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

It was the same upgrade price for the 4930mx when I purchased my aw18 and it added to my unhappy factor severely.

Mr Fox, I commend you and your patients in this thread.

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Don't exxagerate too much noe J.Dre.
4790K is maybe a shy 5-8% behind i7-6700K in performance. So they are not way behind.

That said, I share the view that i7-6700K plus DDR4 would be better though. Not just that performance difference but also because the Skylake CPU runs substantial cooler than 4790k and overclock generally better.
So I too hope Alienware have that ready when Clevo launch their 17" SLI machine with 6700K.

Cant fall behind now Alienware. Here's to hoping you upgrade the AW18 in a swift manner later on

 

Not exactly talking performance-wise... But you scratched the surface of what I was getting at.

 

Dr. Fox at your service!

 

Unlikely

 

They are slightly ahead of the IF it is not all BGA, no thermal issues, fan issues and can supply ample power. Ahead in the sense nobody else has a desktop CPU and sli EXCEPT for the x79 clevo system. I think only Eurocom sells at this point? I'll take a supposedly slower than skylake CPU and sli over a single gpu skylake system anyday of the week.

 

What was wrong with that component in particular, aside from the price?

 

Me too. That is a no-brainer and requires zero contemplation. No matter how powerful a GPU might be, 2 (or more) is better than 1.

I sure hope Clevo releases an X99 5960X laptop monster with dual GPU. 4790K for a laptop is on par with a mobile Extreme CPU performance for less money, but it would be nice not to have to settle for less when more is available. If I go back to desktop and abandon the enthusiast notebook scene (which is likely) no wimpy i7 quad CPU will even be an option open for consideration. Unlocked hexacore is the new entry-level CPU option with unlocked ocatcore being where all of the real action is.

 

The 5960X should last you quite a long time. At least 'till Volta.

 

Clevo's LGA Skylake line-up may not only consist of single GPU models...

 

The aw18 had and still has several bios issues not allowing proper cpu support which was some of the problem. These issues caused very high temps with any modest overclock and the 4930mx would not be stable at anything over 4ghz so I usually could get away with 3.8 or 3.9 ghz on 4 cores long term and that was it so in reality it didn't give much more than the 4900mq series would deliver other that it's overwhelming price tag. Bottom line is the aw18 just didn't live up to it potential in many areas so for them to present a 4k+ laptop again out of thin air leaves me very suspicious.

I almost find it comical to now show up with a desktop cpu knowing the system has serious power limit issues seen with 780s.

Please keep in mind I owned one and this is simply my opinion so no negativity intended. By all means I feel they owe every owner a fix because from day one their advertisement of overclock factory support was completely untrue.





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That would be nice.

 

Hi everyone,

I've a question. Can I upgrade the AW18 with this?

http://www.newegg.com/global/uk/Pro..._re=i7-4790K_Processor-_-19-117-369-_-Product

 

thats pretty much what were trying to figure out here...

 

hmmm ok. Will still continue to follow this thread

 

No, you cannot. If the Alienware 18 has that CPU as an option, it's not the same motherboard and chipset as those with Haswell mobile CPUs. It has to be different. The information posted by Alienware may be a typo. That being said, there is no reason they couldn't release that if they had a mind to do so, and hopefully they have, but this cannot be done using the same motherboard as the original Alienware 18.

4970K is FCLGA1150 socket and 4930MX (and other Haswell processors from the same family) is a FCPGA946 socket. The specs are very similar and the overclockable performance potential is close between those two CPUs.

Look at this detailed comparison from Intel and you will see why it's not a "bolt-in" part swap:

Intel® Core™ i7-4790K Processor (8M Cache, up to 4.40 GHz) versus Intel® Core™ i7-4930MX Processor Extreme Edition (8M Cache, up to 3.90 GHz)

 

I think they should offer a trade in or buy back program for those of us with the 880m, single or sli. When you spend 3500-4k and have GPU's that throttle down into the 500 range, you pretty much took it where it don't feel too good. Might as well have bought a machine with a single 780 in it from 3 years ago because that's what the performance is equivalent to sometimes.

It really sucks when you have purchased 2 laptops in the last year and a half from them, given them 7k of your money and your loyalty and they don't care that you have a broken machine. But hey, it looks awesome and as long as you don't want to play new games maxed out, you know, like a 4 thousand dollar machine should, you are good to go. Step up to the plate Dell. Do what's right and come up with something for those of us that got screwed.

 

@Awhispersecho I do not foresee them refunding or swapping parts for your AW18 with 880M SLI. According to dell there is no problem with the current gen systems with the gimped bios. Best advice I would give is break ties with Alienware as they dont treat you with respect when you give them your money and loyalty releasing a system with a bios that allows control over fans and future graphics card compatibility ensured where completely feasible for 970m and 980m. Look at offerings from MSI, Sager (clevo) , or ASUS.

 

That's one of the issues I've had all along with these "upgradeable" laptops. Sure, it has MXM and a socketed CPU. But without proper BIOS updates and support from Dell, who cares?

And now that Intel is apparently no longer producing socketed mobile CPUs, it really matters less. Though truth be told, even when they were still being produced, given the relatively low impact of CPUs on gaming performance, there really wasn't much of a need to ever upgrade the CPU (unless you were a performance nut/enthusiast or somebody who needs top-notch CPU performance for other tasks).

Several years down the road and an i7-3630QM performs about as well in most tasks as the newest i7s (at least the tasks that matter to me).

Long story short - sockets always had great promise, but few companies ever delivered on their potential. And from what I've seen, a lot of people would often upgrade/change their laptop before even getting to the point of upgrading their GPU, let alone the CPU. And this makes some sort of financial sense from the company's perspective I guess - most companies would rather sell you a brand new system than an MXM GPU.

 

@Ramzay - To be completely fair, those that have the know-how do upgrade and laugh all the way to the bank. Your story is not complete or accurate, but it does accurately represent the technical abilities of the average laptop owner. Until they compromised everything by going BGA, Alienware did deliver on this, and they did so in spades with the best high performance notebook platforms the industry had to offer. Many of their machines that are 2 to 5 years old, with upgrades, are continuing to slay their latest and greatest offerings.

As an example, my M18xR1 went from 2720QM and 6970M CF to 6990M CF to 580M SLI, then 2920XM, then 7970M CF to 680M SLI, then got upgraded to an M18xR2 Ivy Bridge motherboard, using the fully compatible previously generation 2920XM Sandy Bridge CPU, then later upgraded to 3920XM and then 780M SLI. I used 980M SLI for a time, but NVIDIA screwed up Maxwell architecture in ways that adversely impacted compatibility. @Prema had to mod Clevo BIOS on several older models to make them Maxwell compatible, but that is not universal. There are some models that remain incompatible (or partially compatible) if I am not mistaken. God blessed the Clevo owners with Prema, otherwise many of them would be up the creek without a paddle with Maxwell also. But, all things considered, I think that is really amazing bang for the buck. And, it was thousands of dollars cheaper than buying a new machine every time something new surfaced.

The BGA model fails to measure up in terms of performance as well as upgrade potential. Add to that flawed model the lack of serviceability and it's obvious who benefits. It's definitely not the customer. But, the ability to sell dead-end platforms is an undeniable plus for the OEMs that care more about making money than the quality of the products they sell. That's a cop out.

 

Dell, while most certainly a big name, isn't the sole arbitrating party in the matter of determining if the GPU is runing properly. They can say it is fine and problem free, but simple data showing clock fluctuations, even with their often-used GPU Z, most certainly derails that claim. A derailment that puts the onus on them to adequately explain away those clock fluctuations as some kind of anomaly with no real effect, which is nigh impossible, or alternatively, own up to the matter and admit that there is a problem.

Interesting anecdote from my side on this matter because a while back, I was having serious problems with repeated driver crashes, and Dell used their remote connect feature to inspect the GPU performance while it was running. The driver issue was resolved, but the phone support technician himself was puzzled by the clock and performance fluctuations, especially since it was not jiving this his theory that the cards were behaving that way due to overheating, which they most certainly were not during the inspections and the GPU Z tables backed this fact. At that time, I just thanked him for sorting out the driver issue and ended the support call because the support rep was almost ready to have replacement cards sent over, which I personally knew would've been a pointless endeavour since the issue runs deeper and the new cards would've performed just the same way as the old cards. That is, the cards run at full boost speed when using the custom vBIOS, and in other cases of the stock vBIOS, the newer drivers help them maintain stock and even boost speeds.

Having that said, I absolutely wouldn't mind a reasonable GPU upgrade pathway via payment, even if I wouldn't personally avail the option, because consumers need such options. They've offered component upgrades through payment with warranty coverage in the past, so why not?

 

It is very unclear on the Dell.com website. In building your Aw 18 it says; i7-4940mx but in the actual construction site of the Aw18 it says i7-4790 (k). Who knows ?

 

@Mr. Fox
Don't forget that Intel also contributed to the death blow along with NVIDIA and Dell. Wonky Maxwell architecture from NVIDIA, no more socketed mobile CPUs from Intel, lack of software/driver updates from Dell.

And you're absolutely right, I'm sure certain people did get a ton of value from past AW machines (it sure seems you did). My net cost of going from a GTX 770M to a GTX 970M was around $350 CAD. Much cheaper than even selling the laptop and buying a new one.

The problem I'm seeing this year in particular is not just the new Maxwell chips, but also Skylake (new socket/MB structure), new IPS panels that won't work in the AW17 R1, the introduction on a larger scale of G-SYNC, USB 3.1 and a few other things. Previously, apart from the GPUs, there really wasn't a whole lot that warranted upgrading the entire machine. SSDs/RAM can easily be swapped out.

In other words, it seems we're at a point where so much new stuff just arrived/is about to arrive that simply upgrading the GPU won't really capture all the possibilities. If I want one of the new G-SYNC IPS panels and a USB 3.1 machine, I have no choice but to sell my AW17 and get a new machine that supports these things.

I'm not saying everybody wants those new technologies coming out. But for those that do, upgrading won't cut it. Luckily Clevo is there with a wide variety of offerings that cover everything from BGA to desktop CPUs to SLI monsters with dual-PSUs.

 

Alienware fix your marketing and make it clear to the customer what they are getting!!!! Also look at the graphics card config the landing page says 8GB x 2 for the 980M however on the actual configuration page it says 4GB x 2.........\

Awlappage by Tony V posted Aug 24, 2015 at 2:57 PM

AWlap by Tony V posted Aug 24, 2015 at 2:57 PM

 

@Ramzay - yes, at some point it is inevitable that upgrades will become impossible, unreasonably difficult or pointless with any computer. Buying a new machine at some point makes the most sense if you want some of the new features that the older products are not able to support. A product worthy of being purchased will have robust configuration options that avoid reductions in performance and potentially allow massive gains in performance, along with flexibility for future upgrades. If you just take whatever is offered and find out later on that what you purchased is a dead-end platform with everything welded to the PCB it's a pretty sad situation to find yourself in.

Intel did contribute to the problem with BGA nonsense. It was unfortunate that Alienware was so eager to adopt rather than adapt or improvise by continuing to offer sockets and slots. Clevo did it, and still does it, so they are without any legitimate excuse.

 

Definitely the company. A large part of the reason I returned both the AW17 R2's I got was the ridiculous design of the innards. Sure, a panel that removes easily to give you access to the only two RAM slots , the 4 M.2 drives and the one 2.5" is nice. But having to completely disassemble the laptop to do a re-paste? Stupidity.

 

It's only sad if you didn't expect it, or paid too much for it.

If you buy a $1200 Clevo P650SE with BGA i7-4720 and 970M, and expect it to last you 1-3 years before selling it off (and using it to play some games while doing casual email and web browsing), you didn't really get ripped off. You got exactly what you paid for. It can run any game you throw at it. These machines took a step backward in terms of build quality, performance and upgradeability, but have come down drastically in price. You can now get a machine that can adequately game in a 15" portable format, while not costing much more than a desktop. Companies saw an untapped market segment and went for it.

If you paid a premium for a "high-performance" machine, then realize a year or two down the road that the new entry-level machines out-perform yours while costing a fraction of what you paid, and you can't upgrade yours, and nobody really wants to buy yours because of its limitations - then that is sad indeed.

Those buying the Clevo P650SE are just fine. It's those paying $3k+ for machines with BGA innards that are probably getting screwed over.

I'm pretty sure companies love planned obsolescence - which is what this new breed of BGA machine is. Guaranteed cash inflows every 2-3 years as people upgrade.

 

Oh, I see what you did there, and obvious as it might be, I must commend the sheer poetic approach to how you used that juxtaposition to highlight the tragic irony of what Dell did to their Alienware laptop line.

 

They responded on facebook to me replying that it's not a typo. I assume price adjustments are coming.

 

Even more tragic would be the buyer that did not do enough research to know they were buying a machine that is incapable of being upgraded. Shame on the design, yes, but having no idea what you are buying can be a difficult (and potentially very expensive) lesson to have to learn. We cannot blame that kind of mistake on the OEM no matter how much we might want to.

 

This is why I have a lot of love for MSI, it seems to me a lot of the moves they make are very pro-sumer in nature, easy access to the internals to clean it, not as much of a laser focus on the BGA cpu which is un-important for 99 percent of games and actually stating in their marketing that they will support 2 future generations of GPU's. Love them for that.

 

Intel to offer unlocked Skylake-K processors for laptops

http://www.dvhardware.net/article63044.html

 

We've known this for a while now. It's been on Intel's blog, the original source.

 

lol hahaha I read it on a spanish website

 

Dell by Frank Azor said this during AMA that desktop processors were not something to aim for in Aw laptops... He said that Dell had bad experience with this and not worth it in our experience.. It took over 7 months to change their minds. LOL
Better late than never.

 

No, maybe not that expensive, but they need to keep up with this kind of action to stay relevant among enthusiasts, and the 15 and 17 cannot do it with the BGA core components, even with an eGPU helping out.

http://www.3dmark.com/compare/3dm11/9905398/3dm11/10209568

 

Talked one on one with a tech. What they see on their side is the 4940MX, NOT the 4790K. I have no idea what's going on but I'm more or less back to my original suspicion that it's a typo.

 

I don't care if anyone bought one at regular price but can people post up some of the deals they are able to get on the updated machines.

 

Using Dell's search engine, the Alienware 18 results only list the i7-4710MQ, i7-4790, and i7-4790K as CPU options. It used to be that the i7-4910MQ and i7-4940MX were options in place of the desktop processors.
If this were a typo, it should have been rectified by now or pretty soon. Haven't gotten a response from Alienware yet about this, but I might this week.

 

Dell, by my records, has taken up to 3 weeks to fix a really bad error which hurt their profits.

I believe the tech over the website any day, because these are the machines being used as replacements for Americans, which is out of reach for the rest of the world.

And as we know in one thread, someone is already receiving 970M SLI.

I will know once it reaches Canada.

 

I still think the desktop chips are typos. It would have cost way too much in R&D to develop a new board in 1 year for what was already a "legacy" system.

 

The news should have been that MX/XM mobile chips are now called HK.
Or better NO news at all...

Those are NOT at all desktop chips like in the Clevos.

 

Thank you Mr. Fox. That was my initial thought as well. Though, I'd like to apologize if I wasn't being clear. I was referring to the 4710MQ which is still PGA.

 

Just had a chat with a sales rep. who confirmed it was the 4790K.

 

They even confirmed it on facebook. They offer 4970 and 4970K

End of discussion

 

ill only believe it once i see it (= nbr user with an actual machine in front of him/her posting pics of the innards and CPU-Z screenshots)

 

I may have missed a small part in this conversation, but was anything confirmed by the responding parties about the vRAM on the GPUs?

 

Never trust a salesman.

However, I believe it. Making a typo from 4710MQ to 4790 and 4790K is extremely unlikely.

 

Well, well, well, somebody decided to get back into high performance. Clevo was getting lonely at the top.

Looks like a statement about desktop CPUs in laptops might need to be retracted "not worth it", "lower quality systems".. Get Frank a towel for all that egg...

Maybe the typo is the $500 upgrade from 4790 to 4790K $60 more will get you two Ks at Microcenter.

 

How has no one ordered one yet?