What an incredible machine the M17R2 is!! Now running 4K

I have an Alienware M17R2 which I have had for around 5 years or more. It's served me extremely well and proved a superb machine. More recently I bought a Toshiba S50-B-15N which is a great laptop for travel and has a lovely full HD screen (I am a photographer so use photo editing software.)

I decided I wanted to upgrade to a 4k monitor to support my editing in Lightroom and planned to mostly use it with my newer Toshiba which is 4k compatible. I never expected a stock M17R2 with native 4870 videocard to be able to run 4k and everything I read on the interweb led me to believe it wouldn't work.

Well I'm thrilled to say it does work - in fact I'm sitting here typing this now on my beautiful new Dell P2715Q full 4K screen. CPUID reports my CPU core temps at 28 degrees (peaking at 60 degrees) and I couldn't be happier. I'm almost tempted to treat the old girl to a GPU upgrade to celbrate but I guess if it ain't broken LOL. I do play Rocksmith on the machine though so would certainly be interested in the best option bearing in mind I connect the laptop to my AV receiver/home cinema so need the HDMI to provide both sound and full HD (1920x1080) resolution for the game. My connection to the 4k monitor is for when photo editing and I'm using display port of course.

Anyway I thought it worth posting this because others may be thinking of upgrading their monitor and the previous advice it wouldn't work is incorrect.

Jonathan

PS The display is utterly amazing and my photos now look incredibly pin sharp!!

 

So basically , it outputs 4K through display port ? Have you watched a movie or played games on your new 4K monitor from the m17xR2?

 

I've watched up to blu-ray quality video clips so far with no issues - I haven't yet tried a 4k movie clip but will report back when I do. I do find it incredible that a machine built around 5-6 years ago is able to support resolutions that hadn't even been conceived when it was built.

I was under the impression that display port has gone through three iterations:

DP 1.0-1.1 8.6 Gb/sec
DP 1.2 17.3 Gb/sec
DP 1.3 26 Gb/sec

I don't know how much bandwidth 4k demands or what version of DP is fitted to M17R2 - anybody know?

Jon

 

http://en.community.dell.com/owners-club/alienware/f/3746/t/19596828

I ran across this. Let us know if you happens to test out a 4K video. If you happen to have a smartphone that can record 4K video , test it out. I have Nexus 6P that can record 4K video. Maybe I can upload a file and have you test it out.
Ray

 

I guess you are running it with the DELL supplied cable, correct? At what refresh rate it runs - 30 or 60Hz? Thanks!