*OFFICIAL* Alienware 18 Owner's Lounge Thread

This is the EXACT setup I want when my computer arrives. Did you have to do anything special to get Windows 8 installed on the mSATA in UEFI - I understand you just have to install it from a bootable USB drive formatted in UEFI/GPT, is that how you did it?

For that matter, what did you do to get the original recovery partition and other data off the shipped drive, and did you put it back onto the mSATA as well with the OS?

Didn't know it was possible to flash the cards (video?), is there a link you can provide for the files from Techinferno, or is it easy to find by searching there?

 

Unfortunately I have some bad news. My new Alienware, which was working beautifully with heavy gaming the last three days, all of a sudden experienced freezing issues about an hour ago. Froze once in game, restarted, froze again, restarted, froze once more... White screen of death.

It doesn't even boot into the Bios or Windows. Tried basic things like unplugging the CMOS and draining the power. It just boots into a white screen with nothing. Tech support offered another replacement system, but I'm just going to return it for now I'm afraid. Look at some other cheaper systems to tide me over the next couple of years or reorder a fresh Alienware 18 with a fresh 21 day return option later. Thanks for all the help along the way though, it was fun, despite the tragic ending.


@PillowMetal:

The only special thing is you have to make sure to make the USB is UEFI bootable and have a the Intel RST drivers available either on the same USB or another USB to install once you get to the windows partition screen, since it won't detect any drives until you install the driver. Then once you make your partition(s) it will automatically format them in GPT.

I did not bother with the recovery data on the shipped drive.

Here is the link for the modified 780m VBios: Unlocked NVIDIA GTX 780M VBIOS - Tech|Inferno

Good luck!

 

that's Exactly what was happening to me, with the ssd after one day running fine the computer sudden crash and said that it find no boot drive.

 

When do we receive our gift cards?

 

I got mine on 7/26/13.

 

Following up with this comment, are the OS installation USB drives you request from Dell already UEFI bootable or do you have to format another USB drive, make it UEFI ready, and transfer the OS installer from Dell's USB stick to that USB drive?

 

I know most of you guys are into SSD's but I thought I would post my pre raid and post raid HD results. My 750 drives are now raid 0 with both accelerated by m64 msata. They did not arrive that way from Dell. It seems the 64 gig msata does help.

 

That really sucks...getting me worried. I plan to just run mine with the default stuff initially to see if it's most stable...I wonder what's going on for it to do that for your machine. Did a major component just die?

 

Is there an non-glare IPS screen option on the new Alienware 18 or is that only on the Alienware 17?

 

If you want to get it fast, you can call up Dell and 'rush' them a bit. I got it less than 2 days after calling in.

 

I had the same problem when trying to clean install onto the SSD. Alternatively, you can format the drives in GPT first, then it will be fine in UEFI.

 

Not sure. The problems manifested themselves differently.

Thus far I've had:

-One of the two 780m's died on first system
-IPS panel with really noticeable light bleed on second system
-Completely dead second system "white screen of death" after 3 days of use

Bad luck I guess. I'm sure 9/10 people have their systems and have zero issues at all. My 14x lasted nearly 3 years without a single problem, so this is new for me as far as alienware systems. My Dell XPS m1530 has some tech work over the years but has been solid for going on 6 or 7 years now.

Meanwhile I'll decide on whether I want to reorder the new 18 again after the refund comes through. Looking at some other systems at the moment, and I'm pretty interested in the Asus G750, at least for the next two or three years until Maxwell or Volta are out.

 

Do you think is worth the update from a m18x? Is the boost in performance worth the money?

 

That's too bad...At least with standard 17" machines, you DO have a lot more options really...

 

Sorry to hear about the problems you are experiencing bro. Alienware should give you a big discount if you do, in fact, reorder.

 

I can't believe all the problems you guys are having with the new 18s. You put down some serious cash and then to have to put up with so much aggravation. I really feel bad for you and I hope Dell gets their act together

 

The problem is we don't know how many people have good/working systems. As with most forums, you only hear about the people with issues. I think during the 10-30% off sale, quite a few people jumped off the fence and bought something so if the failure rate is 1%, maybe 5%, it really isn't that bad. Considering I wasn't in a rush to buy and jumped off myself, I assume there are quite a few others in the same boat since 20-30% off is pretty good for a new generation release. Keeping my fingers crossed...

 

I am really interested in buying the Alienware 18.

However so far I could not find a single review, that did precise measurements of screen brightness, color space coverage, delta-E and noise. All reviews so far only gave subjective statements about this or did I miss a detailed review ?

So you can see one of my main remaining concern is the display. If it is really PLS it must be Samsung's variation of IPS (more glossy but still with a anti-reflection coating), can anybody confirm this ?

Cheers
DonGod

 

Hiya, guys,

I have a bit of a conundrum. I've received an offer from Dell for a replacement for an M18x R1 with Crossfire 6990Ms (9 service calls overall, most related to the display/graphic cards and motherboard) to an 18 with GTX 770Ms. Should I take it no questions asked or see if I can't get a bump to 780s? I'm asking because with the amount of issues my M18x has had, I'm not sure I would want to go through that again (I'd probably sell the laptop as soon as a single issue appears) and I'm guessing there won't be a lot of takers for a second hand 18 with those 770s.

All other things considered, it's still a massive improvement in performance, so any advice is welcome!

Thanks a lot!

 

Screw 'em for all you can get....that's my advice. As for wether you are 'entitled' to 780m Sli, that's a rather open-ended subject, as technically, 770m Sli is comparable on a performance level, and again, technically, all Dell are obliged to give you. Count yourself lucky, because all Dell offered me as a replacement was an R2 with 3630qm and a single 675m for my R1 that had a 2960xm and dual 6990m's....

Until such a time as Dell can treat everyone fairly, they deserve to be screwed at every given opportunity. Go for those 780m's :thumbsup:

 

I wouldn't say go screw Dell, but what happened with me was that Dell actually receive my order for the 4930MX even though they didn't have it in stock. And trying to call them to inquire if the CPU is in stock is no easy task. It took me another 2-3 hours again, getting re-routed over and over by Indian reps. In the end I just cancelled it and got it from GentechPC.

 

My 18 shipped today and should be here tomorrow. 10 days after order, which matches most of my other experiences ordering a PC from Dell/Alienware. That month long 17 wait was the exception.

 

Well, from a replacement perspective, as they guy asked if he should push for 780m sli or not, if they (Dell) cannot consistently compare hardware for everyone, and replace accordingly, then I say it is 'open season' and every man for themselves...get as much as you can, when you can....because the likelihood of getting consistent treatment should the need arise again in the future is very slim.

If someone asks for an upgrade, and Dell give it to them without making the required comparability checks to ensure 'like for like' replacements are carried out, then more fool Dell - they deserve to lose out....and well played for that individual for getting whatever they can get.

 

Steviejones, thanks for your reply, I guess I'll try for the 780s once and then just let it go. I still consider myself lucky, as in the process they bumped up my processor, ram and offered an ssd too.

I'm sorry to hear your offer was so disappointing, I guess I was just lucky there aren't any more R2s readily available.

 

Thanks for the info and the link!

 

Im still waiting for some one to try regular DDR3 in there lappy.

 

You should definitely try and get a pair of 780s, however if they dont give it to you, then you should be happy that they gave you what you got so far. 770m in sli is leaps and bounds above the 6990m cf. If you really want the best config, you could offer to pay dell the difference and see how that goes. Also keep in mind that the 18 is in many ways a much better machine than the r1, and that in itself is an upgrade, in addition to the additional cpu/sdd and whatever else they gave you this is a steal.

 

Well I went ahead and placed an order for the G750 with a 770m. Obviously not in the same ballpark as my 780m sli w/ 4930 mx Alienware 18, but saved me about ~$4000 at the end of the day after the refund goes through.

In the mean time I'm going to try and help out slv7 via email the next couple of days with bios flashing before I actually return my second 18 unit.

After that, I expect my G750 will tide me over for the next one to two years until Maxwell or the first Maxwell revision comes out. Then I'll drop another 5k I'm sure lol.

 

Say hello to a soldered CPU that you are stuck with throughout the notebooks entire life. The GPU as well since Asus use weird shaped MXM cards, so you can`t just buy a new GPU from Ebay. Plus they lock down the BIOS to just include the GPUs they used before.
That alone, in my head (lol I know, im a weird one) qualify to "no buy" since you are basically supporting a company that force customers to have to buy a completely new notebook everytime they want to upgrade.

Say hello to having to remove 100s of parts just to get down to the CPU/GPU and being able to repaste them.

Say hello to a mediocre Audio system.

Say hello to a keyboard with just one colour (yeah I know, I`m a teenager wanting pretty colours)

MEH @ you Asus.

 

I hope you stick around and let us know how the Asus G750 goes. I used to be a big fan of Asus motherboards maybe 15 years ago...No idea how they are now, but it'd be nice to see how it works out for you in terms of performance, their support, fit and finish and your overall happiness with the machine. Did the G750 go for about 2k? Any haggling or discounts?

Sorta like how it's expensive to live in the Bay Area and people say how it's great to move out...After a year or 2, a lot of people end up moving back or wants to move back.

Not saying you're moving back to AW anytime soon, but having a bad experience with a machine doesn't mean it's all bad is all...and I wanted to test my theory that there is limited choice and all laptop vendors are sorta crappy in the end.

 

Wow! That's a lot of criticism lol.

I did my research, and I understand your points, but do keep in mind I'm purchasing the system as a two to three year fill-in, and any extra use out of it will just be icing on the cake. Also remember, it really is an inexpensive model given the components inside.

Moving on:

Soldered CPU - I don't care to replace a CPU on a system that inexpensive. The replacement outside of warranty would likely cost nearly as much as the system's resell value.

GPU - Same as above. Also, from what I've read / been told, because of the design choice the card does not need to be repasted and should run cooler than equivalent cards in other machines. Allows for a thinner profile as well.

Locked BIOS - Non-issue for reasons above. Probably hampers overclocking though.

Audio - I use headphones 95% of the time lol

Colors - You may have rebutted your own point about that one lol. The thing I care about least on Alienwares are the pretty colors. I loved the new design mainly because it's less flashy in the front.

Now OBVIOUSLY, I'm not going to love this new ASUS machine like I LOVED my Alienware 18, but, unfortunately, because of the circumstances it's just not meant to be for me to own one this year. I'm excited for next years Maxwell model though and its revision the following year. My wallet and I will be waiting

I love Alienware! Particularly Alienware support. Dell... not so much lately mostly because I'm always routed to somebody in India or something lol.

Yeah there is an unfortunate lack of laptop vendors and variety out there. There also seems to be a shortage of 780m's at the moment. The Clevo/Sager models and all the rebrands from third party vendors are just too ugly for my taste to deal with. I could have gotten a 780m Sli for less than 2.5k if I wanted, but I just hate the way the Clevo/Sagers look. The MSI's feel like they are bad of REALLY cheap toy plastic and have a subpar cooling system. Asus was really the only other alternative for 770m and above.

Since I have my own hard drives already my total after discounts came out to about ~$1700. A very fair price in that range imo. I'll come back and give my impressions / comparisons to the new 18 once I have it in my hands. (I'm predicting it won't be quite as fast...lol )

 

I think early Maxwell won't give as big of a performance leap as people might think. Early Maxwell will run on 28nm, which we might see in Q1/Q2 2014. I'd expect the later 22nm Maxwell, which should give a more tangible performance boost. That won't be till at least Q3/Q4 2014.

Maxwell will have an ARM core beside the GPU core. As such, compute performance is going to get a boost, since Nvidia have not been happy about AMD crushing them in terms of compute performance since AMD's Graphics Core Next (GCN). If you run stuff like compute @ home, for eg Folding @ home, SETI @ home etc, you should be expecting some boost in compute perf with Maxwell.

Technically, the AMD GCN GPU have higher throughput then Nvidia's comparable GPU. It's a shame that their driver support is lacking. Nvidia usually send their people over to game companies earlier than AMD to optimize the games for their GPU.

It's Volta with the on die stacked DRAM that's probably gonna be something. Future Nvidia 'Volta' GPU has stacked DRAM, offers 1TB/s bandwidth - TechSpot

Still, it's a shame, since a few years ago AMD GPUs were theoretically more powerful than the Nvid's GPUs. It's really a shame the drivers aren't as good...

 

Please do share. Didn't you use a 30% off coupon as well? I know I priced my machine to ~$2300-2400 or so with 1 year of support so it's quite possible to get them well below Clevo/Sager prices. You may have had the top CPU though pushing up the price a bit.

My thoughts on all this is that generally, you could have problems with any machine. Hard to say if the percentage is higher with these AW or not. I guess I'll find out soon, it's probably delayed at this point.

 

Well, my 18 got here today and the screen is messed up. There's a band of miscolored pixels that looks horrible, especially on greys.

 

TSMC said yesterday that 20nm (not 22nm) mass production for their customers begins in very early 2014 while they are doing "risk production" right now. I reckon they mean getting the techniques right and maturing the process to get sufficient yields. Since Nvidia was out with the first Keplers in April last year, they will have no problem meeting the same timeframe next year with 20nm Maxwell since production have been going for quite some time.

If they choose to push out Maxwell at 28nm to begin with, it will be because AMDs Volcanic Island (9000 series), is having the market all by itself. Since its a new architecture but running at 28nm, it wouldnt surprise me that Maxwell is out January next year with 28nm, and later in April, build GPUs om 20nm node.


I totally disagree that AMDs GPUs are "more powerful" than Nvidia's GPUs. Sort of. Gaming wise, they were dead even, but Nvidia had more efficient high end GPUs which allowed them to build Titan and GTX 780, while AMDs architecture had too low efficiency, meaning if they followed the core and clock race with Nvidia, they would have to build a 400-500W GPU. Which is why we didnt see any better GPUs than 7970Ghz, and why AMD first now is ready to retake the throne with a more efficient and better architecture, Volcanic Islands.

GPGPU, or amount of TFlops computation power however is AMDs playground. There they can offer much better GPGPU performance for the least amount of money. No doubt. Nvidia can and have beaten AMD there too, but it took a behemoth of a GPU, GTX Titan, to dethrone the smaller 7970.

My 10 cents

 

Ok now even I start to wonder if it was a mistake putting this IPS screen on the Alienware 18?!
So many users here report various problems with it, that I cant wonder if the display is not really ready for prime time?

If Alienware get 20% of the Alienware displays sent back due to various errors, how long will it take them to discontinue using it?

Anyone else that feel the same?

 

Well, even if I were considering buying an 18 - which I am not - then all these screen issues would stop me dead in my tracks and I would not be buying a machine that seems to have such a plethora of possible screen issues. No chance.

Good job for me that I wasn't given an 18 - I feel a whole lot better about getting out whilst I did....

 

I will be keeping an eye out for further user reports, thats for sure.
Its just that this forum got a small user base, this Alienware 18 owners even smaller, and since we see users getting 1-2-3 screens before they find one thats suitable and works great, it kinda makes you wonder. Ive seen youtube videos of users having Alienware 18 screen problems as well.

Already, in the very start of the launch. We even had many people posting news about their orders delayed because of quality problems with the screens,

Small userbase + big percentage out of the userbase) = big problem?

Very fishy

 

well the screen problem was there since day one. since the m18 was launch...

 

No need to say much more than the above two posts, really...

 

Efficiency wise they are not that far apart. Load power are about the same for GTX 680 vs 7970.

By more powerful, I meant theoretical throughput. 7970 > 680, and 7990 > Titan. In fact, the 7970 still beats the Titan there.
AnandTech | AMD Radeon HD 7990 Review: 7990 Gets Official
OpenCL: General-Purpose Computing - AMD Radeon HD 7990: Eight Games And A Beastly Card For $1,000

20nm Maxwell might surface early 2014, but then it'll take some time till mass production of the GPU. Even if TSMC can make it fast, the chips need to be sent to Nvidia to be verified, and that's at least 2 months window there. The good thing for us is, the mobile GPU will come before the desktop GPU.

 

I don't know of anyone saw my signature, but I'm waiting for a replacement for my newly arrived, and already departing, damaged AW18. I didn't share about my issues before because it happens that products are shipped damaged, but I just wanted to mention that among the out of the box issues the screen is one of them. Just like with yours, the screen shows patched that are discolored and pixelated, always visible, but horribly image-disfiguring with greys and greens. I too wonder about the quality of these IPS now.

 

I don't have any problems with the screen. It's actually about as reflective as TN panel, when the stray light comes in at certain angle. For me, if there's light directly behind me, it gets annoyingly reflective. Other times it's fine. Viewing angle is great. I'd prefer better color gamut, and higher contrast. Brightness is good enough for me for indoor use.

 

Yes its really really strange. First quality control issue rumors, then user after user getting the problems.

Its obviously not a problem on all Alienware 18 displays, since we have users lile kh90123 and other that found a working display after 1 or two replacements.

But that is not my point either. It is: is this a sustainable strategy for Dell? To replace so many? Surely that must cost them some money, in work hours for the technicians, shipping and new displays?

If this IPS display is not ready for prime time, what next? I dont think Dell have any other IPS displays as backup, which sucks because that might mean its back to TN again :/

 

Well isn't that just the downside to using percentages on small number.. (you get a high percentage)

Could it be that we get carried away too easily and things seem worse than they are. Regardless, no true way to know for sure how many are affected.

 

Not impossible. Right now ot seems that many have the problem, but I dont know. Have to wait and see I guess

 

Update on my screen issue. I replaced the stock 64GB cache/750GB HDD with a 512GB PM841 and dual 750GB RAID 0, reinstalled Windows and now I don't have any issues with the screen. The greys are all as they should be with no splotches anymore. Weird. Still have a tech coming to look at it on Monday. Having some issues with the Killer Ethernet though. Reinstalled the drivers from the Dell web site, and my computer keeps telling me to check the cable at start up. Don't have any cables to test it with though since I'm at my mom's place.

EDIT: That error message was because I forgot to change my boot order back to mSATA first. Duh. Wireless speeds blow though. Pay for 50Mbps downloads, and I'm getting 10-13Mbps at 29ms ping. MacBook Pro two feet away is getting 49Mbps at 19ms ping, so it's not a distance issue. Not really sure what's going on. Will have to screw around with the drivers, though there aren't any others for the 4352 on the Dell site.

EDIT2: What are you guys with dual 780s/49030MX seeing temp wise? At stock I'm already running high 40s/low 50s at idle, which is higher than my 17 was... After a 3DMark11 run, all hit high 70s. Hit the low 80s with a mild OC of +100/300. Thinking I'll go for another repaste, but taking it apart is just such a PITA for a simple procedure like that.

 

Could it be a channel conflict?

Idle getting 54 and 48 degrees, running 780s but 4900MQ CPU

 

GTX 780M SLI is gone from the configurator @ Alienware.com. They only offer GTX 770M SLI now...

Demand is high!

 

Or supply is low..