Wait for R3? Or Buy R2 Now??? Help Please!

So this is an ongoing saga that I have been battling for the last couple of weeks...I put in a purchase for an R2 about a week ago (That was before I discovered this awesome message board).

Should I have waited? Should I have gotten the G73 3DE instead?

I basically got a loaded R2 for $2800 total, 0% financing for 12 months...I also got them to give me an additional credit of $100.

Did I do the right thing? Is AW the real deal? I have looked at these for a long time, and while I have never seen one in person, they look like absolutely gorgeous machines, so I'm excited...But the more I read about the R3 and the Asus G73 3D, the more I doubt my decision.

I know I can return this, but I'm hoping I made the right call, as it's in Prep mode, and I can't cancel anymore.

My Config and Price:

Quantity Item Number Description Unit Price
1 224-8106 Nebula Red - Special Edition - Anodized Aluminum $2591.80
1 317-5661 Intel Core i7 740QM Quad Core Processor, 1.73GHz (2.93GHz Turbo Mode, 6M Cache)
1 317-3665 8GB Dual Channel Memory (2x 4GB DDR3)
1 330-7841 Alienware M17x 240W A/C Adapter
1 320-8856 17-inch WideUXGA 1920 x 1200 RGB LED (1200p)
1 320-9009 SLI 1GB GDDR3 Nvidia GeForce GTX 285M
1 342-3119 640 GB, 7200 RPM, #2,P11,MP4
1 330-3924 Name Plate Engraving
1 330-6106 Personalized Nameplate Trigger
1 313-8791 AlienFX Color, Mars Red
1 421-2261 Alienware Command Center, M17x
1 421-1400 Genuine Windows 7 Home Premium, 64bit, English
1 420-9691 DataSafe Local BackUp
1 420-6436 PC-Restore, Dim/Insp
1 421-0092 DELL-DOWNLOAD-FLAG
1 410-1883 Adobe Acrobat Reader 9.0 Multi-Language
1 421-1304 CyberLink PowerDVD 8.0 Software
1 421-1305 Nero 9 Media Burning Software
1 318-0505 Slot-Loading Dual Layer Blu-ray Reader (BR-ROM, DVD+-RW, CD-RW)
1 313-8944 5.1 Channel Audio
1 430-3739 Intel Ultimate N WiFi Link 6300 a/g/n 3x3 MIMO Technology
1 330-6348 Automatic Updates: On
1 950-3337 1 Year Limited Warranty
1 908-2207 Dell Hardware Limited Warranty, Initial Year
1 922-3410 Dell Limited Hardware Warranty Plus In-Home Service After Remote Diagnosis, Initial Year
1 950-9797 No Warranty, Year 2 and 3
1 994-3730 Warranty Support, Initial Year
1 421-1724 Soft Contracts Dell In-Home Hardware Agreement for Alienware
1 330-0171 S and P Drop-in-Box Marcom forDHS Notebooks
1 421-1360 Steam and Portal Factory Installed $0.00
1 421-2611 AlienGUIse Theme Manager with Breed Theme $0.00
1 421-1584 Alien Cyborg $0.00
1 421-1594 Alien Cyborg $0.00
1 430-0628 Bluetooth 2.1 with EDR $0.00
1 330-5090 Thank You for Purchasing AlienWare $0.00


Sub-Total : $2591.80
Shipping : $39.00
Tax : $157.86
Order Total : $2788.66

 

skip the 8gb ram i picked up 8gb aftermarket for like $90 OTD and change the video card to 5870m unless you need nvidia for rendering or work...gaming hands down 5870m. Bluray burner is nice but think about this if you get an external bluray it will be cheaper and you can use it in other laptops and desktops and use it in your next laptop as well and they are slim usb powered. The upgrade is like $200 or something like that you can get a bluray reader for under $100 and bluray burner $150-$175. If you return it and reorder they will not charge a restocking fee and i would expect free shipping not $39. Lastly for HD the 640gb is a good choice if it is a single drive and then you can add a SSD as a primary aftermarket. Honestly back to the 8gb do you really need 8gb of ram right away for VM, Photoshop, CAD or other ram intensive tasks.

 

I will use the CPU for business, I'm a headhunter, so I could honestly use a computer from 1995 to do what I do...I will be gaming on it heavily, I honestly got the 285m because they were more expensive, and I thought they were better because of that...Silly I know.

So I can return without a restocking fee, if I rebuy...Interesting...Then I am sure to get an R3 if I choose too....Hmmm.

Did I make the right choice in going with AW over Asus in your opinion?

Thanks for the reply by the way.

 

not going to get into the alienware versus asus but what attracted me to alienware was dual video cards, in home next day warranty, cooling capabilities, 920xm/940xm support and the build quality. You decide if alienware is worth the extra $$$ over asus for those reasons or not.

I would highly recommend the ati 5870 i know normally more expensive must mean better but in this case it is nvidia demanding a higher price which gets pushed over to the consumer. $ for $ ATI hands down for gaming and $ for $ nvidia hands down for CUDA.

Restocking you will need to speak to the customer service rep but i would use the point that you are not happy with the gaming performance and after more research the cheaper cards are the more powerful and say you want to buy another laptop in exchange for it. You have 21 days but do it asap so you can get the process started on the new build. Buy an extended warranty from the money you save on video card, ram and any other upgrades you do not want.

 

nice, thats good advice, thx.

 

Am I reading this right? You're skipping the extended warranty? If you're getting a DELL and you're investing this kind of money in a laptop my advice is get the extended warranty. Now you get into the whole extended warranty debate and personally on a desktop, ok ya i can see skipping the extended warranty because parts are easily accessible aftermarket, but for a laptop... especially if you're very mobile with it.. get the warranty... its a DELL.

Now, granted if you are on a credit budget like I was and you want to get a beefy rig right away then you can always extend your warranty after the fact. However, keep in mind that you do not want to let your warranty laps. If you let your warranty laps its going to cost you a lot more to extend the warranty out. My thoughts were extended warranty vs xfire 5870, well I only play WoW so xfire is over kill, so it was an easy choice for me. You can also call spare parts and order a secondary 5870 for around 384.00$ and install it yourself later on which i will be doing.

Just food for thought.

 

Good point, I've been thinking about this over the last day...I will call them and add the warranty if I like the M17x, I think I'll be really happy with the 285s, I've been gaming on consoles for ever, and 5-10 fps isn't really going to sway me either way...I can always lower the settings a bit...Looking at vids on Youtube of the sli 285's, the framerates look great, so I'm not worried about going with them over the 5870's, stuff like optimization for SLI, and Physx looks very cool too, and Nvidia has listed most of the major games that I want to play.

So you can swap out GPU's in the future? Say that I want to go with the newer Nvidia GPU's in 2 years, will I be able to do that? I didn't think that these things were really upgradeable, I hope I am wrong though.

 

I just went through a huge fight with DELL over the video upgrading. From my experience with them most of the technicians do not have the technical expertise to answer questions regarding how to do this. Problem with laptops (especially DELL) is everything is proprietary so you can’t really find a secondary card if you order just one, you have to have a matching card to work with the one you ordered originally. If you get the wrong one it won’t work. I called Alienware tech support and got escalated to “tier 2”, and you would think these are the guys that would know the answers to these types of questions off the top of their head. Well… I got a tech telling me he had to go back and re-read the instructions manual on this laptop… (really?) and then told me “it wasn’t possible to install a secondary card yourself” granted even though we all know that to be an incorrect statement.

So, what you have to do is:

1. Get the part number(s) (the card part number and the mounting bracket/fan part numbers) you need a head of time and call DELL spare parts and order the right ones and hope the operator doesn’t ask you any questions.
2. If you only have a 150w power supply you need to order the 240w power supply (around 100.00$ US)(xfire/SLI is going to def draw more power).

Total this should cost you around (after shipping) 550-650.00$ minus the labor you’re going to put in watching the break down video and installing the card yourself. “Well how come you don’t just order it crossfire/SLI to begin with” some people might be asking. Well the simple answer is money, right now some people have a max budget they can’t go over until they pay down the credit the system is on and then later on tag the spare parts to the DELL account.

Personally I wanted a laptop with room to grow (I’ll get 1 card now, throw another in later), and the sales rep assured me, absolutely assured me (of course he did right) that at a later date I could easily add another card in yadda yadda yadda… but when I called the actual techs, they could not quote me a part number and say heck no you can’t!

But yes you can, you just have to do some research first and I apologize for going off on a tangent. Hopefully I gave you some half decent information.

 

Simple answer; would be Maybe. Never count on swapping out major parts like GPU's in a already year old Chasis. If it is possible, im sure a thread will pop up with somthing trying it out... Only then we will know for sure. But i would be willing to guess that you will not be able too upgrade past the current GPUS offered for the M17xR2 chasis.

 

you will save more money if you buy the warranty upfront and you can call in to negotiate pricing on the laptop and the warranty. when you get the laptop try to get a warranty quote right away since the price only keeps ticking up like the federal deficit . I would still look into exchanging the laptop for:

R2
i7
RGB
Xfire 5870
Intel 6300
3 yr CC Accidental warranty
4gb ram

With the money you save on video card and ram you can negotiate the pricing on the warranty and come out the same. Now tell me for the same price or $100 more you get a more powerful laptop with 3 yr warranty and you only gave up 4gb of overpriced ram for it and a video card which will not help you in gaming versus the cheaper one. Price out everything you want like crossfire upgrades and warranty after the purchase and i put money down it will be more expensive down the road versus up front with some negotiation skills.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/alienware/456885-aw-dell-ordering-advice-how-save.html

thanks

 

Nendez that is the best, most succinct explanation of how to add a second video card I have seen. I think your post should be stickied somehow. This is something I may want to do myself in a few months to a year.

 

Well it came yesterday...Wow, what a machine!!

The screen is absolutely amazing, I am just floored by the quality of the craftsmanship too. I called and added a 3 year complete care plan, which was expensive ($700), but worth it for this.

I got the SLI 285m cards and will be happy to post benchmarks for people if they want. I know that most go with the ATI gpu, so it may help to have perfermance tested for others.

I have only had time to game on it for about 20 minutes, played Black Ops, just incredible performance, the detail on the screen easily eclipses 360 and ps3 on my Bravia HBR. Amazing!

 

That's great to hear! I'm sure I will have a similar story to tell when I open mine tomorrow.

 

Holy !!!

700 bucks for extended warranty? Ouch

 

i hate when I'm choosing something to buy, and don't know what to buy :/
should I buy a m17x r2 with 5870xfire, or wait for r3? and then again if i wait for r3, i know that these machines wont have xfire support, and i doubt that a single good card can beat crossfire, even if its 6970m/ or 485m. And then again is the usb 3.0 support with the r3, and options for more than 8gb of ram.. do I even need more than 8gb for gaming? Im planing to use the laptop for the next 2-3 years.

 

With the re-release of the R3 (if it happens), the factor for most that will sway the option one way or the other is, SLI/X-Fire vs 3D. It really depends on what you are looking for. Do you want 3D, or SLI/X-Fire? Pretty, or power? From what I gather, the R3 is not a sure thing to be re-released any time soon. But hey, DELL/WA have come through in the past with amazing speed and production.

This is a question that many people seem to be asking a lot right now, most answers resemble this, "If I were you, I would wait a few months to see for myself what will be available from AW."

AW is in a transition right now working on a few projects, give it some time, and I am sure we will all have a better idea what we should be getting.