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

Why are there not going anywhere`?
I mean, it's already cheap (cheaper) in the USA and now you got Coupons?

THIS IST JUST BULL****, DELL!

 

For gaming it's not worth it, all the CPU options for the A17 are good for gaming, and the GPU is almost always the limiting factor. If you're gonna use your CPU to 100% in work or other programs, then it might be worth it, but most desktop users would not use the CPU in that way.

 

I'll have to check myself, when mine arrives. But in Owner's Manual pages 46-47 the fans, sinks, CPU and GPU are definately in place.

EDIT: Also see photos here.

 

Where does one get this coupon? LOL, i just ordered mine on the 25th, would be plenty of time to cancel order and re-order, or call and try to get the difference.

 

And there goes the argument the sales experts at Dell have been telling us when we tried to get a discount
"Sorry we cant offer you any discount, we sell Alienware 17 at very low price"

When they can offer 20-30% discount with these new coupons, you can`t help but wonder...

 

Need help with installing 320.49 WHQL driver, I get the error: no supported hardware found..

Drivers | GeForce

 

They told me the same in my location (Poland). I answered that I'm not interested and wrote something about that they should be more opened for negotiations as they are seling most expensive laptops dedicated to very small group of enthusiasts. So they came back to me with about 7% discount, which still wasn't good deal for me. Now I ordered mine with -15% coupon and I was really happy about it, until I have read about 20-30% in the US

 

Yeah, its not even fair lol

Europe: High price + Low discount
US: Lower price + High discount

US >>>>>>> Europe

Oh well, atlast we can order from US too with a few tricks here and there

 

Seems like the idle fan profiles are aggressive on the new model. I've seen complaints about the fans revving up in Chrome. Shame if that's true: the r4's fans are almost always off.

 

Very hot weather at the minute though!

 

Mine isn't aggressive at all. I even thought my lappy had a defect since the fans weren't spinning when on idle only to find out that they activate only when needed.

 

I wouldn't bother with overclocking. I can Play Tomb Raider on Ultra just fine without it; You probably won't need to for about a year or more.

I had the same thing when I tried the 326 Beta drivers. You need to check "do clean instal" it erases you current Nvidia card settings, but it should bypass that error. I think its because Dell wants you to use their driver

 

I wnet with 326.19 instead. 320.49 won't detect your system since Nvidia hasn't registered alienware with that driver.

 

anyone using the new 326.41 beta drivers?

 

Cant seem to find that checkbox, the installer won't even let me pass the "Checking Compatibility" Fase..
I uninstalled everything from NV, except for a HD audio driver, which isn't the 311 factory driver I suppose ?

Installed the new 326.41 BETA instead

 

Try the 326 Beta drivers: Drivers | GeForce

 

That error is just because the card is not in a .inf flie the driver uses to check machineID/CardID. You can get the modded inf for any specific NV driver from here: LaptopVideo2Go: Drivers

 

With 326.41 i got a benchmark score of 5016 (increased by 116 points compared to the previous driver 326.19)
Read on the NV forum that a stable version would be released in 2 weeks, yet that's speculation

 

I had a bunch of issues with screen flickering and the screen refusing to wake up from sleep when using 326.

 

Check the GPU usage and power draw in Chrome. It's ridiculous. I was drawing 26% power in Chrome vs 3-4% in Firefox. My battery lasted maybe an hour and a half in Chrome, vs double that for Firefox.

 

Ran a benchmark. Got these scores: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 780M video card benchmark result - Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-4800MQ CPU @ 2.70GHz,Alienware 068R5X.

 

So I opened the cover up today and reseated both of my hardrives, the memory under the bottom cover that I could access and drained all the power from the system while I had the battery out anyway. I am on stock vbios, most recent system bios, updated video card drivers and went through the main pieces of hardware as well as resetting the bios to factory defaults. The computer is still shutting off before the bios posts when I initially turn the computer on, but when I turn it on right after it will boot right up. If I wait more than 15-20 seconds or so and try to turn it on again it will do it again, but if I turn the computer back on right after it shuts itself off it will boot up fine, occasionally it will "restart itself" and power back on after the shutdown and continue booting but most of the time I need to start it again. I'm going to try booting the computer with 0 drives in and then one or the other and see if it still has the problem but other than this and tearing the whole machine down I don't really know what else to try, I can reinstall the OS again but this is happening pre-post so I don't think it's anything windows related.

Edit: I've noticed that my keyboard loses power and disconnects itself from my computer occasionally, and more so lately once this problem started. Is it possible that there could be some sort of power issue, maybe the keyboard trying to draw too much power or something and damaging it? The only thing is it happens on battery alone regardless of the charger, and it happens whether or not anything at all is plugged into the usb ports.

 

Try a different 330W power adapter if you can (It should be able to run off a 230W as well as Sager gives 330W adapters to their SLI machines). Also you can try resetting the BIOS Battery by disconnecting it and replacing it after you discharge the motherboard. If your problem continues you may have to contact the Alienware Returns and replacement service (contact AW directly, not Dell; there should be a service number to call attached to your warranty)

 

Is there a different number to call when you have an alienware then? For technical support as well? Where do you find those?

 

If you want to call Alienware technical support from the UK, the number you need is: 0800 2799 751 - have your service tag to the ready.

 

Where did you find these numbers?

 

I'm a man of much knowledge :thumbsup:

 

Thanks for this thread. I have been following along, and I just ordered an AW 17 with free 2-day shipping. FYI - The mystery coupon offer is apparently over tomorrow (July 31) at 7 am. Just Google dell mystery coupon and you will find a link. I got the 10% off one, but 20% or 30% is possible.

I hope my 17 is golden !

 

I have a 20% off coupon that works for Alienware at home segment. PM me for an offer.

 

Just remember guys all dell coupons are country specific and will not work elsewhere. Maybe add your location to your profile, makes helping out with support easier

Good luck

 

Also worth noting you can sign up to dell VIP (in the UK) and get a 10% coupon. That's what I did

 

hi there guys im new here. i just wanted some advice from the experts just 2 questions:

1.) is this a good spec for the laptop?
2.) is it worth this price?


SPECS:

210-AAPS
1 Alienware 17 Base $1,560.66 $1,560.66
370-AANN
1 16GB Dual Channel DDR3L at 1600MHz
580-ABEG
1 English Keyboard
490-BBGQ
1 NVIDIA GeForce GTX 780M with 4GB GDDR5
658-BBOD
1 Broadcom 4352 Driver
400-AASW
1 750GB 7200RPM SATA 3Gb/s + 64GB mSATA SSD Caching
619-ACMQ
1 Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit, English
429-AAGC
1 Slot-Loading 8x SuperMulti Drive (DVDR/RW)
555-BBEQ
1 Broadcom 4352 802.11 ac 2x2 and Bluetooth 4.0
470-AAKG
1 US 125V Power Cord
340-ABEU
1 Documentation, English
421-1723
1 Soft Contracts Dell In-Home Hardware Agreement for Alienware
950-3337
1 1 Year Limited Warranty
950-9797
1 No Warranty, Year 2 and 3
994-3730
1 Warranty Support, Initial Year
954-4168
1 Dell Hardware Warranty Plus On-Site Service, Initial Year
954-4191
1 In-Home Service after Remote Diagnosis, Parts and Labor On-Site Response, Initial Year
338-BCHU 1 4th Generation Intel(R)Core(TM)i7-4700MQ processor (6MB Cache, up to 3.4GHz w/ Intel(R)Turbo Boost)
391-BBEM 1 17.3 inch (439.42 mm) WLED FHD (1920 x 1080) Anti-Glare Display
451-BBCB 1 8-cell Lithium Ion (86 wHr) Battery
450-AAJI 1 240W AC Adapter
354-BBBB 1 Anodized Aluminum
640-BBLC 1 Alienware Command Center 3.0
658-BBNS 1 System Software for Alienware M17xR1
340-ADEL 1 Alienware 17 Anodized Aluminum
389-BCCZ 1 Windows 7 Label, OptiPlex, Fixed Precision, Vostro Desktop
340-ACQQ 1 Not Included
340-ADEV 1 Setup Instructions English
332-1530 1 Dell.com Order
332-1530 1 Dell.com Order
658-BBNX 1 Additional Software
340-ACQQ 1 Not Included
630-AAAU 1 Software: Microsoft Office 2013 Trial
817-BBBP 1 None Required
730-5486 1 Thank You for Choosing Dell
* -DISCOUNT/COUPON APPL
600-0277 1 State Environmental Fee for display 15 inches, less than 35 inches




Subtotal: $1,557.67
Shipping & Handling: $0.00
Tax: $140.18
Environmental Disposal Fee: $4.00
Total Price w/Discounts: $1,701.85


thats the quoted price but bought it for $1,301.00...worth it?

 

:O I play swtor as well!.

Anyhow, that game is way more CPU demanding than GPU. I recommend doing a slight CPU overclock if you plan to play it on ultra.

 

What Server do you play ^^ ?
The problem isn't with SWTOR I can play everything on ultra without a problem.
It's just the benchmark score that worries me, especially because I've seen different scores with a similar or slight less config as mine but with scores off 7K

 

I've seen some people mentioning getting 4.5 hours on battery.. I don't think I've ever seen mine show that much time remaining. I think I've gotten it up to about 2.5 hours on battery (full screen brightness, AlienFX off and balanced power profile). Will changing it over to power saver really double it?

Also, last night I decided to run the benchmark form Metro: Last Light and I maxed out all the settings and I chugged through it. I realise it's a demanding game graphically so I was curious if others got the same results. It hit lows around 7fps and average fsp of about 22fps. I fiddled with the settings, turned off SSAO and now average around 30 give or take a few frames. So far this was the only game I've played on it where it really couldn't handle max settings. By the way I had EVGA precision on in the background with a manual temp target of 93'C (though it never went above 80'C).

 

You definitely have some problem there, I get better numbers than that with my OC'd 675! Could be the power throttle kicking in and there is no way to fix that without a vbios mod (if one is available). To find out use the OSD settings in PrecisionX to see your clocks and frame rates on-screen while gaming. If you see highs and lows, or just a low clock from the start use nvidiaInspector to see the P0 (max) and P1 (low usage and power throttle) clock speeds to confirm it is a throttle.

If it is I will tell you what you need to search for...

 

At $1301 with a GTX 780, 16Gb ram and, 750Gb + 64Gb Msata. IMO that's a great deal!

 

I agree a great, great price..

 

I also want to know because while I haven't measured every time I unplug it says 2-3 hours left Balanced mode. Should I just drop it down to power saver to get those hours?


Sent from my HTC6435LVW using Tapatalk 2

 

It should automatically go over to power saver butsomething may not be set up correctly. Manually switch and see if there is any difference (Doh!)...

 

I think brightness is the largest power drain and you would notice a difference by lowering. Think the max I got from mine was 4 hours. As soon as I unplugged it took 5 minutes to give me a realistic time

 

Wow really? I haven't done any changes other than flash the A03 bios, update to 326.19 beta drivers and install EVGA precision. Performance is great all round I've run precison's OSD while running Last Light and I don't see any abnormalities. GPU usuage was high, temps were in high 60's, low 70's but frame rate was in the 25 fps range.

Are you positive I should be seeing substantially higher frames in Last Light on maxed out settings??

 

You should be getting about 35-40 FPS on Ultra according to Notebookcheck: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 780M - NotebookCheck.net Tech
My guess is however, they probably turned down AA because you can't tell the difference on on a 17" screen between AAA and High MSA 4X

 

What about clock speed? That's the one to tell you something is going wrong. You should also show voltage as this can also be a good indicator if it changes. It can drop to P1 and still be playable with some games, Metro LL is one of them, just gets slower. Only after a couple of patches did I only see P1 occasionally in that game and not all the time. And it will be different on a different GPU.

 

Yeah I think that could be the SSAO option within Last Light though I'm not postitive. When I did that I got up closer to 30 fps. Highest I saw in the benchmark was 41 fps, lowest was about 10 fps and averaged in and around 30. Maybe I'm on par then.

 

Turn off DOF, I usually do and get an extra 15 FPS average with little to no visual difference in quality

 

POT5

Honestly I have been playing on maxed out settings on the A17 (4800 + Gtx 780M) and I am just glad that i can finally play at 60fps compared to my old machine (bottom sig). Used to get around 20-30 fps on that one.

I havent participated in World events yet, but on my last my machine, i could not go over 5-10 fps with 50 on my screen.

 

I'll look for that though I didn't recall seeing that option..

I'm wondering if I'm losing a lot of frames in some games because I don't stick with default presets. My Nvidia control panel I've adjusted some options globally like AF to x16, vsync forced on.. power management on max, triple buffering on etc. And in games they usually have preset settings like "low", "medium", "high" or "ultra". I normally go in, and set everything to custom by forcing everything to it's highest setting manually. If I just selected the preset of "ultra" in some games there would still be some options not enabled or set to it's highest.

Perhaps I should just be happy with the "high" and "ultra" presets and stop fiddling with the additional maxing out of options lol.

 

Everything in the Nvidia Control Panel that can be turned to "Application Controlled" should be. An I always have vsync off, its not something you need for new games or good graphics games.

 

I agree, you'll be turning up options only needed for older games, and all they will do in new ones is slow them down...