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

Let me hit on a different form for this topic.. Porras are you guys at alienware going to extend any offers to us that have been plagued with issues on the first M18? because i my self have been patiently waiting for the fixes to come rolling out and the only thing alienware did was to discontinue the m18 do to any number of problems..

i feel greatly cheated by this and im sure others will to.. i am glad tho the 18 didnt die off but im very sad that alienware hasnt fixed or addressed are issues as of yet on the first M18.

 

Maybe this is a dumb question but will the 980m sli work with windows 7? Or is that weird uefi only crap still be going on?

 

Grat news!

 

and it doesn't have the stupid alien head for the power button....that thing was ugly.

 

Is it advisable to buy this unit now or should I wait for the next refresh?

From their official Facebook page "Intel 6th generation notebook processors have yet to be announced. When that is ready for the market - we will be ready."

 

There are no guarantees in life. Snoozers often turn out to be losers. If you want one, better get one before it's too late. Plus, who knows if the 6th Generation notebook CPUs are even going to be worth having. They might be great, or they might suck. Strike while the iron is hot. Having newer tech means nothing if it sucks.

On another note... Some of the comments on Alienware's Facebook page are too stupid for words (which should come as no surprise to anyone).

Who gives a rat's butt about longer battery life or reduced power consumption? If that stuff matters, then this is not the kind of machine you want anyhow. These are for performance freaks, not tree-huggers.

 

The 18 will pretty much stay the same (unless new GPU options arrive) even when Skylake mobile releases.
Skylake mobile would only affect the new laptops.

 

Skylake's IPC improvement over Haswell is about 5% and it doesn't seem to overclock much better either. Just some things to consider because mobile Skylake will be BGA only.

 

Hopefully win7 support, nobody knows yet.. Reps keep us in the dark usually.

 

Yeah, Facebook... LOL. I seldom have the pleasure of seeing so much stupidity concentrated in such a small area...

@johnksss and @D2 Ultima and @Kpaxx will get a big kick out of this.

 

ALRIGHT!!! Support for the GTX 980m. This is the gr8-ummm, wait a minute my AW 18 has been rocking 980ms for 8 months. LMAO, thanks to the community for achieving that feet with no help from Dell/AW. I'm wondering if Dell took the communities work and released it here Regardless, glad to have it back, maybe if I have to send mine in for service, parts will be available.

 

I hope everything does get straightened out for existing Alienware 18 owners as well. That would be wonderful. An updated system BIOS (unlocked, no less,) and a vBIOS that allows the beast to use 980M SLI correctly without any stupid UEFI shenanigans and nasty power throttling would be welcomed by all and help restore the brand reputation that has been lost.

 

ha. This would be a worthy remedy to my (still dead) Alienware 18 eh @ Alienware-L_Porras. I've had 3 sets of nVidia 780M SLIs, a system board, a LCD, and a palmrest replaced. Still doesn't turn on and is currently sitting in the corner still waiting for a proper fix.

 

Great news. What do they say about squeaky wheels? Of course, I wish they would do something for those of us struggling with the crippled, throttling disaster that us owners of the 880m version are stuck with. Sure wish I still had the 3800 I paid for mine to spend on a new one that isn't broken. Glad its back though.

on a side note, how funny would it have been if they released it running Windows 10 with all the crap going on with it right now. See that Dell, that's the direction it seems like you were heading, to a company that would do that. This is a nice surprise and a start to earning some trust and respect back. Keep it up, there is more work to be done.

 

Ohhhhhh.................................

ohh.................

This is why I buy Alienware.

 

Indeed, I just went through a third set of 780M's and just had a replacement machine for my old M18 approved...I was wondering why they didn't immediately just offer one of the new M17's and make me agonize over possibly going from SLI to single GPU, but now I'm keeping my fingers crossed it was just because they wanted to actually send me another 18 inch unit with SLI...oh wouldn't that be wonderful!

 

This is making me consider scratching off my desktop plans for next year.

 

Who knows. Maybe they will when they get refub/reject 2015 Alienware 18s in. No way I would settle for a 17 R2, it is just gimped compared to the A18

 

I saw Mr. Fox Tweet this today and was wondering, didn't you all confirm that there is no way to use these GPUs in the AW18 without having them throttle like heck? So how did Dell manage to do this?

Do you think those machines are sold with an updated BIOS or motherboard or what's the deal here? or are they selling them with free throttling combo like the case with the throttling CPUs on the new Alienware 17 15, and 13 line?

 

I see they just straight bypassed my comment (facebook) and answered everyone else. Too funny.

 

@johnksss - And, had they answered we still wouldn't know for sure if the answer would be accurate. Almost everything I find on Facebook is wrong, messed up, lies, distortions, or just a mindless regurgitation of something found elsewhere. I think Facebook is probably the most worthless example of troll-infected social media on the face of the earth.

 

The problems everyone has experienced are BIOS related. So, yes... they definitely may have fixed the problem(s); and if so, it will be awesome for everyone that already owns one if we can flash an updated BIOS. But, we won't know if they fixed the problems until we find out. It will be interesting when we find out.

 

or it can be that they are selling it with the current throttling problem since they don't seem to care from what we've seen from the new Alienware laptop models that everyone has been complaining about. I check daily for driver updates on my AW18 page under my service tag and it's so sad they they only have a few WLAN Drivers and outdated GPU drivers there as usual and the main components such as Chipset/Card Reder/Alienware command center/OSD App are all missing. Even more sad when you consider that they have all the drivers for the consumer based models such as the Inspiron and Vostro but they ignore their flagship models.

I can't wait till someone buys one of those new models with the 980M SLI GPU setup to let us know if it throttles or not.

 

No way for us to know until we see the outcome. I doubt they have even shipped the first one yet. We will have to wait and see. BIOS and driver updates are never available before a product starts shipping, so we will have to wait and see what happens with that also. I'm looking forward to seeing what happens as well.

 

Longer battery life and reduced power consumption should mean a lot to you. The advances that allow those efficiency improvements has also been what's allowed desktop-class CPUs and GPUs into notebooks. That reduced power consumption is what lets two 980Ms go into an 18 in the first place.

Also, not everyone buys an 18 for benchmarking or FPS gaming. It's actually pretty nice to use the integrated graphics if you're stuck someplace and can't plug in but want to browse the internet, so you can get a few hours of battery life rather than just an hour or less. Those of us who use the 18 for graphics or video editing, or just as a main rig like having the fans stay quiet and only whir up when needed.

A machine that sucked 300W+ all the time and ran with the fans on full blast whenever it was on just because "who cares about anything?" would be pretty annoying, not to mention rather silly in 2015.




I agree the FB comments are stupid though, but that's the maturity level of some people.

 

I bet my desktop that regularly draws 1400-1800 watts makes you wanna go hug a tree doesn't it?

 

If that was in response to the previous post, it bears mentioning he has a valid point. If it weren't for advances in efficiency, there wouldn't be an AW18 with SLI GTX 980Ms.

 

Yes it has plenty relevancy to the comment. The majority of buyers of a enthusiast grade 18" notebook are buying it for power and speed. Hell even so a lot people are adding second psu's to get more power to them. If green is a concern there are plenty of low power 17" notebooks that play that game and can still edit video and check email.

 

Yet you once again missed the point that the increased efficiency that has been gained across the years is what has allowed this dual-GPU beast to even exist in the first place. The point is that "green" concerns have helped make such powerful GPUs in the first place. Hence why they should be important from a certain point of view. Increased efficiency means you can cram more power into the same chassis without really affecting thermals. I should think any performance enthusiast would relish the idea.

He didn't say you should ask for a green machine - if you think that then your reading comprehension needs work. He said you should be concerned about things such as power efficiency, and the reasons have been clearly stated. Not only that, but a powerful machine, and one that can run quiet and get a few hours of battery life, are not mutually exclusive. Good fan tables, thick, high-RPM fans and an (optionally enabled) iGPU can be present and allow the AW18 to be both.

And no, your comment had no relevance whatsoever. It was childish and was meant as an insult to the above poster. You offered no insight, no counter-argument, added nothing of value to the discussion. It was pretty much the definition of a trash, useless and inflammatory post.

 

AW18 is back!

 

That's just typical evolution of technology. They had desktop CPUs in notebooks back in the early 2000's. They have had a series of mid-range to high-end gpu's in notebooks for years. Way before the whole green movement. The whole preaching the green to am enthusiasts crowd won't go very far. The opinion on green is my opinion as much as you have yours except you state yours OPINION as fact. Although mine has fact with the history of high powered laptops having very high-end parts before the whole global warming green movement.

 

It was a smart move on AW's part, yay!

 

No, this is just way wrong and messed up thought process. Totally inaccurate, too. GTX 980M is absolutely not an efficient GPU. Powerful, definitely yes... but, efficient, absolutely not. It draws more power than any notebook GPU ever produced. And, you do not need longer battery life or reduced power consumption to have amazing performance in a laptop. That's Kool-Aid drinker nonsense. What you need is ample power and excellent thermal management. Lack of both of those is what gives laptops a bad reputation among desktop fanboys. The ridiculous preoccupation with size and weight reduction, reduced power consumption and increased battery life on high performance and "gaming" notebooks are huge impediments to achieving desktop-class performance. You cannot have it both ways. You must choose one or the other. Compromise leaves you stuck with something mediocre in the middle that sucks both ways.

Why else would Alienware have burned a bunch of calories on an eGPU trying to make thin and light fanboy happy with a crippled BGA hardware platform connected to something that can help it not act nearly so crippled? That's why there is a need for it... the platform cannot stand on it's own without the eGPU as totally awesome because it is power-starved and has insufficient space for excellent thermal management hardware. But hey, it's cute, thin and light. And, with an eGPU it runs games and graphics benchmarks pretty well in spite of it's CPU shortcomings.

My greatest curiosity is whether or not enough testing has been done to recognize the potential that the existing Alienware 18 will be too crippled from power starvation to actually be useful, and if it was recognized, what has been done to rectify that problem. 330W is not enough juice for 980M SLI to function correctly. Heck, it wasn't even enough for overclocked 680M SLI and 780M SLI, and neither of those GPUs draw as much juice as 980M. (Sounds like the same problem as using 180W AC adapters with single 980M.) Watch this video. Stock clock speeds... and then tell me that is efficient. But, I am extremely glad that it is not efficient because that's precisely why it's so awesome. 500W peak power draw and over 450W average with no OC... sweet! But, how you gonna do that with 330W?

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

 

This really has nothing to do with the "green" movement. It's about advancements in engineering and technology, and take a wild guess where A LOT of those advancements come from? That was a rhetorical question of course.

I'm not sure where people started spouting off stuff about "green movement". We're talking about increased power due to increased efficiency, something enthusiasts should be very keen on, as that's where your increased power comes from. Nobody's preaching "green" - people are preaching increases in power, which are partially due to increases in efficiency.

The original point was that performance enthusiasts should be very concerned about increases in efficiency, since that leads directly to increases in power.

If somebody read into that something about global warming and tree-huggers and whatnot, then that somebody needs to work on reading comprehension and probably ease up on the redneck pills.

 

Well, redneck or not... don't want to do more with less... want to do a lot more with a lot more. If you can get more performance from the same power, then by all means, cranking it up, more power and more performance than ever. Just don't try doing more with less. That's messed up. When you create capacity and then max out what you have created, then create more and max that out, then you have some awesome. When you try to hold the line on resources, you get junk.

 

I will not resort to name calling, thank you. Good luck to you.

 

The 980M does draw more power than others, and it uses this extra power draw to provide far greater performance in the same sized chassis, using the same thermal management as previous cards.

I previously put a 980M in my AW17 R1, using the same heatsink/fan combo as the R9 M290X that it originally came with. Guess what? More FPS, less heat, less noise using the same 240w PSU.

Increased efficiency allows you to either get the same performance with less power draw/heat/noise, or increased performance with the same or greater power draw/heat/noise.

Looking over power draw tests, you can find that a machine with the 980M draws about 20% more power from the wall than a similar machine with a R9 M290X, yet the performance is increased by as much as 50%.

What is that if not efficiency? The basic cooling design hasn't changed, still using the same fans/heat sinks, and the overall size envelop hasn't changed. Yet they can fit ever-increasing amounts of hardware that produce greater graphical processing power in there, and while power draw increases, the performance gain is greater than the power draw increase.

Ultimately I'm not sure what is being argued anymore. I'm certainly not advocating for thin and light, power-starved machines (that's why I sold off my Clevo P650SE and bought another AW17 R1). But somewhere along the lines, somebody got it into their heads that people here were trying to make an eco-friendly AW18 or something. Somebody (rightly) pointed out that increased efficiency has enabled massive gains in performance in the same size envelop, then gets called a tree hugger, and all of a sudden the whole "green movement" is brought into it.

My argument remains the same - anybody interested in performance should be keenly interested in advances in efficiency, since that will directly translate to greater performance gains.

 

You were the first to resort to name calling. Do you think being called a tree-hugger is a compliment?

 

Yes, that is... but that's doing more with more, not more with less. The negative word association and misuse of "efficiency" is where the communication gap is. That's all I'm getting at. You've created capacity and consumed it; not reduced consumption while maintaining the same performance. Great! That's progress. Maintaining status quo while using less power is not exciting. Excitement is leveraging the new overhead you have to produce more performance and then adding more power and pushing it further and harder, lather, rinse, repeat.

Kind of like feeling special to have a L4 perform like a V8. If you burn calories on that instead of making a V8 run like a V16, all you've done is stalled progress focusing on the wrong thing. Of course, this is framed in the context of an enthusiast and not someone that needs a pathetic device to not be nearly so pathetic in order to be more useful. I understand there is actually a market for that. Just don't try to snow me with lies about the less pathetic device suddenly becoming something awesome.

 

Yes, they are creating more with more. But they are creating MORE with more, if you will.

Another way to think of it - downclock/under volt the 980M to the point where it performs on par with the 880M, then compare how much power it draws.

Essentially, they had several choices - have the 980M perform on par with the 880M but draw around 30% less power, have it draw as much power but perform 20-30% better, or have it draw more power and perform much better. They chose the latter (thank god).

Efficiency just means getting more from less - a 50% power gain from 20% increased energy consumption is very much an efficiency gain.

I agree that status quo with less power draw is dull. No argument there. I'm just pointing out that the new card is indeed more efficient, that's partly how they got that increased performance/power draw from it.
It may not be what most people think of increased efficiency (usually people think of increased efficiency as same performance for less input).

Again, all this started because somebody misconstrued one comment about efficiency as being a signal the green movement was here to invade the AW18 and cripple it (hopefully it doesn't). Efficiency leads to performance increases (at least partially) - learn to love it.

But I get the angst - AW has already signaled a shift towards "tree-hugging", and people are worried (especially that abortion of a hybrid BIOS that draws from the battery to supplement the inadequate PSU). I'm pretty sure everybody here (myself included) is on your side. We're not the enemy.

I mean, I currently have a laptop that uses an 80w desktop CPU (a Xeon in my case). I'm clearly not overtly concerned about power consumption.

 

It's most likely the good old AW18 with a new bios that adds support to the GTX 900M series, unfortunately my previous AW18 had issues and I had to get it replaced with an AW17R2 + GA + GTX980 because the AW18 "isn't produced anymore"... I should have waited before agreeing to a replacement. Too late now.

 

That's part of the reason why a lot of people were upset - they bought extended warranties, but the only option offered was to replace their AW18 with a AW17 R2 - not a fair trade, even with the GA.

 

Hmmm.. New AW18 not support HDMI 2.0 Output? My current laptop have artifacts on UHD TV.

 

@rerfy - How could it? The machine was released before HDMI 2.0 spec was officially released. It wasn't designed for that because the specification wasn't finalized.

You might be able to get it to work by tweaking some settings, but the machine wasn't designed for it. See this information... might help. Even if that works for basic 4K output, it may not support HDCP @ 4K because 980M does not support HDCP @ 4K if the information I have read is accurate.

 

im (almost) afraid to say this, but mr. fox has got a very valid point there concerning the undersized psu. i can make my system draw more than 300W from the socket with everything oced, and thats with a single 980M.... granted, desktop cpu, but still!

Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk

 

I'm curious to know how you did this. Also, do you know when updated drivers will be available?

 

The 4930MX likely draws as much at 4790K or very close. I know the 4930K running stock is about the same power draw as 4930MX at 4.3GHz... around 120-125W just for the CPU. That is why I dropped my 4930K CPU to 3.9GHz for the video demonstration.

 

I don't know why you say that about Windows 10. I've been rocking it on my AW18 2014 and it's awesome!

 

Consider yourself fortunate. Not everyone was so lucky. I hope your luck continues to hold out. You might not think it's awesome if you develop the corrupted EDID problem and your machine starts failing to POST with 8-beeps.

*** Windows 10 Upgrade Warning for Alienware Owners ***

 

So, that means AW18 2015 have identical hardware with current AW18 models and new BIOS with maxwell support is comming...

My UHD TV is LG and dont have these options in menu