Are there any new Alienware models in the works? [Speculations and Wish List]

Please tell me what the performance increase would be?

 

there isn't any performance increase at all unless you use up all 2gigs of vram. that it almost impossible to do at this point so I have no idea how you think its a huge deal.

 

maybe wolf runs an external monitor with ridiculous resolutions... Either way I agree with the above 2 posters, kudos.

 

The 4GB version can OC higher too. The dell 2GB version chokes when upping the memory clocks.

 

What about SLI configs?

 

Well , yes heat might be an issue if you are using SLI with the 4g 680M's

The only meh factor is the actual build quality of MSI and Eurocom .

The sound card and connector are way superior in the MSI tough ,

for audiophile is seems to be a better option , and yes I am using multiple monitors .

2 gig just doesn't cut it . Heavy graphic / res games do perform better in the 4 gig 680

 

The only thing alienware needs to do is increase gaming performance to match desktop gaming lol.. maybe quad sli/dual sli bigger screen.. desktop cpu. and awesome cooling would be sick.. desktop in a laptop lol

 

At that point why not just duct tape a tower to a lcd, hot glue a car battery to it and put some wheels on it.

Or just bring back the xps m2010... in alienware form.

http://publish.it168.com/2006/0719/20060719010503.shtml

 

Lolz. That was a good laugh.


Sent from my SGH-T999

 

Where in the hell are the 670mx and 675mx for m17x? MSI has it, clevo has it, and Asus will soon have it.

 

Pfft not even close. The MSI ge70 weighs less and you can make it way more powerful for literally over 1 thousand dollars less... Razer blade is a massive disappointment.

Sent from my SCH-I535 using Tapatalk 2

 

I was talking about its thinness. Its half as thick as the GE70, and the only reason its heavier is because it uses a fully aluminum chassis, which is extremely nice, and adds a layer of durability and sleekness the MSI doesn't have.
I would still recommend the MSI over the razer simply because of the price difference though. For roughly the same price as the blade, you can cram in dual SSD's and an HDD, a 680, loads of ram, etc... and have 4 times the gaming power the blade has.

 

Which is still about 1/3 of the power the M18x has

 

Over double the weight and half the reliability

Sent from my SCH-I535 using Tapatalk 2

 

How does 2 680's equal three times as powerful as one 680?

 

OMG I hate laptop touchscreens. And Win 8 looks bad for gaming. I wouldn't want oily finger prints/scratches on my display (especially if it's a retina display).

 

QC issues - maybe. Reliability - no issues. I have been using AW flagships for 5 years now and am yet to see problems. Given the number of laptops that went through me during my IT career (approaching 20 years now) I can safely say, AW machines are among the most reliable, no less reliable than the top business grade systems, not less reliable than MBP's or any other "elite" brand/line/model. If your machine arrives in bad shape with missing screws, loose connectors, scratches, etc., that only means that it was assembled by monkeys (and to remedy that you have the best warranty in town), but it doesn't mean the system is of a poor build quality or reliability.

Overclocking potential. M18x can go way higher on CPU/GPU's than any other system with 1 or 2 GPU's. It's all in the benching thread and will stay valid until you can prove otherwise by posting your benches.

 

Sure your bench scores might be three times as high, but your performance in games won't be, and that's what really matters. Even with overclocking, you will not get anywhere near three times as many fps at max setting in ANY game compared to a single 680. You probably won't even get twice as many frames because most games handle sli poorly or not to potential.

 

In the end you don't need to spend $3000 to be able to play games maxxed out, you buy the higher end hardware for benchmarking and tweaking and just having fun!! Benchmarking is a game in itself to get your system to preform as peak performance and dominate other people. Gets quite addicting.
As to SLI, It varies from game to game. Don't call me an expert as I'm not interested in owning a dual card system as I'd rather upgrade my cards more often, but you do see a significant increase in performance once drivers are optimized for the specific game.

 

lol you laugh but if its not for you its not for you.. i for one wouldn't care if it was 25-30 pounds.. if the machine rocked and gave me what i wanted in a laptop..or a desktop replacement...
really tho id take a 24 inch screen... if you are happy with your puny little mx11 thats fine.. be happy with it.. but dont knock my ideas just because your one step from owning a mac friend..

 

If you buy your rig only for gaming - yes. But like Bigtonyman says, there's more to it than just being able to max most games. TBH, if all I ever needed was to play games, I'd grab a 800$ machine with GT 650M and have at it. It would max 90% of the games and the rest 10% would play on high/very high. End of story, why bother with ultra powerful machines?

But it's in our nature, we want the bleeding edge, extra power, better cooling, more features, unique style, etc. Give us all that and we will pay extra $$$ for it gladly.

 

If you don't care about resolution or quality then sure a 650M would cut it, but for 1080P with AA/AF or hooking up to a higher res external then you need more horsepower.

 

Have you ever seen a rMBP 15"? I have had it for a few days and the majority of games I threw at it ran at max/very high @1200P. Heck, most games ran on high/very high @2880x1800. So yeah, it's enough if you are not looking for perfect power. But if you state that you want all games maxed @ 1080p - single 680M is not gonna cut it either. You will need SLI/CF to max Assassin's Creed III, Hitman Absolution, World of Tanks V8, Guild Wars II, Sleeping Dogs, Ghost Reckon: Future Soldier, Metro and a few others, especially if the multiplayer versions with 64+ and intense action maps. In addition, some games scale with CPU power. Many gamers like to record their gaming sessions with apps like FRAPS. Here's an example. A 3770K + 2x7970 (desktop) dips under 30FPS when playing and recording Assassin's Creed III @ max details and 1080P. So yeah, it all depends where you draw your perfect line.

On the other hand, you could probably get away with something like ThinkPad X230 + eGPU and have fun

 

When you say ran at 2880x1800 at high/very high then it wont be modern titles like the games you mentioned.

Also I did not rule out dual card setups for the real power users who want a lot of performance.

But a single 680M will give you much better frames at 1080p than the 650M in every situation. You may still have to not use the highest performance hogging features unless you apply some serious overclocking though.

But considering you can add a 50% overclock to the 680M that's something you can look into if you need it.

I mean, we are talking the 680M having 2-3x the power of the 650M, so it's not like i'm splitting hairs between two close products here.

 

You concern yourself too much with the resolution.
Personally I prefer a higher resolution for my work, games always come second. For work a higher resolution is always more helpful think.
Now, for games, I have 1920x1200. Sometimes I prefer to have a higher level of details and play at 1650x1080. The thing is, because of the pixel density, downscaling is not much of a problem. Sure, things looks little bit more blurry, but truth is, it is certainly not a deal-breaker.
Now, on a higher resolution screen, with a higher pixel density, down-scaling would be even less of a problem. So... don't worry. The higher resolution the better.

 

Not a deal breaker for you, but that's personal preference again. Which is fine, but it wont suit everyone.

 

Does Alienware/Dell usually announce upcoming products at CES?

Its coming up in a month and I'm holding back buying a laptop now in hopes something really cool will be announced.

 

Yeah, the chances of seeing something before Q2-Q3 2013 are very slim.

 

It's just not worth releasing a machine and then 2 months later it needing a new motherboard and a refresh.

 

Ahhh well that makes sense then.

Dam, i have my heart set on a m17x too. But I feel the r5 is so close, that I can't just pull the trigger yet...

 

How long has the design of the alienware laptop brand has been out? I know they made slight changes to them since the beguinning, but I think they will change it.
Also the m18x last version has been out since when? I m starting to think they are going to release new laptops earlier since it's been a while they don't change it.

 

Haha, tell this to Clevo guys! Their flagship models have been using the same chassis for like 3 gens, lol

 

clevo appeals to a different market than AW does as far as looks go. Of all the gaming brands (MSI, AW, ASUS, etc...) Sager/Clevo, is the most plain and "professional" looking. There is a lot of people who want that because of the simple functionality, less of a chance of it being stolen (a clevo might have 3 grand worth of hardware in it, but if a thief see's one next to a 2k MBP, they are probably going to take the mac), their designs also fit into more environments. The simple, but effective designs also allow them to be the cheapest of all the gaming laptop brands.

One of AW's main marketable appeals is its laoptops somewhat over the top looks.

 

True, but I didn't spoke in clevos or in the name of clevo brand, I only spoke in the name of alienware.
Alienware it's a brand which I love and I can't have it but still I follow it with a lot of attention and joy, it's been 5 years since I know about alienware and I've seen a lot of changes, but I feel that alienware is getting too quiet.
Either 2 of the choices, 1 Dell isn't backing them up and they are taking more time than needed to have a new upgrade so they strech it, 2 they are exploring new market ideas like the rest of the companys, in the gaming area ofc, but with new concept ideas that could bump them to another level.

 

I wanna see someone try stealing a 6kg+ machine, lol. But I do agree, it's time for DELL to infuse new ideas into the next gen design. Glowing head has had its best days and should get replaced with a more serious logo. Flashy lights could also evolve into something more subtle with intensity controls. If I were to design the next AW flagship model, I'd go in the following order:

1) Make all heatsinks copper + composite materials (higher than copper thermal conductivity) with more and/or bigger pipes + more powerful fans. Each GPU HS should be 120W, CPU HS - 130-140W for extreme OC'ing
2) Make CPU/GPU and mobo easily accessible. I really don't like the idea of having to remove 30 screws and 10 connectors to repaste the CPU.
3) No Edge-to-Edge glass cover, offer 75% anti-glare panels like those retina screens (but higher gamut 100%ARGB).
4) Keep similar storage configurations but make at least 4 bays SATAIII.
5) Offer controls for light intensity, possibly with more customizable areas.
6) New chassis design, but a) keep the anodized aluminum or offer carbon fiber shell b) Only make it slimmer and lighter if the cooling and performance aren't compromised!

 

7) Sell it in Portugal so I can buy it *.*

 

I'd love to have a machine like this, but I doubt most of this stuff will make it into the next M17x. A dual card system is just to expensive for a poor guy like me.

 

Something else for the next gen. Please take a not out of apple and razers book concerning power bricks. Seriously, I know the wattage the m17x and 18x require causes the bricks to have to be rather large, but they don't have to be this large. The m18x's is literally the size of an actual brick.
I can stand a large laptop, but a large power supply just adds weight and takes up space in a bag and on a table. Please put some RND into it.

I have been thinking about an alienware tablet. I know it sound crazy, but hear me out.
Back in the early days of AW being with dell, dell still had their own separate gaming line (XPS), dell saw this was a waste of resources, so they discontinued the gaming XPS line. Today AW is the only dell laptop line that offers true gaming performance and good graphics cards. They still offer a couple of normal consumer laptops with decent cards, but they are not really built for gaming.
I will return to this in a moment.

Razer right now is making a gaming tablet called the Fiona. For the past few months its been floating around in development hell, but recently they made a post on their facebook asking about peoples interest. They said if they got at least 10k likes on the post they would share more info, and go ahead with production. In less than a week it got over 140,000 likes.
They then asked what people thought specs, price, and dimensions should be, because they had several working prototypes in their studio of differing levels of size and power. After sorting through the thousands of responses they posted what the fiona will probably launch as.

A 10.1 black aluminum tablet with an HD screen. It will have Windows 8, a core i7 ivy bridge processor, bluetooth 3.0, a webcam, Dolby 7.1 surround sound and stereo speakers, several gigs of ram (probably 4-6), a beefy enough GPU to run current games on medium-high settings (so likely a GTX 650), and USB 3.0, all in a package about as thick as 2 Ipads stacked on top of each other.
There will also likely be attachable nun-chuck like controllers, and a variety of other peripherals. They have said the launch price will be around 1,000 dollars.
this is the patent design they just applied for on it.


Meanwhile King Microsoft has also entered the tablet arena, the mid range market with their surface, and the high end market with their surface pro. the pro has 4 gigs up ram, up to 128 gigs of SSD space, beefy cooling, decent battery life, 4 gigs of ram, bluetooth, windows 8 pro, USB 3.0, a keyboard dock, and should be able to play quit a few games because of intel integrated graphics.

There are several other companies that are working on high end, capable tablet pc's as well but none have really built up a sizable user base yet.

These examples show tablets are beginning to come into their own as far as power goes. It is possibly to create a powerful, portable, tablet pc.

Now back to dell and AW...

Dell has their own mid range tablet line. But it isn't very well known, and it doesn't have a very large market share. This is because they entered the tablet game late, and there are to many competitors in the low and mid range levels. I don't think they should stop making mid and low range tablets, not as long as they are still making at least some money off of them, but I think they should also look to the high end as well, which is a much more open and less competitive market.
They should think about what they did with AW and XPS, laptops, and apply that to tablets. Keep the low-mid range ones in their consumer line, and design a high end AW tablet, that can be used by both gamers, and power users on the go who would normally go for an ultrabook, nut need something smaller, and not as underpowered as most netbooks are.

picture this:
windows 8
10.1 inch HD screen
full aluminum chassis about 0.5 inches thick and under 2 lbs.
4 gigs of 1600 Mhz ram
Intel i5-i7 ivy bridge processor
GTX650 graphics card
(big draw here) specially made bigfoot/killer wireless card
USB 3.0 port
bluetooth 4.0
128-256 gigs of SSD hard drive space.
attachable keyboard dock that also extends battery life

The chassis would have lots of AW styling, without getting to over the top. an alienware logo on the back with a changeable LED behind it,and the cooling grills would have LED's to. there would be 2 keyboard docks, 1 that is very slim and plain, and one that costs a bit more that is a bit thicker and has LED back lighting.

BOOM, make that package around 1000-1200 dollars and quit a few people would jump on board with it. It would be a great replacement for the m11x, and put dell in a good head start position in the high end, powerful tablet market, especially since it would only be them and razer with one marketed towards gamers.

 

I'm all for a gaming tablet by Alienware.
However I feel that the direction in which things are going is that server based games that are streamed onto tablets, despite the initial failure of onlive, are the way things will go.

If the tablet is to withhold all the hardware as you are suggesting, how long before that hardware becomes obsolete?
And then there's the high RRP

If they focus on providing the best wireless experience, and then augment better servers to handle the online load, your tablet won't become outdated and will be able to play a generation of games.
Alienware could focus on just the asthetics of the tablet and would be able to offer it at an affordable price, much like what they intended with the M11x.

 

I wouldn't mind a hybrid alienware tablet. Just hope if they do release such a thing the price isn't crazy high.

Sent from my Samsung Galaxy S2 running Resurrection Remix

 

That's what I'm afraid of. There's going to be a big alienware tax on it :/

Sent from my SCH-I535 using Tapatalk 2

 

If razer releases one for 1000 bucks and its really nice, then if AW released one it would have to be a very similar price point, and have to have a couple of special features to make people choose it over the razer one.

 

lets hope this is not the case!!! Would be sweet if I could play most of my games on it though.

 

So far nothing , AW is taking their sweet time to even announce their new 2013 line or whatever ....

hopefully it will be worth it

 

When does Alienware usually announce their new lineups?

Edit- seems they announced their current lineup back in April..
Maybe well have to wait till April 2013 for an announcement..

I hope not though..

 

It will be whenever Intel's Haswell, Plus the next gen GPU's are available. From what I have seen, Mid-2013 is the possible release date for haswell, so I would say that is when the next big alienware revision will be.

 

Yes, though you can get leaked details before then. It will be a new chipset without backwards compatibility so no early launches like sandy to ivy with the old generation initially sold in it.

 

Just had a great idea for an AW tablet.

make it also have a thunderbolt port so it can use an E-GPU when your not carrying it and its plugged in.

As a tablet it could have a mobile 650 built in, and a DESKTOP 660 as an optional E-GPU. boom. Real gaming tablet right there, and it would leave Razers in the dust, unless razer also has a similar idea...

 

pssh lets go big or go home! make it so you can put up to a 680 into that enclosure so we can have some crazy power.

 

It would be kind of awkward and a pain in the tush to have to fumble around with an e-GPU, especially with a tablet already being more awkward to handle than a laptop. I would prefer to just have a monster with everything inside the chassis than to have to fuss with peripherals. Plus, I hate wires. To me that would be more of a novelty than a good idea. Unless something changes in the future, everything I have seen from Razer has been all show and no go. For me, that's a no-go.