my first and last Alienware experience will be a short lived one which im gutted about because the machine is superb, just a shame about the company building them.

 

That's a shame I have read about other users complaining of the same thing yeah. I don't think they were able to resolve it but I can't be 100% certain...
I've just discovered a crack by my Ethernet port, so ill probably end up having to send mine in for repairs too. Not a happy bunny at the moment!

 

That seems stupid given its just laser engraved they should be able to take your specs and redo it!

 

Try tweeting @DellCares if you live in the US.

 

That's just unacceptable. It even reduces the resale value, it will be looking like a user upgrade. Start a new call and have a pic and the order ready and just say 'are you going to supply the correct part or refund my money?'

Whatever the outcome it's over one way or other, shame though this stupid stuff is happening

 

I spoke with an agent last night via chat, can't seem to get them to budge much more on the price. Managed to get him down to 2450$ with 200$ gift card, free next day shipping, 2% off of the end price also. Does this seem good? It's for a 4700 processor, 16 gb ram, 750gb HD with 64gb ssd cache, and a 780m. I couldn't get him any lower after about an hour long chat.

Also scared to order now that the bios @thatoldguy said fixed the throttle, I'm sure this will be something addressed in the near future right? Or if in reading right this doesn't affect gameplay and you guys are only noticing low 3d mark scores?? That doesn't really bother me, gaming and steady fps over benchmarking for me.

Thanks guys! This forum has been very helpful in deciding if this will be my first alienware purchase or not.

 

I did, I have a 4700MQ+780M, but the plate says 4700MQ+770M.
Honestly, I don't really care about it.

 

Ok, so I talked to sv17 on tech inferno, and he said the throttling issue was not in the vBIOS to begin with: [AW 17] - BIOS update A03
It seems like its more random than we first were thinking with tenspeed33 saying he never had temperature throttling, Voltran saying EVGA works for him and Plutonium saying there was no change in their systems and nvidia inspector doesn't seem to work. I'm beginning to wonder if it is program related? For some reason benchmark programs seem to be the biggest culprit. While gaming seems unaffected by temperatures. I'm going to take Tomb Raider sensor logs anyway now to see what I can see.

 

Gaming is not unaffected by the temperature limit. We had atleast 2 members saying they had lower FPS, than 680M with Optimus enabled. Alienware 14 owners had problems as well.

Im thinking that this problem only occur from time to time because the cooling system in the new models is pretty good at keeping it under 77C, but sometimes it goes over, and it starts throttling. Ambient temperatures also play a big role.

Too bad people still say they are affected even with the new BIOS. Had my hopes up this time.

 

I can do some more testing when I get home from working later tonight and see what I can get the temps up to.

I did some gaming last night and it seems like I was getting much worse performance on A03 stock vBIOS than my +0/+0/85C setup I was using the night before, but I have no numbers to back that up, yet.

I'll definitely keep you guys posted.

 

I took my Tomb Raider logs, and the GPU throttled around 88 C. It also throttled when GPU usage went down (I think this is when I found journal entries or was at a campsite).
My conclusion is that the thermal limit is inconsistent per user, which doesn't make much sense, but I think almost everyone can game in dedicated mode without problems. View attachment GPU-Z Sensor Log Tomb Raider 2013 no EVGA.txt

 

I think that's not throttling, that's the GPU not needing computing cycles and deciding to ramp down because there's no need for more speed, throttling is the GPU ramping down despite needing more computing cycles.

 

Thats what I thought too.

Unfortunately i'm in the UK :-(

This is exactly the point I made to customer support but their only solution was a 5% rebate. To most this wouldn’t be a big deal but so far I’ve had nothing but issues just getting the machine and backpack plus I’m one of those weirdos who tries to keep everything immaculate and in as perfect condition as possible for personal and resale value.

I’m still awaiting another call back even though the 24 hours they said has passed but likelihood is that I'll just return it and cut my losses.

 

You'd return it over a Spec. Plate on the bottom??? Dell will eventually have an overstock of plates. If you have an AW17 thats performing well, I'd just wait till those plates show up on ebay or something. I don't think it would hurt resell value at all, when selling my old M11x and M17x I didn't even mention the plate with my handle on the bottom.

 

I'm with you man. I know a lot of people will say it's only on the underside or does not matter BUT, dell originally offered a personalised plate with your own gamer tag in it if you wanted. It was not offered in many countries but I think they were etched in the country of destination, not at the factory, hence not everyone could get one. Now they have changed the way it works and someone screwed up. Them not caring is just the pits of customer service. You (Dell) advertise a selling point, you deliver it. They need to understand that either they get it right or they loose the sale. This is not some cheap piece of no-name kit. /rant