*OFFICIAL* Alienware 18 Owner's Lounge Thread

The top end A18 Quad-Play unit uses four 256GB drives: one 256GB mSATA, two 256 SSD in the hard drive bay and they rip out the blue ray reader for the fourth 256 GB SSD drive and run that all in RAID 0. If you want more storage you can theoretically quadruple the memory by replacing with one 1TB mSATA and three 1TB SSD's in RAID 0 for 4TB of internal storage. RAID 0 works best if all units are the same size. It would be kind of extreme to go beyond that.

 

Hi Guys. Do you think new Alienware 18 will have IGZO screen or better resolution LCD ? Maybe even bigger display ?

 

Doubtful anything other than GPU & CPU configurations will be any different, as basically, this is just a "refresh" to keep up with new graphics card and processor hardware refreshes. A completely new revision (eg. an Alienware 18 R2) with new screens etc is not likely to happen for a while yet.....

 

That is showing 2 drives fit there (physically) using the primary HDD caddy in the optical bay. But, there's no SATA port there to support a second drive. You would have to locate another SATA port on the motherboard and route a cable to that second drive before it would actually work.

 

Engineering samples can sometimes be better, sometimes worse. I have a 4930MX ES and it seems to be better than most, but I have seen more examples of an ES not performing as well as QS or OEM. Any unlocked CPU is only going to perform as well as the person tuning it. Simply installing it in the CPU socket won't yield great results. That 3DMark11 score is a bit low, but probably normal if nothing is overclocked and you have a stock 780M vBIOS. In judging the performance of the CPU, the Physics Test results and Physics score number are what you want to look at versus the overall score.

Here are some settings that work well with my 4930MX ES CPU that you can test to see if they work well for you...

<iframe class='imgur-album' width='100%' height="750" frameborder='0' src="http://imgur.com/a/NN4vg/embed"></iframe>

Haswell processors run extremely hot, so you may want to grab some Liquid Ultra thermal paste to get the temps under control. See info here on that suggestion.

 

Soon...

Sent from my SGH-T999 using Tapatalk 2

 

So... My AW18 came early. Ecstatic about that. I'm feeling it's underperforming though. In Metro Last Light at 1920x1080, SSA off, Tesselation on Low, Motion Blur on Normal, 16x texture filtering, it's seeming just as choppy as my desktop running a single gtx 470. Shouldn't 880's in SLI be able to run this nearly max? I know it's pretty demanding but I've been turning settings down a lot and it doesn't seem smooth at all. Am I missing some tweak I need to make?

Also my Tactx keys on the left side seemed to be stuck on a pale yellow color despite what color I set them to.

 

Check for cpu throttling

 

Where exactly? I've been googling but every bit of info is at least a year old and implying that updates soon would fix the issues so I'm no sure.

 

have you tried to reinstall the video drivers?

 

• Be sure SSAA is disabled in MetroLL
• Install the latest drivers from NVIDIA
• Use GeForce Experience to apply optimized settings
• Open NVIDIA Control Panel and confirm that SLI is enabled
• Set NVIDIA Control Panel to "Use the advanced 3D settings" then click "Take me there." On the Global tab change everything you can find in the menu the 'High' or 'Maximum performance' option and whatever you find with an 'off' option, turn it off
• Open your Windows power profiles, choose 'High performance' then go into the advanced settings and follow the same logic, set everything to '100%' or 'maximum' or 'performance'
• Be sure you are not using integrated graphics (check Device Manager or GPU-Z to be sure it is not seeing the Intel HD graphics
• Be sure the system is connected to AC power, as it is not possible to have an acceptable gaming experience running on bettery
• If your on-screen preview is showing the TactX keys changing color in Alienware Control Center but they are not taking effect, download Alienware Control Center from Dell Support. Uninstall AWCC and reinstall it using the new file you downloaded, then try again

 

Not able to run through that stuff yet but thank you very much for typing out so much info. I can imagine you have probably regurgitated that information many times by now.

Sent from my HTC One using Tapatalk

 

Would it be worth switching from a M18xR2 with a 3940XM and Dual 7970's for a M18 with a 4800MQ and dual 770's with everything else being equal

 

New tech is always nice, but you could just buy two 770m's and be better off for it. (personal opinion only)

 

No, not even for free. What you have already is a better product. Just upgrade the video cards and revel in it.

 

First, thanks again for the post.

Did everything you recommended and Metro was working great until I got to the part where you test fire guns. Got a lot of choppiness from everywhere thereafter. I even went backward from that point to more simplistic rooms and the choppiness stayed constant.

 

It almost sounds like your GPU is downclocking. Have you ever used Afterburner or PrecisionX to monitor for GPU core clock using the on screen display (OSD)?

 

dont tell him that, its better to be oldschool for sure

 

Inadequate power supply for your setup?

 

Using the power supply that came with it. I'm assuming that's enough


Sent from my HTC One using Tapatalk

 

I wouldn't stress out about it right now. Both Metro games can cause even very powerful desktop computers to struggle during certain game maps. To some extent this could be normal. How about other games? The other thing to consider is that your 880M is using a stock NVIDIA vBIOS, and that almost always translates into less than expected performance. The problem might go away once SVL7 releases a modded vBIOS. If you were not already aware of it, GTX 780M and GTX 680M performance also really sucked with a stock vBIOS, so we shouldn't expect 880M to be any different.

Nobody wants to be told their baby is ugly... even when it's an accurate statement.

 

Hopefully I'll be joining you guys in about 3 days! I'm so excited for the M18!!!

 

A review of the 880m at techinferno reveals that there's some severe throttling going on. It looks like svl7 is taking requests to modify stock BIOS's and he seems to have done a few 880m setups. Would it be safer to wait for some public release or would I need to get one tailored for my Alienware 880m's?

 

Nope, I'd jump in on the ground floor to get in on the vBIOS action.

Just be sure to provide feedback to svl7 on how it works.

 

it is not almost, it is down clocking for sure. mine use to do the same until I update to bios A06 from A05.

 

WELCOME to the community. Looking forward to have you with us here on NBR and on the Alienware Team as well.

 

I have a AW 18 coming from the Dell Outlet as a outlet new (someone cancelled an order) for a maxed out system with:

4930mx CPU
32gb Ram
256 mSata + 1tb
Dual 880m SLI
Blue-Ray / DVD
Win 7 Ultimate
4650 Wireless
1 year parts and labor

With free shipping and no sales tax came to just under $ 3500. Should I be happy with that deal?

 

Congrats... that's a fantastic deal. Excellent specs.

 

You should be happy. I'd ask dell to do a free upgrade to windows 8.1



Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

They won't do it. The OS you get is the one that ships with the system and they don't make any exceptions. The won't even sell you a different OS at an extra cost. Apparently, they have some kind of agreement with Micro$haft and they say there is no wiggle room for them to make exceptions.

 

So... how do I score these sweet deals?

 

You have to watch the Dell Outlet for unusual deals. There are 4 Alienware 18 available for way too much (might as well order new) and one low spec M18xR2 that's severely overpriced for it being a "scratch and dent" option. Looks like there are no good deals to be had at the moment, but if you keep an eye on the outlet they do have some great buys now and then. If you find one you want, buy it immediately. The eBay resellers snag them quickly and it will be gone if you blink twice.

Dell Factory Outlet

Spoiler

 

Just ordered my 880m sli from xotic, now the wait begins

Sent from my SGH-T999 using Tapatalk 2

 

how much is that

 

Base config is around 3250 which is what I got

 

ah i thought they were selling you graphics card alone.

 

Anyone here get the 860M SLI configuration yet? I'm thinking about it. Wondering what the performance is like. Maxwell is impressive so far.

 

Sadly the 860M in the 18 is kepler not maxwell. I'd love to know the answer to this too though anyways.

 

It is? Are you sure? That doesn't make sense.

The ASUS 750JM has the Maxwell variant.

 

Is the the 750JM soldered or a removable card? The only maxwell cards released so far that I've heard of are all soldered on and all the MXM cards are all kepler. I would love someone to prove me wrong though.

 

http://forum.notebookreview.com/gam...-860m-2gb-maxwell-vs-gtx-860m-4gb-kepler.html

There are two variants of the 860m - the Maxwell 860m 2gb will be a soldered on solution, the Kepler 4gb version is MXM, as far as I know..... NVIDIA GeForce GTX 860M - NotebookCheck.net Tech

 

So, if the Kepler version is 4GB, the one's in the Alienware 18 are in fact Maxwell variants? They aren't soldered on.

I've seen the 860M Maxwell on BF4 and it performs better than the 770M, and also runs about 10C cooler, which is impressive.

 

The MXM variants are Kepler, not Maxwell. Not sure about the differences in vRam between the two, or why Dell are using 2gb Kepler MXM cards instead of the 4gb posted earlier, but see below:

Source: Review Nvidia GeForce GTX 860M Maxwell vs. Kepler - NotebookCheck.net Reviews

I don't quite agree that 2gb vs. 4gb makes little difference - maybe it does on native notebook resolution, but I imagine lots of 18 owners who have 860m SLI will want to push that resolution up higher with external displays......the 4gb variant would obviously be better for that reason. Running at 1080p, probably not much difference.

 

You're right... 2GB of vRAM is not "more than adequate" any more, in spite of the talking heads that like to make comments like that. Even 1080p can gobble that up real fast with large textures and high settings, not to mention that some games use more than they actually need to.

Spoiler

AvP

Far Cry 3

Skyrim w/ ENB Mods

COD Ghosts

 

I agree. And thanks for the info, Steve. Makes sense now.

 

Well . . . finally jumped . . . got the below on the way

4th Generation Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-4910MQ processor (Quad Core, 8MB Cache, Overclocked up to 4.1GHz) . . . didn't think the 4930 was worth the $500 . . just not that much of an increase
Dual NVIDIA(R) GeForce(R) GTX 880M graphics with 16GB total (2x 8GB) GDDR5 - NVIDIA SLI(R) Enabled
2TB RAID 0 (2x1TB 5400RPM) + 80GB mSATA SSD Caching
Windows 8.1 Pro 64-bit English

Yeah . . . I went 8.1 . . . figured I have a couple of 7 licenses that I can use as a Dual Boot if I want

I'm moving up from a 2920XM and 6990 CF . . . so happy to be going green again!

Will I be able to use the below . . . I thought I saw a few posts only mentioning 1600Mhz for memory . . . I really like the 1866MHz that I have in my R1 tho it looks like I won't be able to use that memory as it's not DDR3L? and just DDR3

http://www.corsair.com/en-us/vengea...-laptop-memory-upgrade-kit-cmsx8gx3m2b1866c10


Farson

 

cool! congrat.

 

Yes, that 1866 memory should work fine. You cannot use the DDR3 from your M18xR1... has to be DDR3L for the 18.

 

Mr. Fox!

Thanks for the reply!!

 

Just to add to what Mr. Fox said:

Usually, DDR3L memory also supports 1.5v operation. So, technically, you should be able to run 1.35v (DDR3L) memory in any system.