*OFFICIAL* Alienware 18 Owner's Lounge Thread

I used to not able to install the DPTF driver with Win 8, until I upgraded to Win 8.1, then it installed fine. I am not sure what DPTF does, there's like 5 levels of Power Limit and Acoustics Limit. Maybe Mr. Fox or someone else who knows more could chime in.

 

Hopefully... a quick search online and using Intel's drivers tool didn't show anything about it!

I just done a clean installation (again), to make sure everything was installed in-order. I also formatted my 2nd drive for good. Unfortunately I still can't install DPTF... but now I can do the whole setup in <1 hour!
I got Intel's Rapid to accelerate my drive, but it doesn't show the drive grouped with the mSata as it used to... oh well!

 

You need to be in cTDP mode in bios to install the DPTF driver. To be honest, I would not worry about it at all.....have a read of this short 5 page thread: http://forum.notebookreview.com/ali...-driver-dell-drivers-downloads-confusion.html

As for the mSata, once it is being used for caching, it effectively disappears - you should still see it upon boot at the raid splash screen, in diskpart and iRST... but not in my computer etc.

 

I will go through the thread and try cTDP mode. Thanks for it! I thought I done something wrong... looks like I just wasted time and lost a couple of files... oh well

I can only see it in the iRST! Not in the diskpart...

 

Diskpart using an elevated CMD prompt followed by the command "list disk" (without quotes)....try that. If you can see it in iRST, it's all good by the sounds of it.

As for cTDP mode and DPTF, as you have a QM chip and not XM/MX or other variant mentioned in that thread, cTDP/DPTF will not really provide much value, IMHO.

 

Yep I tried diskpart both on Win8 diagnostic screen and within windows -diskpart is one of the cmd utilities I still remember how to use!

cDTP isn't even an option on my BIOS for my QM chip... I tried enabling BIOS OC and disabling it but nothing.

 

Maybe my error thinking you could see the mSata in diskpart LOL - never had a caching mSata to find out, I thought you would see it there....

Well, if you cannot access cTDP mode in the performance options menu, seems like you won't be able to install the DPTF driver anyways.....again, I cannot validate this as I don't have a non-XM/MX cpu right now...heck, I don't even have a machine, let alone a CPU to put in it LOL. I wouldn't lose any sleep over it - on my old machines, I never bothered with DPTF anyway....

 

lol! I guess you can't! To make the mSata available yesterday on Windows, I had to switch from RAID to AHCI and then try through Windows' installer. I guess between my two clean installs, there was no need to re-configure it...

I guess I won't. I will give it a try after I get 8.1. Other than that, I won't bother. The machine appears to work fine -at the moment it is extremely silent and cool, so I am happy.

This is my first Windows installation after 4 years and the first on my personal machine after 6 -not counting in Parallel's ultraeasy VM Windows installation! Tell me old fashion, but I would rather have Win XP's installation any day! Simple and to the point!

 

I have OC disabled in BIOS for now and the DPTF driver installed.

Now I think I have a dead SLI bridge and have to wait another week to get a new cable...

EDIT: Somehow they have the parts here so hopefully it's Thurs or Friday. I really need to get the system back up to its full capacity.

 

What is wrong with your SLI?

 

Dead SLI cable. Can't enable SLI in Windows.

 

I think I am onto something here. Following the 3rd no POST just now, I took out the palmrest, took out all the RAM, and let the system beep away. It beeped for a while then restarted, but still no boot.

I then took out the display and CPU, and let it beep away. I believe during that time I also disconnected the CMOS battery. Then I put the CMOS battery in, after putting in the CPU. Eventually I put the display in and it booted again.

So there're ways to reset it without using another CPU, which involves cycles of powering on/off with the CPU/CMOS battery removed. I am not sure about the exact order, but if it run into no POST again I will be able to pinpoint it further.

The system will beep according to this beep code:
My Alienware Computer is not showing image and is beeping (No POST Beep Codes Table) | Dell US

 

Good finding, so the SLI did not fix the issue? Have you thought about sending it in for us to review it?

 

No I still don't have SLI on the system, due to dead SLI bridge. Both GPUs are fine and are in working order, I tested them out by swapping GPU 1 to GPU 0, which required me to swap the heatsink on the GPUs since the GPU heatsinks are not symmetric. Both GPUs show up fine in GPUZ and show up in BIOS, but once the SLI cable is connected GPU 1 shows up as FF in the revision tab in GPU. FF means 1111111, which in this situation means something is not right. All of those led me to conclude that the SLI cable is dead, and I have called up Dell and should be getting a new SLI cable soon.

Just to avoid confusion, the no POST situation is not related to the SLI issues that I have. I suspect it's the frequent removal of the mainboard and the detaching of the SLI cable which broke it. I saw the technician applied quite a bit of force trying to get the SLI cable in. I should have done it myself, one just needs to align it properly and it just pops in.

Brother, it's high time Dell gives us an answer with the BIOS issues and the CPU throttling on 4900MQ/4930MX. I hope the throttling on the 4930MX is not an intended design choice. From my observations of the temperature and power and fan noise, it's becoming more obvious to me that it might very well be a design choice. One can see it in all the AW 14, 17 and 18, that Dell has sacrificed component temperature and surface temperature slightly in order to obtain lower noise. On top of that, the fan response has a hefty delay that's no less than 5000ms. I am not expert or anything, but this is not a good design choice. There are better solutions out there. The EC controller need to not just look at temperature, but rate of change of temperature when adjusting the fan speed.

 

I know it's taking a while, but we can't rush them anymore We have already escalated the case and submitted them the ideastorm threads. Now it's up to them to develop the fix. The thing is that sometimes it takes a while for them to create it.

 

They still should be able to atleast release a bios with fixed fans tables etc for the people that paid for faster CPU's to run properly without throttling.

 

Well, my purchase of an 18 is 'on hold' until it's resolved. I was sorely tempted by a relatively good deal recently, but I am not gonna part with thousands if the machine is gimped - no matter how cheap I could get one for. Maybe AW will lose a few sales - like mine - because of this. I think it needs resolving F A S T - much like other issues, particularly the totally inept UK web site....which will also be bleeding cash for Dell because of really stupid errors whilst configuring machines...

 

Indeed. Tried to configure an AW 18 on the UK site of AW (since for some odd reason they don't sell the 18 in the Netherlands), and well, things didn't go that well...

 

Yeah, I know exactly what you mean. I missed out on a 10% 3 day promo because the site was so awful, the offer ended, then suddenly some of the options were available again, however, massive problems in trying to configure certain configurations where the same machines do not have the same issues on the US site......it's almost as if anyone outside the US is somewhat of an afterthought, like we really don't deserve the same kind of service....

 

Well, I've had my Alienware m18 for a month now and thought I would post my findings.

First: The obvious. Gaming is smooth and crisp. I've never had a machine - desktop or laptop - this quick. No doubt a desktop of equivalent value would be much faster (duh) but then I would lose the (relative) portability. The machine is complete overkill as it is - The only games that challenge this machine (Crysis 3 and Rome 2 Total War) would be CPU limited on a Desktop anyway, thus requiring steely-eyed overclocking to eke out much more performance.

After a few weeks I replaced my 64gb ssd cache/750mb hdd combo with a 500gb Samsung 840 evo. I have to say I am slightly underwhelmed by the difference - the caching on the 64gb ssd was actually pretty great, working much more effectively than I realised.

Purchasing a bag was a bit of a nightmare. The Everki Titan was too small (!?!). Had no wish to purchase an Alienware bag, as it positively screams 'Steal Me!'. Eventually I managed to find a Toshiba bag built for 17" laptops that was an exact fit.

There were a few days where I was worried because a green spot appeared on my monitor, however it seems to have vanished naturally.

A warning to those considering using the m18 as a classic laptop - this is not suitable for carting around the house, or moving around on a whim. It's not just the weight and size at issue, and the underclocking that takes place on battery means you won't want to game with it unplugged.

That said, it's fast. So very very fast. I don't regret purchasing this in lieu of a desktop at all.

Despite my comment about the green spot earlier, the inbuilt screen is so nice I've stopped using my nice expensive low-latency monitor. The colours pop very nicely.

In hindsight getting 32gb of RAM was total overkill. Absolutely nothing uses that much RAM and I don't run VM's off my laptop.

1 month later - very happy user.

 

It is because we are paying more... oh wait!

The site, customer care and sales rep all need work. I am not a native English speaker, but I had no troubles speaking and listening to people, when I was at Uni and now at work. Everytime I call AW support after 6, I always have to ask them repeat what they are saying 2-3 times!
The sales rep for UK are total idiots... they don't know how to sell and what they are selling, just how to spam you "asking you to make your mind soon" and after the sale they just ignore you.

Last week I was speaking with a senior business consultant from work; he used to work at Dell's enterprise division at the UK. I told him my story with my ex AW17 and he was shocked how poor their support and quality control is! He told me that within Dell, they consider AW their top-class, premium brand. Another interesting thing he mentioned is that Dell had to outsource customer care/ tech support to Philippines -as they had their support in the UK for a really short period0 due to their financial status but they "plan" to bring it back to the UK at some point -something he doubts it will ever happen or at least, anytime soon.

 

Ah, my AW18 is on the road Was sent just now!

So I guess by monday I might be with the new baby

The swedish sales people at the Dell company where all nice, they gave some degree of effort to try to fix my issue(except one guy who really was being an idiot). However the "order" people that you actually can call and talk to here where excellent and helpful and really put in the extra effort.

I'm hoping I wont have to experience how the tech support is for another while

 

For anyone who's going to run Win 8.1, and don't want to enable SecureBoot in BIOS, I found a way to remove the annoying watermark on desktop which says "SecureBoot not configured correctly".

http://forum.notebookreview.com/ali...questions-discussions-here-2.html#post9421227

 

Huh. I have read this before, but I have seen little reason to believe it.

 

I don't know if Dell considers AW it as their top class but it is probably one of their more profitable brands.

 

Alienware computers are in a completely different class from everything else that Dell sells. That is an apples-to-oranges comparison. Nothing else they sell can match the specs and performance of the Alienware product line.

They have some very nice XPS, Latitude and Precision machines, but they don't compete with Alienware and they are not gamer/overclocker/enthusiast products. They are business class workstations and multimedia focused machines that are intended for a different customer base.

This is an example of Dell's best in a general consumer XPS laptop. I am using one of these. It is an absolutely fantastic machine... it plays most games well, has an amazing display, and superb build quality... but it is by no means a high performance enthusiast product.

New XPS 15 9530 QHD+ Touch
Dimensions & Weight
Height: 0.3"-0.7" (8 -18mm) / Width: 14.6" (372mm) / Depth 10" (254mm)
Starting at 4.44lbs (2.01kg)
Specifications
4th Generation Intel® Core™ i7-4702HQ processor (6M Cache, up to 3.2 GHz)
16GB Dual Channel DDR3L 1600MHz (8GBx2)
512GB mSATA Solid State Drive
NVIDIA® GeForce® GT 750M 2GB GDDR5
15.6 inch LED Backlit Touch Display with Truelife and QHD+ resolution (3200 x 1800)
Exterior/Chassis
Machined aluminum lid and palmrest
Carbon fiber composite base
Edge-to-edge Corning® Gorilla® Glass NBT™ display
Silicone palmrest pad
Full size, backlit chiclet keyboard
Glass integrated-button touchpad

 

Wow, that's an awesome resolution.

 

It is, I've never seen that before. Hopefully, next year, Alienware offers a 2560x1600 screen for those who order SLI graphics on the AW 18. The mobile GPU's we are seeing now - pretty much ever since the 680M - are proving to be able to handle high resolution gaming. I'm willing to bet the 880M is going to do so very well...especially dual 880M's.

Are we peaking into an entirely new era of mobile gaming for Dell/Alienware? Hope so. A lot of things will change over the next few years with Dell and its subsidiaries. Michael Dell and Silver Lake are taking over and moving into the private sector, once again focusing on the customer, as opposed to the stockholders.

 

I'd love to get my hands on one of those Touch's - just to see the panel!!

 

I personally do not like using a touch display. I use two Dell XPS machines with super hi-def touch displays (the other is an XPS One 2720 AIO with 27" 2560x1440 True Life display). I feel that using touch is awkward compared to a mouse and keyboard, not to mention that I truly loathe having fingerprint slime on my screen, LOL.

However, the QHD+ True Life 3200x1800 display is beyond phenomenal. It is super bright (break out the sunglasses) and has amazing clarity. You have to increase the scaling to 125-150% for touch to work correctly, otherwise everything is too small for touch with a 15" panel. I set the scaling to 100% and do not use the touch screen and the amount of stuff you can fit into 3200x1800 display is amazing.

The XPS 15 9530 QHD+ is a real beauty. It has what seems to be a carbon fiber base, edge-to-edge display, heavy gauge aluminum palm rest and display lid (about the same thickness as the M18x chassis base) and a rubber pad on top of the aluminum palm rest. It also has a backlit keyboard. It does not set any world records for speed with GT 750M, but it handles most of my popular Steam games at 1080p resolution with totally playable framerates. Here are some examples to help put things in perspective as far as the pixels are concerned. Be sure to click the "gear" icon in the upper right corner and look at these in full screen mode. And, yes, that Tomb Raider screen shot is showing the playable frame rate with medium settings at 1080p.

<iframe class='imgur-album' width='100%' height="550" frameborder='0' src="http://imgur.com/a/QZ8GE/embed"></iframe>

 

Ended up settling for this machine. Question is solved.

- Nvidia 780m SLI with 4GB VRAM
- 4th Generation Intel® Core™ i7-4800MQ
- 18.4 inch (467.36 mm) WLED FHD (1080p) TrueLife TN 400 Nit Display (1920 X 1080)
- Memory (RAM): 16GB Dual Channel DDR3L at 1600MHz
- 750GB 7200RPM SATA 3Gb/s + 64GB mSATA SSD Caching

 

They are both fairly good deals, but I think the first one is a little better. The second one will outperform the first, without a doubt, so I'd go with the second one.

 

Dell - Slap that panel in a 15" AW......please.......or make the same panel for the 18.....touch capabilities? - don't worry, I couldn't care less about them

Can't help but think that this is a Dell attack on the Apple MacBook Retina Display market....which is good...

 

What about as far as resale value as I will probably opt for the 880m's in the near future.... And thanks for your feedback.

 

If you plan to upgrade in six to eight months, I'm sure the 770M's will suffice. Then again, the 780M's will have a good resale value, and the 4800MQ will be good for 880M's. That's a tough one... I'm assuming the 780M's will hold resale value best.

And, no problem. Happy to help.

 

I plan on actually selling the computer when the refreshed models become available.... I have a very tough decision to make. I just think it would be easier to find a potential buyer for the first build because of its price point.... correct me if I'm wrong and also that build gives me the option of removing the 840 500GB SSD and selling it for 250.00 or so.

 

Oh, you're trying to sell? Hmm, yeah the first would be easier to sell probably. Cheaper usually is. Of course you can remove the SSD.

 

To stop beating around the bush I already purchased and have the first Alienware 18 with the 770m's. I am just trying to decide if selling it and opting for the second machine is worth the hassle and money and if it will help with the resale value when it comes to upgrading my machine when the 880m's are released (supposedly big gains in performance)

 

Damn Fox, that resolution is just A-M-A-Z-I-N-G! Everything looks so... beautiful. I say it once again; amazing! If Clevo won't put a display like that in future laptops (within 4 years), I am definitely getting an 18 (asuming the 18 will have this resolution by then).

 

My recommendation with have been to go with 780M SLI no matter what. As J.Dre said, they will have a good resale value. If 880M does not materialize, isn't substantially better or priced even more asinine that 780M then having 780M SLI and not bothering to upgrade would leave you in better shape than 770M. The resale value on the used 770M cards probably will not be that good.

 

I plan on selling the unit entirely...... not selling the old cards and buying new cards, but I see your point.

 

That is something else...

 

Has anyone here that owns an 18 tried Batman: Arkham Origins?

 

That's a great config, you'll love your AW Let us know when you get it.

 

I am waiting for a Steam sales. I typically buy at around the $20-$25 price range, so I will be waiting for a little while.

I hope it comes with SteamWorks and none of the SecuROM garbage. Now that GFWL is dying, hopefully we will not see any more of the silly DRM drama like I had to put up with on Batman: Arkham City.

Thankfully, that's fixed now for both of the older Batman games, but the Batman: Arkham Asylum benchmark was removed.

 

I played it for a bit last night. With stock slv7 clocks and CPU at 4.2 I could max out all settings, including AA (tried with both FXAA and GeForce AA) and I saw 100+ fops at all times. With sync on it played quite smooth, with the occasional stutter, which I think it's due more to optimization than performance, since fsp didn't get lower than 59. At 4.2 CPU temps ranged between 75 and 85. At 4.1 between 71 and 85. I noticed that you cannot assign more than 3 actions to a multiple button mouse like before. I liked to have grapple and deflect on the left side buttons, but now it's not possible to assign any command to them under options; only left and right click and the wheel are recognized. Using the keyboard for that instead it subtracts from my "Batman-like" experience. Not to mention that I used to be very quick and effective against villains thanks to that mouse configuration. Maybe that's something that they'll fix it soon with a patch.

The game itself is cool as expected, however it also feels it doesn't really add anything new. It is like a third movie of a successful series, which was made with profit in mind and based on the same ideas. Definitely there isn't the wow factor anymore. Combact and environment feel very familiar. The world is larger, so you can spend more time wandering and fighting. Graphics are gorgeous, gothic, and dark as expected. Truth is, I wasn't really expecting Batman origins to be a different game, yet considering that now our hero deals with villains that fight back and deflect his attacks skillfully, I wanted to have more variety and possibilities to approach a fight differently (something new from what batman has been able to bring from the last two games). Don't get me wrong, it is a very enjoyable game with gorgeous graphics, attention to detail, fluid and satisfying fights, and that seems performing really well on our rigs. The only bitter note is that it feels like Matrix 3, we get it, we want to love it, but we know this is the end. Unless they bring something really fresh into this game, it is really done for it.

 

Does anyone know where I can offload my 18. I have been trying to figure out where to sell it.

 

Uh eBay or the for sale section here....

 

100 posts required to sell in the NBR Marketplace though, and he's only got 24, so that's a no-go right now.....Ebay or local sale perhaps....

 

It should be 100 posts and X amount of them must be 'liked', all by different users. No real justification for a post requirement that shows no real dedication to the community. More times than not, people 'liking' your posts is more significant than having a large amount of them.