Alienware 18, now with Maxwell GPUs (Officially) and a new BIOS

http://www.dell.com/us/p/alienware-18/pd
http://www.alienware.com/landings/laptops.aspx
It's not a joke, and it is available. The Alienware 18 launches with dual GTX 970ms and GTX 980ms with PGA CPUs from the i7-4710MQ to the i7-4940MX (no 48xxMQ, though). A few notes though:

• The storage options are limited due to being the start of the release. There should be more options later in the year, hopefully.
• 16 GB of RAM is the standard for the laptop.
• It'll appear shortly in other regions.
• No eGPU solution available. This laptop is meant for dual GPUs, using the 330w stock charger.
• No touch and no Blu-ray.

Merged duplicated thread from Alienware M18x/18 sub-forum starts at post # 223.
Game's EDIT #1: Here are answers to some questions I have asked Alienware for questions you wanted to ask.

• BIOS will be out in 3 weeks (from 8/25). Yes, this BIOS will work for all Alienware 18 models, those sold in the years 2013-2015.
• BIOS supports CPU and RAM overclock (response to unlocked BIOS). Might want to ask if this is all, but that's if I really want to.
• No desktop CPUs in 18. Just the i7-4710MQ, 4910MQ, and 4940MX.
• As far as launching in other regions, I was given a, "When/if the country offers it, it will be posted on their website."
• The amount of VRAM for the GTX 970m and GTX 980m is 6 GB and 8 GB, respectively. The 3 GB and 4 GB amount is incorrect.
• Maxwell 18 available in Canada, China, Hong Kong, Greece, and South Africa.

If you have any questions, please say them, and I'll ask Alienware for you.
Game's EDIT #2: A couple of updates.

• A single GTX 970m 6 GB option now appears on the US. Dual GTX 970m is a $250 upgrade from the GTX 970m.
• In the US, 8 GB of RAM is the standard. Elsewhere, 16 GB is the standard.
• Still no Windows 10 option, but Windows 8.1 is still an option (other Alienware laptops only have 8.1 Pro).
• BIOS A12 is out. New vBIOS as well, courtesy of rerfy.
  

 

Alienware finally joins the club? Kind of late. Pascal is coming, lol.

Glad to see it, regardless. They seem to still be hanging onto the AW 18. That's good. Should have never tossed it.

Bring the old Alienware back! #ResurrectAlienware

 

Did you guys see this?

 

Yeah, this is really wonderful news. Alienware is back in the battle again with a big SLI beast! Yay!

 

Nice.

Should make a lot of people happy...assuming they didn't go all AW-2015 and gimp the specs, BIOS, PSU, CPU...

I'll be interested to see the detailed spec sheet.

At the very least, shows AW listened to some of their core customers.

@Mr. Fox what say you?

This might be the answer I've been looking for. I really like my (modded) AW17 R1, but I really want to be able to put a nice IPS panel in it (the same LG panel on the AW17 R2). Other than that it's great. So this AW18 (R2?) might be the next best thing.

It'll be competing with the MSI GT80 Titan.

 

Rejoice! @Mr. Fox you can now try the bios for the GTX980Ms now.

 

This is not an R2. This is the R1 with Maxwell.

Great to see!

 

We've been discussing about this since then with PG and at last we got this haha. I'll try to get all the details you need to know answered here.

As far as I've been informed, it's like that indeed.

 

I'm happy to see this. Hopefully the BIOS(s) are in order now. I know there were a TON of issues with Maxwell upgrading from Kepler.

#ResurrectAlienware on Twitter

 

Congrats, long time AW fan here so my fingers are crossed. Its great to have more than one 18 retailer to create competition and benefit the consumer. Really wished the spec sheet showed broadwell but still haswell for now I guess.

 

@Alienware-L_Porras

Please do keep us informed, I've yet to find anything close to my AW17 in the current crop of machines in terms of quality (that's a compliment).

However, the difficulty in upgrading (I need to use modded drivers to get my GTX 970M to work), the so-called "white list" (certain parts won't let the machine boot up if they aren't recognized as approved), the low-CFM fans, wonky fan tables and locked-down BIOS need to be addressed. If you want this to be THE go-to enthusiast machine.

It's good to see AW has come up with this. But those problems I've mentioned might still be enought to deter certain people. MSI has guaranteed at least two generations of MXM upgrades that they will provide/support. Which means none of this BIOS/modded driver crap needs to happen with an MSI to get the newer GPUs to work.

What will be AW's answer to that?

 

Haswell MQ and MX actually perform better than Broadwell HQ. You don't want HQ. HQ is soldered.

Let's hope they release an R2 next year with Pascal.

 

Damn, whish I had the money. So this does mean that the older 18 will get a bios update to support the Maxwell gpu's properly as well ?.

 

So you guys finally came through ey? It took a good 8+ months or so since the Alienware CEO was here answering questions and promising GTX 970M and GTX 980M support which never came.

Now we have it. Dell should write in clear text next to the new BIOS for Alienware 18 on your website "adds support for Maxwell GTX 970M and GTX 980M" so that the guys that have been through the painful process of dealing with custom fan modes with software and BIOS crapping out and forcing people to do a hard reset everytime they try to do changes to the BIOS, know that a proper BIOS is now available for them that make their notebooks behave normally.

Now try to listen to your fans Alienware, before making a move to cut off certain notebook models and lose more Alienware fans. Maybe even be proactive and add features through software that fan`s want for their machines.

I want to suggest:
- On the fly change between certain modes like "Silent", "Extreme Gaming", "Office" etc that makes a software change specifications of GPU and CPU to make them act accordingly to the mode the user want. For example "silent" that removes hyper threading on the CPU, downclock the CPU and the GPU. "Extreme Gaming" that overclock the CPU and GPU on the fly by say 10% to add more performance and change fan table to get a little more agressive.
All these modes are enabled and disabled through hotkeys on the keyboard

 

That all depends on if it's just barely functional or fully working.

 

Notebooks with GTX 970M and 980M are now available in their shops it seems

http://www.dell.com/us/p/alienware-18/pd

 

Hopefully this means new bios with 980m support. If they fix the bios and fan tables, it's a great day for Alienware


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Who's going first to see how it performs?

 

Doesn't MSI and Clevo offer something similar to this?

 

Yay Alienware. A day late and a dollar short for most. It also looks like the 990m is BGA only and possibly every new gpu after that might be. So this might be short lived or last of its bread again. Time will tell.

 

This is true. But, it is still wonderful to see the effort being shown to give those that want a beast something to work with. If they get it right it should be awesome. We have a couple of Alienware 18 owners with 980M SLI that are having good gaming experiences at stock clocks. It will be interesting to see how the power draw is addressed. Have a look at the video below.

The 4930K at stock clocks has remarkably similar power draw (watts) as the 4930MX at 4.3GHz, so this should be a reasonable comparison to what we would see with 980M SLI in the Alienware 18. It is also the same as what I, and others, have seen with 980M SLI in the M18xR2. As you can see in the video, over 500W peak and over 450W average. With the GPUs overclock is it over 600W.

[parsehtml]<iframe width="853" height="480" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/aM2XU2wj2TU?rel=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>[/parsehtml]

 

Is the old chassis, not a new one like 15 and 17. Maybe this is a plus

 

It is. Having owned both a 17 R1 & 17 R2, I can say the older chassis is better in pretty much every way. It is thicker, but that thickness got you an optical drive, 2x2.5" bays and better cooling.

 

I still prefer the 17 one. I have enough performance with single 980m but it's more portable. Anyway i'm happy that a SLI system is back!

 

Better late than never... shame just about everyone jumped ship already

 

negative, better never than a year late. who wants to buy a 4500 dollar piece of year old tech

 

Wow. I never thought I would see the day....

 

Unlocked bios so they claim....what took so long.

 

no 18.4" screen for clevo/sager. MSi offers 18 screen but cpu is soldered on tot he motherboard..

 

No I meant in terms of software to enable various features mentioned above (such as presets for peformance/fan profiles, etc).

I'm well aware of their laptop offerings.

 

Can I update mine A18 late 2013 to new A18 2015? Matherboard and shassis are similar? Just order new GPU's, heatsinks and flash new bios (maybe A11)?

 

I think the basic spec is better than MSI GT80. Aw18 has dual 970m while GT80 a single 980m. Same prize. Also the Aw has better screen (TrueLife).

 

Where did you see that?

 

They talk about OC into Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/Alienware

 

Well, it should destroy anything except for a Clevo P570WM, so there's that, LOL. *Raises Hand* And, if it works right, why not? Remember: Newer is NOT always better... more often than not, it's not better. In fact, the current trend with new tech has already shown us, regardless of the brand name on the chassis, chances are really huge that it will be a piece of garbage. Much better to have a 4th Generation Haswell Extreme CPU than a crippled BGA wuss machine. So, now instead of having only two decent SLI machines with a socketed unlocked CPU left on the face of the earth that are acceptable (both of which are Clevos) we have three again, and one (the Alienware 18) that isn't made out of plastic. What's not to love about that... as long as it works right? *Puts Hand Down Again*

Yes, that is totally correct. But, where there was once zero hope and a lot of despair for Alienware 18 owners there is now a reason for hope with Alienware officially supporting the configuration. Perhaps now we will see a BIOS update that fixes the issue with no VGA boot with Maxwell GPU, a solution to having to run pure UEFI (no Windows 7 support) and the insane power throttling problem. With the machine no longer being ignored as an EOL product, their support could be the answer to our prayers in terms of those issues. We are all eager to find out.

 

Let's hope there's an R2. I'm not so excited, yet. It's great to see, sure. But it's too damn late for this.



Makes me wonder what's in store for the next lineup refresh, and when.

 

I wonder if now would be the time to try and find a decently-price AW18, sell off the old GPUs, and wait for an updated BIOS.

 

Might be... let's hope.

 

I'm not sure what they mean by this (I can ask), but here is this tidbit from their Facebook.
"The limited edition Alienware 18 is our most powerful gaming notebook to date!

The 18 comes packed with the option for either dual NVIDIA 970M GPU’s or dual NVIDIA 980M GPU’s and we've also updated the CPU’s with the 4th generation Intel K-series processors. Taking is one step further, all Alienware 18’s will come with an unlocked BIOS so any customer can tweak the OC settings of the already factory overclocked processors."
As you might have guessed, current 18's will be affected by this. So,essentially, this is Alienware's first laptop that supports 3 generations of mobile GPUs.
Oh, and here's a silly video of the 18.

 

LOL. Looking at that link, they don't even seem to know what hardware is inside of it:

"The limited edition Alienware 18 is our most powerful gaming notebook to date! The 18 comes packed with the option for either dual NVIDIA 970M GPU’s or dual NVIDIA 980M GPU’s and we've also updated the CPU’s with the 4th generation Intel K-series processors. Taking is one step further, all Alienware 18’s will come with an unlocked BIOS so any customer can tweak the OC settings of the already factory overclocked processors."

I'll almost bet the part about the unlocked BIOS is a unintended twist on words, and what they meant to say was that the options to overclock the 4940MX are visible because it's a unlocked CPU.

It would be awesome if it does in fact come with a fully unlocked BIOS though.

 

Thank goodness alienware was on the verge of replacing my cousin's system with a m17! This thing came out at a great time!

 

Wonder when they'll be releasing the bios


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Never! Part of an evil scheme to force you to buy another.

Nah, jk. I don't know. Curious myself.

 

Chances are they didn't redesign anything since it's the same CPU, just updated the graphics card. Really hope they put out new bios for the 17 and 18.


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So I used Alienware website's "chat with an Alienware expert" talked with some guy. He said the 18 inch model will probably have a 2016 version.
And I spoke with dell's customer service, who said the graphic cards are gsync model

 

Not as intelligent as I think of it

Say you hit hotkey FN+F12 for example and you get three pictures there.

Silent: Which removes hyperthreading on the CPU, downclock it to say 2500MHz max plus undervolt the CPU by -50mV which should work across all CPUs, downclock the GPUs to 150MHz or whatever is the lowest state if you have dGPU active and is forced to stay there. If IGP is active, nothing is done to that.

Extreme Gamer: Increase CPU clock by 10% (3500MHz > 3800MHz) and add additional voltage and power limit if required for a full untamed CPU without throttling. If dGPU active, it overclocks the GPU by 10% (say 980M runs at 1070MHz, now it runs at 1200MHz). If IGP active, it adds 1-2x multipliers to the IGP, and overclocks the IGP. For bonus, the system also overclocks the system RAM.

Normal: All hardware run normal, meaning CPU automatically turbo boost if required or idle. dGPU goes down to the lowest state if required and fires up normally if required.

I don`t think its the "unlocked" as we think of. Its probably just the types of overclocking settings we already have in AW18 BIOS. I bet thats what they call "unlocked BIOS for overclocking".

 

@Alienware-L_Porras

Is there anyway you can confirm that the new Alienware 18 2015 is using an updated bios newer than A10 on the previous Alienware 18 2013 models. And if so will it be available on the dell website soon to download. Or did they alternately tweak the vbios to be compatible with the 970M 980M. I would really love to see a fixed bios.

 

Please tell me it has an HDMI input!!!????

 

It does.

 

judging by the specs in the store, it is the same 18 with support for the 970m/980m.
and if so that could mean that the older 18's will be easy to upgrade?