*OFFICIAL* Alienware M17x R3/R4 Owner's Lounge Thread

Quick question for you guys, if you tilt your screen towards you can you see down the bottom bezel a bit and see the screen glowing down there? I can't remember if it was like that on my original screen. It's not noticeable at normal usage angles. Cheers!

 

If you mean the space around the media bar, yes I can see the screen glowing. Only the windows task bar though. Did you use a matter screen protector?

 

I can see the screen glowing as well.

 

Hi all ,

Is there anyone switched from R3 To R4 ?

The keyboard are the same made quality or better ?

Ghosting issues?

Sata3 full works?

with 120hz display the HD4000 are disabled as the HD3000 on R3 ?

Thanks

 

I'm pretty sure it's the same keyboard so if you had ghosting issues with the r3, they will probably be identical on the r4 as well.

And the answer is yes to both of those questions.

 

Confirmed, this R4 replaced my R3

Edit: The new msata port is sata II and all the usb ports are now usb3.0 not just the two on the left side.

 

1) The keyboard is amazing quality in my opinion, dno about R3 though.
2) I haven't noticed any ghosting issues whatsoever.
3) Sata3 works, yes.
4) Yup it's disabled, which I actually prefer

 

Latest AMD drivers including the 7970M Enduro Fix posted here: [Latest] AMD Catalyst Drivers (Incl. Enduro Fix) + CAP

 

Just think I should share with you guys my new toy . Drop the normal load temp to ~ 48-50 C

Spoiler

 

Can you define "normal load "?

 

Few browsers, a 720p movie and Microsoft word. You may consider it to be idle temp because it's not that heavy load.

Screenshot for reference. Room temp is 75 btw.

Spoiler

 

Im looking for a step by step Win 8 UEFI insatt guide. I would like to install from USB to HDD. Can I find it somewhere, maybe?

 

Thank you for clarification. I have this Idle temperature w/o a special cooling pad. My average room temps are 20 celsius.

 

Do you happen to customize your internal fans' settings? My temp w/o cooling pad is 53-60C which is pretty normal because many people have got this temp with their completely stock settings.

And this 48-50C temp is completely depends on the cooling pad. The internal fans don't really run until GPU gets to 60C.

 

I did not modiefied my fan settings. All is default and stock.

 

The disc, or ISO, that you have Win8 on should have a folder called EFI. What you need to do is have a USB flash drive of 4GB or more and make sure that it's formatted FAT32. Either mount the ISO, or insert the Win8 disc, and copy all of the contents to the flash drive.

Boot into BIOS > go to Boot (or whatever it's called) > Make sure to disable Legacy boot and enable Win8 Fast Boot.

Then allow the system to restart. It should grab the USB drive and begin the Win8 installation.

Sorry, not too detailed of me. I was confused with how to get UEFI going, but it turned out to be super easy. During the install, make sure that the HDD you're setting up is empty of partitions. This way, the WinPE will be able to format the HDD as GPT instead of NTFS.

 

wish it was available on my r3.

 

Sweet looking pad you got there is that the Notepal U3, or which one is that?

 

How is everyone this afternoon? I've been away or a few days.... 80% of my car project is DONE.... I'm almost satisfied so far, I've barely touched my AW past few days lol.... BO II and Halo 4 were just released recently too so I've been preoccupied.... Have to say there isn't a thing I would change for this laptop!

One or two issues though.... Is it just me, or is the color wheel on the keyboard a bit off? I ask this because I was reading about keyboard issues up above.

My whites are pinkish white and some colors are just absolutely off!

Also, what are these ghosting issues you guys speak of? I ask because I'm wondering what that's all about.

To also further verify, there's absolutely nothing wrong with refurb models IMO.... (a few pages back worth of posts maybe?) I have a refurb'd m17x with absolutely 0 issues.... The ONLY ONLY issue when the laptop was shipped to me was because an incompetant tech probably used a flathead to pry the lid open on this m17x, so there's a few pry-marks at the very bottom, but unnoticable without the battery taken out.

 

It's the NZXT Cryo LX.

Ghosting is when you press a combination of keys but certain keys are not registered with the machine. E.g: A + E + F but nothing appears/ reigsters. I think Dell has a page dedicated the combination keys that work and not but forgot where it is though.

 

i've honestly never found a problem with that..... My ONLY problem with my laptop is the mousepad messing up my typing. That was remedied with disabling tap-clicking

Thank you for the info leeshjnn!

 

I haven't had a problem with ghosting on my M17x...

Some keyboards have a problem where they can only register a couple of buttons at once. So if you're lets say running in CoD, you're holding down like W, A, Shift, etc... and you try press R to reload, it doesn't register it and nothing happens because you're holding down too many buttons.

Gaming laptops/computers don't really have this, neither do mechanical keyboards.

About the color wheel, mine seems perfectly accurate.. no problems. Maybe because it's a refurb? Well at the moment mine is all green to match my awesome back ground (black and white picture of a coiled up snake, but neon green stripes on it)

 

nice leo! Green, blue, red are all accurate.... it's the offsets of certain colors that put the color off.... Could you try white?

 

Yeah I notice white isnt quite the same, the speaker grilles are usually different than the rest of the lighting. (Speaker grills are more blueish compared to the rest).

 

for mine they're purpleish. the whites on the keyboard+mouse are more pinkish white. It's not that I care much, but when 3 solid colors are your only sure-fire choice.... it's a little dissapointing

 

Was getting a minimum of 50 last night on ULTRA (not on 3D though), I think a bit higher than that on HIGH and 3D, but ULTRA + 3D was a bit sketchy last night, dropped below 30 at times

 

isn't 30 like.... still VERY playable? I forgot, but i believe past 25 is when it gets soo glitchy i'd give up game play

 

Somwhow is possible to use the Intel 4000 integrated and 7970m dedicated cards in the same time? I mean, normally should run of Intel and if the program want more power the ATI switch on automaticly? Or I need to switch by myself all the time and restart the computer?

 

I believe that is what Enduro is for. Uses either Integrated Graphics or AMD, depending on the needs.

 

Aye, but how can I activate it? The newest Enduro + Catalyst are installed. I choose Intel with Fn+F7 and restarted, started a game, choose the High Performance in Switchable Video Settings, but I still have very bad FPS, what is mean the Ati is not working.

 

Can anyone with Windows 8 do a test for me? If you create a shortcut to your wireless adapter on your desktop, does right clicking it to disable and enable work properly? Mine will show disable/enable when it is already on/off and I usually have to go into adapter settings manually. Thanks!

 

worked for me when i just tried it. took a bit to swap back and forth though.

 

Thanks for the quick reply, probably just need to do a fresh install instead of an upgrade. I'll see if anyone else has the issue Annoying because everything else works fine so far. You're not able to do a swipe from the left side of your trackpad to bring up recent apps by chance are you?

 

nope, but that is probably a driver issue more than anything else. Plus my r3 is not officially supported to run windows 8 in the first place.

 

What do you mean by choosing Intel with Fn+F7?

If you have bad FPS (?), it could mean the driver is not working properly, or it's really the HD4000 causing the problem. You can whitelist the game in Catalyst Control and see if the problem still persists.

 

30fps is playable... not VERY.

Especially in shooter games... and ESPECIALLY in online shooters, 30fps won't do. Single player it just might, but 30fps on a different kind of game is more playable than 30fps on a shooter.

Racing games for example, 30fps is fantastic. But when I tried to record some Metro 2033 with fraps, I capped it at 30fps... it was playable, but horrible

About the AlienFX, I'll give that a thorough look when I get home but from the looks of it, you just have some kind of problem /:

 

WHAT? Battlefield 3 on HIGH + 3D and you were getting like 60fps??

Oh man I am so downloading that when I get home today how's battlefield in 3D btw?

 

Why would you choose Intel for games?

Go to Device Manager and check what is listed under Display Adapters. It will either have both Intel and GPU, or just GPU. Which is yours set to? For the sake of troubleshooting, you should switch so that only your GPU is listed. Then launch the game and see what your FPS are.

I've got NVIDIA and it's really easy to make sure that games use the GPU. I just started a game tonight and it was acting weird. When I went into the NVIDIA Control Panel, I saw that it was choosing Intel for the graphics. Clicked one thing and solved that super easy. Relaunched the game and everything looked as it should.

 

Thanks for getting back to me with that, I appreciate it bro.

 

Hey guys I need some help..

Yesterday my GPU started messing up or I got bad drivers. But I was playing some MW2, and then every 10 minutes the screen would go black for a bit, then come back and I continue playing. I thought ah the game is a bit buggy, was playing on a modded server.

Then when I unplug my mouse to use the touchpad, the screen got a bunch of blue squares or something for a bit, then BSOD... I turned it back on, it was fine for a while, i was browsing the internet and the blue squares come back all over my screen... this went on to happen after a few reboots, sometimes it would go black for a bit then come back working for a bit, sometimes it would just go black and stay that way til hard reboot.

The GPU wasn't overheating for sure, but at one point it was at 60 degrees almost idle.. just Google Chrome and some videos, I turned it off for a bit.. while still a bit warm i booted up and it was idling at 50..

Does this sound like a driver problem? If I were to install the latest WHQL drivers for Nvidia (I have the latest beta, which were perfectly fine until yesterday), would I need to DriverSweeper my current nvidia drivers before installing older ones?

I appreciate any feedback

 

It is my limited understanding that you MUST use the drivers supplied by Dell for the 680m and the updates allowed through that software. I'm currently on 306.97 and have no issues.

 

You don't have to use the drivers supplied by Dell, especially if you're using a 120Hz screen so no iGPU involved.

I'll install the WHQL drivers when I get home from work and see if that fixes it. Funny thing is that the beta drivers have been perfectly stable until yesterday, hope it's not some other problem :S

 

Oh, I already forgot you're 120Hz. Oops.

Good luck!

 

Re-download the latest drivers, completely wipe the previous drivers and reinstall and let us know.

Sent from my GT-I9300 using Tapatalk 2

 

I'll be trying that in 2 hours when I get home. There's no way this could be a physical problem with the card right ? it hasn't overheated or anything, it's not overclocked.. :S its brand new

This must be a driver issue right? or is it GPU damage ?

 

I don't think its a GPU problem, I had a similar problem with my previous desktop build where the screen would flicker and go blank, to fix that I downgraded to a previous version of drivers and waited for a newer release. Try this and if it doesn't work get back to me and I'll help trouble shoot.

Sent from my GT-I9300 using Tapatalk 2

 

Hi guys. Will Dell replace the chassis only? I bought my m17x r4 from Dell outlet, and I really love it, but last night when I put it in my backpack then I saw a big cracked around the vent of gpu. So I wonder will they replace the chassis?

 

I don't have enough time to do anything by the time the blue squares come /: after every login

And I haven't been able to get on safe boot... nothing shows up until the login screen when I start up my computer? whats the button to hold down for Win7 64bit

 

1. Turn on or restart your computer.
2. Hold down the F8 key before the Windows logo appears. If the computer makes a complaining noise, tap the F8 key repeatedly instead of holding it down.
3. If a Windows logo or “Windows starting” appears, wait until Windows loads. Restart and try again, if you still have a problem let us know
4. Once you are successful, a menu will appear with a number of boot options. Use an arrow key to navigate to “Safe Mode” and press the Enter key.

Sent from my GT-I9300 using Tapatalk 2

 

I don't have one of those things to measure energy consumption, but if anyone does could u measure the average usage of a M17xR4?
Just got my energy bill for the whole year and the numbers doesn't add up.
So I would like an estimate on what the laptop uses under full load as well as average usage.