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

No not at all. I have the FHD 1080p 60hz and its absolutely gorgeous, and am quite picky about screen quality. I don't know what screen you have, but if you have the the 1600x900 screen, which I highly doubt if you have an R4, then you may have a pixelated view since those screens are of very low quality, regardless of the resolution since they're badly made, or so i've heard. I know that alienware laptops comes with glossy screens by default, however have you chose to have a matte screen from a reseller, it's possible to have something similar to a pixelated screen. That is because sometimes matte screens display pixels similarly to how you would see a "grain", resulting in a grainy image.

 

My screen is the 120hz HD 3D screen and my graphics card is the 680m (not that it matters). It is still pixelated so maybe you aren't as clear seeing and picky as you think? Also my laptop is straight from dell not a reseller.

It could be because the screen is too close or something Idk. But with certain colors and lights for the movie the screen appears slightly fuzzy (hence pixelated). Its funny because when I watch movies online or just play games or anything else like this the screen is flawless. It is only when I use the blu ray player and I even had a blu ray in there, that it became fuzzy which is strange.

 

sounds like you just need to modify the desktop color settings. Not sure how you do it with a nvidia card, but my display pops almost like an 100% RGB screen after I modified the settings in the AMD control panel.

 

Again the colors are fine. In fact they are better than a mac to my surprise. I think it is something with the blu ray playback that is the case. The fuzzy pixels have nothing to do with color. It may just be normal. I mean pretty much every TV out there has pixelation up close except for 4k HDs and OLEDs and some plasmas.

EDIT: I think it is because I am too close to the laptop or something. Because from a bit of a distance away it looks fine. But my god the DVD quality is complete sh**. It is soooooo pixelated.

 

hmm time for another rather odd question: From a technical side, is it possible to open the laptop,remove the speakers and keep them connected to the laptop while they're outside. (if its possible ill think up somethin for closing the laptop while they're outside)

 

Just wondering why you would do that? And it could be possible, but I don't think the cables will be long enough for it to leave the chassis.

 

Don't see why not. Of course you'd need to extend the wires. Actually thinking about it there is one potential issue that is unlikely. The air flow inside the laptop may be changed causing different thermal characteristics - could be better or worse

What is making you think of trying this?

 

So its only when your playing Blu-ray. Well, while its a long shot, try installing some different codec packs and players, like the k-lite codec pack and use classic media player to play your movies.

 

I just cannot bear the unbalanced sound between left and right that happens with I put my hands on a side of the keyboard. Speaking of speakers, what do you think about msi's dynaudio speakers?

 

Ah, well some decent external speakers are really what you need (IMO)- at least retain the mobility of your unit

I have no real experience of decent ones, I just went for the creative 5/1 speaker set. Great for gaming but I'm no audiophile

Edit: wow, those are high class: https://www.kmraudio.com/brands/dynaudio.php?gclid=CMHc5ZmTrrYCFZDKtAodzUcArA

 

Yes, completely possible. The cables are also plenty long you'll just need to pull them out of their little tracks so that you can actually use the length externally instead of it all going to winding through the little case maze they designed for them.

The Dynaudio ones are just as bad... The only laptop speakers I've been impressed by so far is the Asus "SonicMaster Bang & Olufsen ICEpower" which is what their laptop and monitor speakers are now. They aren't amazing either but as far as tiny laptop/lcd monitor speakers go they're pretty impressive compared to all the others I've listened to.

Personally I would just suggest a nice set of Sennheiser headphones or a set of Klipsch Promedia Ultra speakers...

 

Also, hello Alienwarites I've joined your owners club with my newest gaming laptop. Have previously had Sager (my preferred make have had several...), MSI (GT627), Asus (G73**). Have been using a G73JH most recently and was upgrading to the G73SW for the better processor but found out the video etc on it lacked entirely all the upgrade ability that the JH had so I sold my G73's and opted to keep the M17X R3 that I picked up for $400 due to a shattered screen. My primary gripe about it would be that I consider it being so thick at the front to be a design flaw because it makes typing quite awkward when it's sitting on a flat surface, otherwise I'm liking it so far.

Specs:
M17X R3
i7 2630QM
1920x1080
Clevo 6990m
16 gb Corsair Vengeance
256gb Samsung 830
500gb 7200rpm
Blu-ray drive

Think everything else is all the same options so no point in listing.

I just completely disassembled and reassembled the entire thing numerous times due to the shattered screen, a broken case piece, and issues with the blu ray drive that are now sorted. But if you have any questions I can probably answer them due to having done the complete disassembly quite a few times now...

 

congrats dude and welcome to the alienware club. Hope you enjoy your stay as much as the rest of us!!

 

Could you elaborate? What's bad about them? I'm impressed that I have found someone who doesn't fall victim to MSI's marketing. Also, congratulations.

 

what is the k-lite codec pack?

 

Hi everyone,

I am curious as to what speeds you are seeing with your optical bays when installing a new game. On my M18x R2 I saw twice the speed I see on the M17x.



Sometimes it gets as low as 4MB/s on this M17x. I used to see a steady 12MB/s on my M18x R2. Why is that? And is this normal, or is the drive slower than it should be?

Thank you,
J.Dre

 

Ow i see thats great. the thing is how can I extend the wires outside the case and still be able to close the case properly?

Thanks for the suggestion, but those are way too expensive for me xD.

The link below has a good explanation, although there aren't much technical details.

http://download.cnet.com/K-Lite-Mega-Codec-Pack/3000-13632_4-10794603.html

 

I installed battlefield online and it was pretty slow. Took 3-4 hours. Wow seemed to install pretty fast around 30 minutes that was with a disk. I think these optical drives are just inherently slow. When I want to play a dvd or blu ray it takes forever for the thing to load and anytime I want to fast foward or rewind or skip when clicking the progress bar it takes forever to load and sometimes it just freezes and stops loading.

 

Everything they are tiny speakers so they have terrible sound quality and no bass. It's like describing what's wrong with earbuds vs headphones. They are just inherently poor sounding so despite them working fine and being pretty good for built in laptop speakers they are still terrible speakers... The main issues would be inaccurate highs, mids, and total lack of bass. They aren't any worse than anybody elses high end range of branded laptop speakers they just aren't any better either. Like I said the only ones I've heard that are actually better are the Bang & Olufsen ICEpower and they still are terrible as far as speakers go but for built in laptop speakers they're pretty impressive.

I haven't tested but that seems totally normal. Was your m18x blu ray or dvd? Is your m17x blu ray or dvd? Few things come into play 1 blu ray drives are slower than dvd drives. 2 slot load drives are slower than tray load drives. 3. the drives in the alienwares seem to just be generally slow and bad...

My main suggestion would be doing what I'm planning on doing which is modifying my case and just putting a panasonic tray load drive in instead of using this slot load nonsense... Brand new panasonic BD-RE drives are under $60 and are both faster than these drives and they burn blu rays as well instead of just playing them.

Just poke a hole in the speaker vent and run the wires through it. The vents are just metal mesh with a sound dampening filter on them so poking a hole to run the wires through would be easy and then wouldn't effect the case at all. Other option would be shaving notches into plastic so you can run the wire underneath.

I should point out this is going to look terrible though... the speakers are completely non uniform white chunks of cheap plastic with mounting notches on them and such they aren't at all pretty or designed to be seen. They're also very thin cheap plastic so will be really easy to accidentally crush or damage.

 

Hi all,

Has anyone here managed to make GTX670MX run in Alienware m17x r3 3D model?
I purchased the card on ebay to upgrade my system and now that I start to wonder if the card is capable of running in 120mhz.

I'm fairly new to this so any info and tips for installation are appreciated!

Thanks!

 

Don't think its possible as the Hardware ID is not in the bios like the 660m, 675m or the 680m. So far nobody has managed to crack this on either the r3 or r4 so 3D isn't possible without a verified card.

 

Hi. it will work at 120hz but the 3D does not work. From what I read the card has to be 3D certified in the bios, and only card models offered by dell have this. The guys using 680m's in R3's have the same issue. Unless one of the bios modders comes up with a fix you give it up

 

Does anyone else have sunken touchpad buttons? This happened to my first m17x too. Also, is 50-70C high for a stock 3740qm just using Google Chrome?

 

I'm seeing 50C - 60C+ on mine, which I'm not happy about considering my M18x was cooler with an XM CPU. I'm not impressed with the cooling of the M17x. However, it does keep temps down on load, which I suppose is great.

You're fine.

 

I7 3630QM browsing goes around 45-58 above 58 and the fans kick in for me. Thats browssing and mainly youtube flash videos which use the igpu from what I know.

 

I think the cooling is lacking because of lack of side vents for better airflow. The fans are enough just the design for airflow sucks.

 

Okay, so, just to confirm the battery life: With the 120Hz screen you get about 2 hours of regular use on "High Performance" and about 2.5 hours on "Balanced". Intensive programs (i.e. gaming) last for about 1 - 1.5 hours on the battery. (This is with an NVIDIA GPU.) If you need battery life, get the 60Hz screen. The 120Hz screen is somewhat brighter and smoother while gaming, but in my opinion, it isn't really worth the loss of battery life and the extra $250. The package is nice and definitely stands out, but it's something you probably won't notice half of the time. However, having the ability to watch movies and game in 3D is pretty nice.

I had this concern when I ordered it and felt I should share my opinion.

 

Almost for my machine. You can't game at all, it runs far too slow with the GPU locked at 75mhz

 

its all about the fan tables. If you had your fans cranked up to max you would probably not even see temps above 40C, but the stock fan table is liberal so the fans come on less often. Either way, 60C-70C isn't a big deal for a gaming laptop.

 

My bad, I should've been more clear. I tried playing an old RPG game ( www.tibia.com), not BF3 or anything like that.

 

I played BF3 and WOW just fine on ultra without it plugged in.

But I get around 3.5 hours of battery life on power saver and 3 hours on balanced. There is no high performance mode on mine but that just means the brightness is set to the max.

 

Does anyone know if the R4 supports 16GB's of 1866MHz memory without an unlocked BIOS (as is, from the factory)?

 

If the Ram was plug and play I don't see why it wouldn't work. Just my ten cents

 

Is it a 3D model? As soon as my power cord is disconnected the whole machine (gaming) drops to a crawl. I called dell originally and they told me that the battery could not supply enough power to run the GPU at full speed. Maybe it's different with a 680 but you're the first I've seen that says they can game

 

Mine gets stuck on 135mhz core and 324mhz memory when I unplug. But I have a balanced/power save profile when I run on battery. Can barely play sim city, have to turn down all settings. But 5 hours of battery life.

 

Guess that's optimus doing it's job then. I've see a vid posted by mr fox of gaming on the HD GPU ( http://forum.notebookreview.com/alienware/670572-all-alienware-laptop-gaming-videos-thread-17.html) and it was impressive for iGPU.

Without having an Intel GPU even in-game loads are painful on battery

 

I've read that only two of the slots support 1866MHz. In other words, only up to 8GB's. That's why I'm uncertain if the memory will actually run at 1866MHz or down to 1600MHz with all four dimms.

 

double post

 

Of course its a 3D model. Have you already forgotten all my persistent bantering to get battery life info out on 3D owners? lol. When I have it plugged or unplug I can still run both games on ultra no problem. And nothing else is slowing down that I can tell. Is there a way to for me to check? Also right now my system is set on balanced but the brightness is turned all the way up and it says with 94% battery left I have 2 hours and 50 minutes left. So if I turned down the brightness to like halfway it would probably be well over 3 hours.

I have 3D screen, 680m, 16gb ram, and i7 2.7-3.7 ghz.

 

Same here.

 

Seems I do have a problem then - although I never use battery. If I pull my plug the GPU drops to P8 - 75Mhz and can be seen with NVInspector. Others have said their machine is the same as mine but 5 hours, on a 120Hz display, that is awesome

And maybe the fact that it (680) is running faster (135mhz) means games are playable

Easiest test is to start a game on power and pull the plug - any slowdown?

 

I will try when I get home later today. I will download NVinspector too so I can see if the mhz changes.

 

Also the only way I can see anyone getting 5 hours on a 120hz screen is if the brightness is like on 1 and they are on power saver lol.

 

Edit: I went ahead and installed the memory. They work! :thumbsup:

 

Can someone please check if the webcam appears in the device manager? Looks like mine is not connected as the software reports no compatible device detected. I did have the panel replaced when I first got it and have never used the cam so I'm thinking the engineer failed to make some connection (no mic either)??

Thanks

 

Yay glad to hear it was plug and play.

mine shows up in my device manager. Have you tried hitting FN+F9 to turn it on?

 

Doh, glad I didn't call them on that. Guess I must have pressed it at sometime. Thanks!!!

 

No prob bud! Glad it was an easy fix.

 

hey guys, i successfully installed the 13.3 catalyst driver. however the brightness wont change while using fn+f4 or even with windows! it only changes the brightness after i switch to IGP. Does any1 have the same problem?

 

I have the same problem, but not really a problem for me as I only use the discrete card while plugged in. No need to change the brightness.