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

I have half the FPS in GW2 now with A03 than I did before I flashed. What the frick is this s@£t?!

 

I've also run into a new problem.. Not sure if it's A03 bios related..

I can't seem to get off of intergrated graphics. I have the NV control panel set to dedicated globally but yet running dxdiag it only shows my HD 4000. Mortal Kombat is doing an auto detect and defaults to the intergated card. I can't even force it to run on dedicated as it errors saying I need permission and to set it in the control panel yet it already it.

 

Would you keep your new Ferrari if it had an Audi badge on it?

I understand its a small thing with zero to do with the machine and its performance but its the principal and yes I am just that stubborn, it drives my girlfriend mental

 

@SteveMonk - you can still Tweet @DellCares, location is not an issue. They are global social media.

 

Hey! My AW17 came a scratch. The costumer care also offered me a 5% or the option to return it for a full refund/ new one. I asked them to start their procedure for the 5%, but I also called AW Technical Support centre. The Technical Support agreed straight away to send someone to install me a new palm-rest. Originally it wasn't in-stock, so I phone them back twice to push them a little bit. Now I got an appointment with the engineer tomorrow I would suggest try ringing AW Technical Support, over costumer care.

I wasted 16 pounds on the phone calls to Dell! As they are outside my allowance (0800 numbers).... I hope it all goes well!

 

Did you also get the 5%? That would cover the calls

 

Thanks for the advice. But after talking to a few different sales people a day for the past few days, I haven't found anyone welling to give much more than 5% off and a coupon.

For anyone in America, what state do you live in, and how much sales tax did you have to pay?

 

Not yet, it was raised, but it has to be approved not only by Dell but from UPS as well! As the box was hit and they will try to get the money from UPS.

To be honest I think 8-9 pounds are for the calls for my Windows 8 DvD. They said they were going to send me one, but I looked online and the request was cancelled! I phone them again, put a new request and again it was cancelled the next day. Today I was told that most likely (they don't know for sure) they are waiting for the palm-rest repair to take place first.

 

You pay whatever sales tax is in your state/county. So in Dallas County, TX, my tax was 8.25%.

 

I never even would have noticed that if attention was not brought to it here. I am never pushing down hard enough on the touchpad to notice any flex so it doesn't really bother or affect me at all.

 

Hi all,

Here is another question regarding 3D. If I get the AW 17 with the 780 video card, but WITHOUT the 3D 120 Hz screen, can I still connect an HDMI cable from the AW to my 3D TV and play games in 3D on the TV? And will the HDMI out carry the 5.1 surround sound as well? What about connecting the AW to an external pc monitor that supports LightBoost, will that work?

Your input is appreciated.

 

Hi, See this post: http://forum.notebookreview.com/alienware-m17x/726318-3d-tv.html

For a 120hz lightboost to work (other than just as a normal monitor) you'd have to purchase the NV 3D vision pack for the emitter and glasses and connect via the display mini-port. I believe that surround sound is output over the HDMI if the game has surround output natively, the NV driver takes over the HDMI sound output, but as I don't have surround I can't say for sure...

HTH

 

Got my AW 17 today. I updated the driver to 326.19 beta right away as I read many positive feedback about it.
Then should I update system bios to A03? Heard mix result. Some said good, some said bad.

Use EVGA to mild overclock it a little bit. Haven't tested with 3DMark yet. But I test with FF 14 ARR benchmark. Point increase from 6,800 to 7,200. Looks good. I also don't think I have any temperature throttle. Using HWinfo64 for monitoring and saw highest GPU temp at 84 C. Couldn't believe I'm so happy to see high GPU temerature, lol. So it means I don't have 77 C temperature limit? Did I overlook something?

Ps. Where can I download the VBIOS from SVl7? Just wanna play with this new machine a little bit more. This is accually my first gaming PC though. Search in tech inferno but cannot download. Do I have to donate or anything?

 

Hey, I just wanted to mention this - a Windows 8 install disk does NOT contain the drivers needed for either wifi or ethernet. They're not that hard to install, but it would help to have them ready on a flash drive beforehand

Just a warning before you reinstall your operating system!

 

TechInferno has the SV17, you need 5 good posts on the forum, or donate $5 to SV17 via the donate on paypal under the Community/Contributors list: NVIDIA Kepler VBIOS mods - Overclocking Editions, modified clocks, voltage tweaks

You should update your BIOS to the A03, Its very easy to do, and easy to go back if you experience issues.

There are very mixed results on the forum pertaining to the 77 C throttle. Some people only encounter it in benchmarking, some people only encounter throttling in optimus mode, and since the Nvidia and BIOS update i don't experience it at all.

PS. When did you see 84 C? did you block the vents for it to go that high? After 2 hours of gaming use, my max temp was 75 C (without blocking the fans to test my throttle limit) If you are getting 84 C naturally, you may want to repaste your GPU

 

I did block it just for testing. Normally the max temp is around the same as yours.

Will try tweaking it a bit more. Anyway, right now I'm very happy with the unit.

 

Anyone else having their right button, sometimes "stuck" when pressed?

 

The one thing you overlooked was that EVGA automatically ups the temp limit, so as long as it's running and applied you won't get thermal throttling xD without it, you might do. But it's not really an issue as I've found my GPU never breaks the 77 limit anyways.

Glad you're happy, I am too with mine!

 

Yea, mine got real toasty at stock as well. After a repaste, I hit 72C tops when gaming, versus 80C before. Metro LL is the exception though; it spikes to ~80C on occasion, but never stays that high. I wound up returning mine for an 18 though. Decided I wanted SLI.

 

Have you had any issues with low FPS when playing Metro LL? Its sketchy when I play it even on medium or ultra settings, roughly 20-30 FPS. It seems to jump around though, one chapter is perfectly fine then the next is hit with bad FPS. Every other game I have works perfectly

 

Damn you all and your 75C :thumbsup:, with the temp limit unlocked at 92C, mine got up to 85C during a three hour long session of Metro LL.

Currently, I set teh temp limit at 80C and it throttles from time to time.

Not really, the in-game Benchmark is quite heavy and there are times where I get 20-30 fps, but for 95% of of the time, I was getting 45+ fps during a normal gaming session of Metro LL on Ultra. Are you sure you don't have one of the extra GPU demanding AA options activated?

 

My peak temperature is 85 as well( after playing Far cry 3).

 

So thanks to 2nd day business shipping, and FedEx, my laptop comes tomorrow (Saturday). Imma throw my 250gb hdd to transfer files, but anyone got advice as to what I should do once I got it. I.e. bios software drivers etc?

Sent from my HTC6435LVW using Tapatalk 2

 

No, at least not up until a point. With the settings maxed and PhysX/SSAA turned off, I averaged 80+fps with my OC'd 780M. Around 50fps with PhysX turned on. But, after I got to the church and fought the giant shrimp, my frame rates dropped to a constant 12fps. I've got te same problem on my SLI 680 desktop rig though, and looking at the logs, my GPUs are barely being used, and others have the same problem with even better hardware. So I haven't played it in a week.

 

Surely the alienware recovery partition does though?

 

Disabled PhysX and im getting constant 40-60 FPS now, thanks!

 

No problem, though the necessity to turn off PhysX in LL to get great frame rates was one of the tipping points that made me return my 17 for an 18. It's nowhere near necessary for great gameplay, but I do like having it on.

 

Alienware 17 : Test complet

Seems suspect. I don't think Dell would try to get away with offering a 1080p screen with freezing cold colors and a Delta E of 10 on a $2000 laptop. Especially not after boasting about its quality. Dell's business laptops have used and may continue to use the same screen, which makes the prospect even stranger.

The ASUS G750's mediocre Chi Mei panel should fare poorer, and other reviewers write that it is indeed poorer than the AW screen.

I wonder if Notebookcheck will post a review soon.

Edit: I don't think anyone produces such an inaccurate 1080p screen.

 

you know you can make your CPU your physics processor in Nvidia control panel. Either way LL is a independently developed very new game on a very new GPU. It should be better optimized/ Patched in a few months.

 

Just a quick check up question: Has Dell fixed the temp throttling yet for both iGPU & dGPU?
Thx

 

We don't really know... Everyone has reported something different. I don't know if we have any reports exactly the same; but it seems most everyone is able to game on dGPU without issue. I'm certainly having no problems gaming in either mode now.

 

I dunno if it's still the same situation, but PhysX performance on CPU was awful the last time I tried it, and seriously dropped my frame rates.

 

Hi guys, I finally had the time to run tests on my Alienware 17 and here are the things I want to share about the throttling problem and the battery problems.

1. The throttling seems to be stress testing related. I ran different tests with MSI Combustor 2.5 all throttled except for "Tessy sphere on plane v2". Throttling occured at 71c. however on the Tessy plane v2 test, It went as far as 74c without throttling and temps never went up 74c. was getting a constant 847 mhz. This is with EVGA precision X on the background.

2. I also played and monitored temps and FPS with BF3, sniper ghost warrior 2, and Crysis 3. I set it at max settings and the FPS never really went down. was getting 60 FPS at BF3. temps at EVGA went as high as 80c without throttling and stayed at 80c.

3. if you will be using EVGA precision and you are the type who travels a lot on battery mode, DO NOT SET EVGA on "Start with windows". it will drain your battery significantly because EVGA voltage tuner.exe will activate. battery life on mine dropped from 4 hours and 45 mins to 2 hours with EVGA turned on and using optimus.

 

Does anyone have strange noises coming from their AW 17?

It's a fairly short sound lasting perhaps half a second coming from seemingly beneath the touchpad. It's like a very short SCREEEK sound of low intensity.

My fear is that it comes from the HDD but I have no other symptoms.

 

Most likely it's coil whine. It comes from the GPU when it's under certain load levels.

 

I've been noticing some weird start up issues happening for me when I turn it on from fully off sometimes. I turn it on, the lights start to light up and as soon as it gets to the point where the display would turn on and the HDD would spin up, I hear the drive start to spin then stop almost with a "click" and the whole PC shuts down, no display ever comes up not even the backlight just the keyboard etc. It will sometimes do this for me a couple times then randomly start up fine. Also the first time this happened it did it about 3-4 times in a row, then when I got it to boot it booted into some self diagnostic it looked like and started testing all of my hardware.

I know people were having somewhat similar issues when trying to boot the computer on battery using the modded vbios which I am, however mine has always started fine on battery and everytime this has happened it's been plugged in. I checked the HDD and it is fine, works completely normal and doesn't have any bad spots, I know the clicking is just it shutting off and stopping its spin kind of like an external HDD and it's just making noises because it happens when the HDD is starting. Could this be an issue with the vbios? Could it be something else I'm missing and not thinking of, the computer has been working perfectly fine for me, flawlessly really, shut it down one night, turned it on in the morning, shut it down and brought it to work with me, then tried using it after work and that was when this started. Other than this is has absolutely no issues and once it boots it works perfectly fine but the way it's shutting down on boot has me a little bit worried.

 

Your description is exactly what happened to me. The overclocked vbios worked great for a few days then started having problems booting to a black screen. It’s strange almost as if the display turns off. It started doing it about every other reboot, until it would take up to 10 restarts (by holding down the power button) to get it to work. I went back to the original Vbios and its fine. BTW throttling is still there even with the update to A03. My A17 was shipped with bios A01. Either way no change by updating, and yes I did retry the V2 Vbios with the A03 and it still boots to black. It runs OK, my sons M18xr2 with a 680M runs games a few fps better than mine, which is disappointing. Because I travel a lot I needed the smaller laptop so I’m keeping it, and anxiously awaiting a fix.

 

Just an FYI: I repasted my A17 (780M) yesterday. It was really easy. My temps are better, by about 5-8 degrees. Alienware really lathered it on, it was all over not only the chip, but the board. I was nervous cleaning it off. I’m not tech savvy and was really easy.

 

Very interesting problem. I have a few theories. 1) could it be its trying to boot from USB for some reason? is anything plugged in?, 2) In your config signature you have SSD + HDD, It could be trying to boot from the wrong one. 3) I had a similar Occurrence twice... but things didn't go black, it went blue (the default background and keyboard color) It booted into my user name, but there were no Apps but the default ones, and all the settings were default, Like when I first set up windows. It was like it booted from the windows cache on my SSD or the Recovery partition. I rebooted and everything was fine. Hasn't happened since I re-optimized my SSD.

Also, I have the 750 HDD as my primary OS drive, with 256 SSD as cache and Steam Games, and Important Apps drive. The one thing I can tell you is that I can't hear any clicks on my HDD, in fact, its barely audible when its under full load (writing a lot of stuff and reading at the same time) Most the time I wouldn't even notice it active.
,

 

I thought that at first (I had a dvd i burned with a video on it in the drive when it happened) however there was no usb plugged in, and it worked for days with the dvd in and no problems, I have since removed it and it still seems to be happening at least once when I turn it on. Its very weird and i formatted both drives before installing, the ssd has windows and the hdd only is for storage theres not really any reason it would try and boot from it.

 

So, I've just received my 17 today, about five hours ago to be exact. My first impressions were:

1. It is built like a tank. The overall quality seems to be much better than the M17x R4.
2. It came with all of the discs I needed/wanted: the operating system, drivers & utilities, and an application disc with programs.
3. The screen is vibrant and very clean looking. The matte finish really makes a difference - I love it.
4. The exterior is beautiful and unique. The bottom plate design is much more artistic and had the correct information on it.
5. The battery life isn't great, but then again, I am running a 17.3" screen and a dedicated GPU. I'm seeing 3+ hours browsing the web on Balance with nearly full screen brightness.
6. It seems to be a slower charge than the M17x R4 was. Not sure why, but it could be the components drawing more power than the M17x R4.

I'm currently installing Tomb Raider, so, I plan to see how that goes in about 30 minutes. I did install the latest BIOS and installed the 326.19 beta drivers from NVIDIA without issue. Hopefully performance is good and temperatures are decent, even though it is summer and kind of warm in my room. If need be, I've got a tube of IC Diamond and may re-paste the CPU/GPU, but I doubt I will need to.

So far, so good. I love it! :thumbsup:

 

My 17 came yesterday 7/25 out of the box the machine looked great, but game play was lacking any luster. I Cloned the Samsung 500g SSD with Data Migration disk that it came with. Installed the SSD and ran Samsung SSD Magician, really very impressed with it. Pulled both the Raid0 750g WD blacks and put away in case I ever need them. Installed a Seagate XT that already had all my steam games on it, using the 64 mSata for caching it. Then updated the Bios from A01 to A03. Last I installed the new Nivida 326.19 drivers. Must say I am impressed now. Plays Neverwinter on Ultra settings 50+ to 61 FPS Tomb Raider over 50 FPS got a 3Dmark11 score of P7440 no OCing. I see no throttling or problem with the temps. Alienware did good this time good job :thumbsup:

 

I'm 99% certain it's the vBIOS; I had the issue on battery and plugged in. Roughly every one in two boots it would happen. Try flashing back and see what if any difference it makes

 

I agree. I'm glad the issues were resolved just as my system arrived, and I am grateful to those of you who have provided us with feedback on the issues and possible solutions.

Back to the game: I'm seeing great results while playing Tomb Raider on ultimate (highest settings). The average is around 35 to 40 FPS, but I see 60+ at times. The best thing about the 700 series GPU's, in my opinion, is consistency. The 600 series would jump all over the place and this 780M seems to hold steady and really perform excellently, even in the most graphics demanding scenes. If I could give this system a rating out of 5 stars, it would be a 4.7. I took off 0.3 because of the battery life, lack of bass in the speakers, and maybe the diminished unboxing experience. But this is a large system with great components inside, and I can't argue with the results. I'm actually glad I did not get the 3D bundle this time around.

Good job, Alienware. :thumbsup:

 

How are the speakers and sound options (compared to the m17x r4's)?

Does it seem better built than your m18x r2 was?

 

Totally forgot to mention the speakers! Thanks for reminding me. (I've got externals hooked up at the moment.).

About the speakers: Out of the box, they are similar to the M17x R4, at least in my opinion ... perhaps a little better. It's definitely got a crisp sound and you can hear the quality that the Klipsch speakers are pushing out. They sound good (for a laptop), but it's still missing that bass I like. I don't see a subwoofer on the 17 (though, I may have overlooked it), but it could really use one. I played some AC/DC and it sounded pretty good. Then I played some hip-hip/rap music and more bass was needed. There are settings to adjust all of this, which I did not mess with. That may help! Overall, pretty good. I'd give them a 4/5.

Edit: Is it built better than the M18x R2? Hmm, maybe not necessarily better, but it's definitely up there with it. That's a difficult one to answer, to be honest. (I don't have the M18x anymore, so, I'm going by memory.) The new systems have magnesium and aluminum chassis's, which is excellent. The system itself feels solid and I like to think it's the same, if not better than the M18x R2. No flex in the keyboard (that I notice); the screen hinges are excellent and do not 'creek' or anything like that; obviously, the system does not flex when holding it up because it's aluminum. Pretty dang nice, if you ask me. I wasn't expecting this level of quality.

--- UPDATED ---

I can't find the mSata SSD for the life of me. Is it really that deep inside the system? I took out the ODD bay, the battery, both HDD bays, and still don't see it. It shouldn't be that tedious ... I'll keep "digging!"

 

I've been away from this thread for a bit, but forgive me for asking: Is there a new vBIOS out from Alienware that prevents the throttling now? Am I reading that correctly?

Thanks for the help fellas.

 

Well, I think nobody is sure about whether the issue has been fixed or not. Everyone is reporting different results. But yes, there is a new BIOS from Dell (A03). So just give it a try. Maybe it will fix yours

 

Basically, the updated bios from Dell changes nothing about the throttling issue, if you experience throttling during gaming* at what should be safe temperatures, download NVIDIA Inspector or EVGA precision and raise the temperature target to 80 C which should also be safe (even 85 shouldn't be a problem).

*It seems that nothing can be don against the throttling issue in a stress test like Furmark, but then again if it doesn't affect your framerates during a gaming session, it's not really important.

 

It's under the keyboard/palm rest assembly in the 17.