Ask Alienware's General Manager, Frank Azor, Anything on AWA!

Actually Zero Alienware/dells input is not pointless at all; as a very large OEM/Corporate partner they have way more input than we do so their point of view on the issue is very important as they are one of the few entities with the ability to do anything meaningfully to influence Nvidias decision.

That being said most likely they are are in bed with Nvidia on this one and perhaps even played a role in influencing them to take this very rash anti consumer stance which would explain their silence on the issue.

 

Don;t get me wrong we need to go after Nvidia on this, but we need to go after the OEM's as well long time Alienware customers reach out let them know how you feel and that this will influence your decition to buy their products in the future and the same go's for the MSI owners Sager Owners Asus owners and so on. Getting this issue fixed is going to take the whole community being as vocal as possible to anyone that will listen.

 

Maybe I have the wrong idea of Alienware. I expected them to take adv. of this negative situation and release overclocked GPUs with their notebooks.

 

Haha, have you been living in a cave? Just messing, AW is no longer for the enthusiast. Their latest offerings are eco, hybrid, low power machines. A very different market. They are more likely to be behind this GPU mess. They are NV's biggest single customer.

They do not want the chip to be overclocked as their 180w design cannot cope with it.

 

Petition signed with the following comment:

 

I know what AW is offering. I followed it all the way from rumor to release.

As far as not supporting overclocking, that's quite odd, but I wonder what the reason is. I guess we can wait to find out.

 

I am just now going through this thread - but this paragraph stood out to me because I too have been saying Dellienware is attempting to "consolize" the laptop space, as Fox said a closed, boxed environment experience where you play within a defined "ranch" created by a company vision.

Given the admission by Azor that they were under the gun to cut costs, it explains why they moved sooner rather than later on a mid-cycle refresh to slim the systems and go to BGA. I was concerned that they enthusiasm they seem to have for going BGA was a sign of something, and the desire to be more cost effective (albeit to the point they actually get lower sales) explains why. I don't like it, but it explains the move to a degree.

The G/A has some merit as a concept, particularly for people who often retire in the evening to game at the same desk space where a G/A would live, but that doesn't mean it's a substitute for a powerful system. That being said, they are definitely putting too much emphasis on it.

While I have lost interest myself in a SLI-rig currently, I am still amazed they didn't at least offer single- and dual-gpu versions of the AW 17, it's not like we haven't had SLI in 17" form before (one is sitting three feet from me as we speak). Not having an SLI-rig in the mix is just like trying to paint yourself as a sporty line of cars but having no sports car (think Nissan before they brought back the 350z); it just doesn't work in the long run, people will go where the excitement is even if that vendor is hawking flawed systems.

 

You know what they say about payback... NVIDIA will have to reckon for their insolence toward laptop enthusiasts, and it will be with a capital B, followed by a series of exclamation points and a trail of NVIDIA money green blood as they bleed out laying in the gutter.

These disingenuous actions from NVIDIA affect everyone unilaterally and they rise to the level of being demonic in nature. I still don't buy the lame excuse that overclocking is inherently dangerous or costly to any OEM. I also don't buy into the idea that NVIDIA cares about the reliability of products for consumers. They don't care.

If Dell/Alienware, MSI, ASUS or any other OEMs played a part in it and it ever gets discovered the backlash they will face for it will overshadow any benefit or gain they might have realized by playing dirty pool and double-crossing their customers behind their backs.

I have no warranty from Alienware and I still overclock the living crap out of my systems because doing so is relatively safe and worth the small element of risk in doing so. We have seen tons of system exchanges and GPU failures, in warranty and out of warranty, by people that virtually never overclock or post benchmark scores. Nothing comes without an element of risk, but I cannot identify any evidence of a CPU or GPU failure caused by overclocking.

I am not saying I cannot or has never happened, only that I cannot identify an example. That being the case, any concern about it is displaced and creating a policy that affects everyone for something so rare is a farce. There almost has to be something inappropriate and unethical going on behind the scenes that is driving this behavior by NVIDIA.

 

LOL - you only have to look at Nvidia's typical naming schemes to see they are inherently prone to taking advantage of people...

@Rotary Heart : hate to say it, but yes, BGA desktops are down the line as well in a few more years. I suspect video and memory will be optional, but CPU/MB's will almost certainly be the norm.

 

Maybe... Intel may change their mind. They're not stupid, even though their current action suggest otherwise. They like money, so they may decide to pay closer attention by the time we are done with reaming them a new posterior orifice. Standing together, we can make a difference. I think we are already starting to get their attention even on the mobile side of the house. If we resign ourselves to this filth becoming inevitable, then the triumph of evil is guaranteed.

 

There is a simple 'out' for NV. Stop GFE updating laptop OEM's crippled drivers. Force us to go the verde program where we sign up to risk our machines. It's very clear there that NV recommend you stay with the OEM driver. A conflict - YES. Just fix the conflict and stop this stupidity. But that would expose more weaknesses in the latest AW offerings...[/QUOTE]
As I have said before; Dellienware actually emulate Apple and Razer with the thinnest gaming laptop sold in the market. The thinner the better it gets, says Dell. They had no other choice than to use soldered garbage hardware when Dellienware absolutely had (would) create new Alienware as a thin gaming laptop. Dell does a great job of destroying a well-known (Overclock) gaming laptop brand such as Alienware was previously. It goes without saying that you can not have the best cooling in an Apple thin gaming laptop .. Then you can not overclock the hardware.
If Nvidia, Intel and gaming laptop manufacturers continue this overclocking nonsense with laptops, then it becomes very long time before I will buy a new gamig laptop. It is only if the hardware manufacturers lose money on this overclocking nonsense that they will change their minds.

 

Unfortunately Alienware notebooks were not designed to support overclocking. Overclocking is by no means a trivial feature, and depends on thoughtful design of thermal, electrical, and other considerations. By overclocking an AW notebook, a user risks serious damage to the system that could result in non-functional systems, reduced notebook life, or many other effects.

There was a bug introduced into our drivers which enabled AW systems to overclock. This was fixed in a recent update. Our intent was not to remove features from GeForce notebooks, but rather to safeguard AW systems from operating outside design limits.


For the first time in history .. Made by Dellienware.

 

Definantly is looking as if my first Alienware purchase, the m18xR2, is also my last Alienware purchase. Was kind of looking at an alpha as a home theater base but screw that. When it's time to buy again it's a clevo and amd

 

I have bought the new Alienware 17 2015 model. I then heard about the 180W psu problem and having heard Frank Azors comments that anyone who calls in will get a 240w psu sent out to them. I did try to change my charger from 180W to the 240w psu but they said i can NOT do that there is no option for that its only come with the 180w psu. Did anyone got the 240w psu????

note : (my English is my second language )

also they did delete the article

 

Dellienware is not intresert in helping with this problem. They just want to update a new crippled bios that pulls missing watts from the battery when the power supply fails to deliver enough watts. Or they will throttle the TDP of hardware.

 

Disclaimer/Warning: Utterly Lengthy Anecdote

While I don't consider myself a benchmarker or overlcoking enthusiast, I have dabbled in both across a range of systems. I have a reasonably extensive, albeit silent, history on this forum and as far as Dell's catalogue of extreme mobile gaming rigs goes, it's safe to say that I'm reasonably well-versed in the offerings and the manner in which they changed over time.

I've owned the XPS M1730, M17X R1, M17X R2, M18X R1, M18X R2, and now the Alienware 18. Yes, I've had a bias towards the dual GPU rigs, which speaks to my unwillingness to compromise when it comes to certain basic requirements. At various points, I have pushed almost each of these systems to the brink and back, save for the M1730. Why? Because, as per the reference to the G84 failures earlier in this thread, the XPS M1730's SLi combo was notorious for GPU failures due to the soldering flaw, which wasn't only prevalent in the G84/6, but also the G92 and G94 ( http://www.tomshardware.com/news/Nvidia-GPU-failure,6248.html). I'm talking regular accounts on this very forum of back-to-back GPU failures, with my own system history involving 6 GPU failures just between January 2009 to April 2009 over merely being used for a couple of hours of gaming on weekends. Of further importance was the fact that on this forum, I wasn't the only one with this issue, and neither was I part of a small minority. We were in fact an overwhelmingly large majority of customers sharing alarmingly identical complaints in the XPS owner's lounge ( http://forum.notebookreview.com/threads/official-dell-xps-m1730-owners-lounge-part-4.584016/page-59). The posts of problems in the link I've just shared, *barely* manage to even touch the tip of the iceberg because this was the regular story for everyone all the way until most M1730s were scraped or exchanged for the newer Alienware M17X R1 or the XPS Studio. The only ones who really managed to maximise their GPU lifespan were those using the extreme CPU trick, where overlcoking the X9000 in the BIOS would make all the fans run at maximum speed, and thus, reduce the serious GPU thermal cycling of 50c-80c and back down, which would cause the hardware vulnerabilities referenced above as these GPUs were highly sensitive and could only be maintained at around a 50c-75c cycle. Oh, and there was a small minority who had resorted to oven baking their cards every week or so in order to temporarily resuscitate them back into functional condition. Thanks, Nvidia!

The one thing that was greatly appreciated about the newer Alienware units was the fact that they were generally built sturdy with an excellent thermal design, proper MXM slots and BIOS fan tables complimenting quality GPU hardware. No amount of overclocking and experimenting actually damaged any of my cards, and the reason for the M17X R1 being returned was primarily the throttling issue because of the infamous power draw limitation (I believe) in the BIOS, which could only be circumvented with ThrottleStop at the time. Outside of that, the system was generally doing an excellent job and many folks who moved from the M1730 to the M17X R1 went on to enjoy their systems for a good while without ever having to get on Dell's case about warranty claims over core system components. The same can be said about the follow-up units, with the exception of the M18X R1, which had a glitch-stricken GPU out of the box and it was promptly replaced by Dell with no follow-up complaints.

I'm afraid that all this rhetoric from the 'companies' about overclocking and overvolting--being a primary contributor to GPU damage and life-span reduction--is manipulative and a case of employing half-truths, in an utterly flawed context, to make a flawed premise/apology for essentially imposing restrictions on consumers. Going forward, some of us will take the pragmatic route of knowing what's actually going on here but just accepting the party line anyway, while others will take a principle stand on the issue. However, another group of consumers--still looking to enhance their knowledge--might genuinely be misled by such selective and deceptive rhetoric. It's the fact that this group is being misled/manipulated with such nonsense that should be of particular concern to everyone, because it means that these companies aren't only attempting to restrict consumers, but also redefine consumer attitudes and culture with a serious dose of historical revisionism regarding the realities of why certain isolated GPUs develop hardware problems while others with flawed architecture exhibit a higher failure rate. If one thinks that having overly patronising conversations with technical support and online moderators--to the point of intellectually insulting condescension--is bad, then one must understand that this kind of cultural shift will make this issue much worse by order of magnitudes.

 

only thing i want to ask Alienware manager is if he's heard of P751ZM !!

 

I'm loving my new sagar np9377 . I like it more than my alienware 17. I've never been happier. Thank you alienware for forcing me to choose a different brand. If it wasn't for you guys welding everything to the motherboard and not supporting me on upgrades on my alienware I would of never ventured out to try other laptops. Everything works great on my new laptop . Even the fans function like there supposed to. There really is no comparison when it comes to the user experience.

Edit: I care both for what's under the hood and on the outside but what's under the hood is by far more important than what's on the outside.

 

For me to buy the new alienware machines would be like buying a new camero and having the motor , wheels , and Trany welded to the frame. You get a flat tire or bend a rim you better have insurance because you have to exchange the whole car for a new one. Oh you want to put new rims on your car after 6 months sorry you have to sell the car and buy another one with the rims you want already installed. If your motor blows up after warranty but the car is still in perfect shape sorry you have to buy motor , Trany , and frame to put on the body of your car because they come all welded together. Oh I almost forgot if you want your car to go faster than 55 you have to buy this trailer full of batteries that you tow behind your car with a power cord you plug into the back of your car so you can go faster than 55.hehehe
I think I will just buy a car that I can change the parts on sepperately just in case something breaks I don't have to buy a whole new car everytime.

Edit: sorry for that rant it's just all this crap is just so unbelievably irritating and redicoulously un called for.
Ok that's it.
Everyone have a nice day

 

Wonder where @Alienware-Frank and @ AW Khan went? Maybe still out on vacation? When they get back, I'd like to hear what Alienware plans to do to help us whip NVIDIA back into shape for their extremely idiotic position on notebook overclocking. Somebody with some authority needs to have a come to Jesus meeting with these imbeciles at NVIDIA, because they seem to lack the capacity to think rationally.

It is abundantly clear that the people making up such retarded rules at NVIDIA have absolutely idea how robust certain machines are, including Alienware products. Appears they think all notebooks are thin and light garbage with mickey mouse heat sinks and inadequate AC adapters. I don't appreciate my passion being stifled by the absolute lowest common denominator in notebook land... stinking Nazis.

 

thanks guys I'm getting one






mmmmmmmmmmmmm

 

Almost no point in buying a new laptop for as long as NVIDIA is getting away with playing God. Just buy something used and cheap with a 780M and overclock it.

 

Or buy a old MXM Alienware and get the R9 295MX GPU... More heat but not giving money to those green trolls.. if someone would buy my 970M, I'd get the R9 295MX... I really hate NVIDIA now!

 

What laptop did you order? Curious since it's shipping so soon. Also, who did you call to get the 240 watt PSU delivered before the laptop? I've tried to get the PSU, but keep getting told I have to wait on the laptop to arrive so I can provide a service tag.

 

i order the NEW Alienware 17, Intel(R) i7-4710HQ, GTX 980M with 4GB GDDR5,RAM 8GB, hard drive 256GB M.2 SSD + 1TB 5400RPM SATA 6Gb/s. I did call this number +18006249897 and no i don't have to wait they already sending the psu to me.

 

Congratulations on the new laptop! Let us know what you think! I still have a while to wait on mine for some reason...eta is 3/6/15 which is ridiculous. Anyway, thanks for the info! I'll give that phone number a try and see if they'll get my PSU out instead of waiting on the laptop to arrive first.

 

I hope your laptop comes fine after all this waiting, because if you have to deal with the Alienware support, to be blunt, they suck. If you ever have to use their suppot or talk to anyone on the phone, just give up. Seriously, this company is only slightly better than Asus. Feeding me crap and lies all the time about "we will call you back." Never end up calling me back, making excuses, irritating me, not helping me with my issues with the laptop etc.

I paid for premium phone support, what did I get? Asus level garbage support. Tech support promised to call me back or e-mail me, never did. Group of liars.


For what it is worth, these Alienware reps only come on here as PR stunts, they don't actually do crap or give a crap. At least in my experience, when they face anything they just either don't reply or go into hiding.

 

I know for a fact that @AW Khan has been reading our posts the last few days after this NVIDIA OCing debacle and yet there has been no reply.. Indeed looks like they just come here for PR stunts.. They just want our money at the end of the day..

 

Must be the country you live in? I live in Norway. Had 3 major problems so far with my AW18 (network, screen, and network). Each time!, good support from Dell.
They promised to call back, they did. They promised to call back after service guy had been at my house, to check up on me, they did. And even if I told them it wasn't fixed(network), they call'd back, to follow me up. Each time, they go true the same, to check if the fault is from my side, if not, service guy the next business day(from Sweden, but hey I can live with that).

So my experience, each time, 100% positive.

 

Yeap. AW Khan was last seen Friday at 8:27 AM and Alienware-Frank was last seen: Feb 6, 2015

 

How much you want for it?

 

This is a new Alienware 15 with i7-4710Bga and AMD Radeon R9 M295x graphics. Look at the physics score in 3Dmark11 .. Do you think the total score is good with AMD Radeon R9 M295x graphics? http://www.3dmark.com/3dm11/9442024

 

You have to remember that the 240w PSU nor the updated BIOS were in action during this benchmark. This benchmark isn't fully representative of the 4710HQ and m295x combo.

 

That physics score is about 1000 point lower than when I was sporting a 3610qm!!! lol. No doubt windows 8 has alot to do with it. But still, more than 2 and a half years later and we are going backwards in performance. A sign of the times lately. What a joke the laptop scene has become.. and almost over night

 

Seems like performance stagnated after sandy bridge/ivy bridge. Intel is unable to make these things faster without using a ton more power.

 

Most of laptop's with i7-4710Bga has a physics score of over 8000 and are tested both win 7 and 8 in 3Dmark11. It looks like every time Dellienware launches a new Alienware laptop, then it comes with a crippled bios. Previous version of Alienware had to use a c rippled bios with throttled TDP of gpu for over 7 months. And yet has not Dell's engineers managed to fix the broken fan profile in bios / Ec on the previous version of the Alienware 17 and 18 which was released 1.5 years ago.

 

Old i7-4700mq performs much better than this i7-4710bga in the new Alienware. Maybe Dellienwares engineers done a brilliant work with the bios again ..

 

Well, I paid quite a bit in shipping etc from US to UK etc etc.. It would be cheaper for you to get one from elsewhere.. I might dump this if AMD release something better in H2 but for now, I'm fine.. Very pissed of with NVIDIA but I just don't have the time to switch out GPU's etc..

 

Just buy my Alienware 17 with R9 m290x, I'm looking to ditch it anyway.

 

HAHAHA!! Would love too but it has a 900p screen and I'm dead broke.. will have money in September once I start my full time graduate job.. Currently tutoring and next priority is getting these headphones..

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Sennheiser-Momentum-Circumaural-Over-Ear-Headphone-Brown/dp/B009QV15DU

 

In other words, you are planning to hang onto it indefinitely?

 

So pessimistic Fox, maybe AMD will fire back strong!

 

I'd love for them to prove me wrong. Both of them suck, just the red more than the green. I trust both of them no further than I can throw them, but AMD's track record with me is a dismal failure. There's always hope for a good outcome. I don't care about brand; I care about results. AMD had not given me a basis to say anything kind about them since 5870M.

 

Come now, had it not been for the premature deaths of the early 7970Ms, I would easily hand the victory over to AMD since it trades blows with the 680M, without sacrificing professional power. What came in the years after has been rather lackluster I admit.

I'm praying we get something along the quality lines of the Mobility Radeon 5870M soon!

 

I really miss those days, the last few cards I have had from them have been decent performers but there is just certain games that perform terribly and it happens far too frequently for me to consider going back to them.

 

Apparently, you did not see any of my or @johnksss extreme overclocked 680M SLI benchmark results. With an unlocked vBIOS, 680M SLI literally tears the 7970M CrossFire a new posterior orifice. It's not a "little bit" faster... it's actually a blood bath. 7970M cannot compete with 680M performance on any level except GPUGPU compute, in which case it excels at that task. Running stock or with a minor overclock they are really close, but I don't give any credit for that. Stock performance needs to be nice, but what really matters is how far you can push the performance. Unless AMD releases an overclocking banshee that matches overclocked performance of NVIDIA, their products will never be viewed as a viable alternative to me. Same applies to their pathetic CPUs.

Their products are a good fit for low-budget value builder PCs that play games better than a console, but beyond that I find it hard to identify any value in their offerings. There is nothing whatsoever wrong with this niche market and I am not being critical of it, that's just not my cup of tea. It's definitely better than console gaming.

I have never experienced a lick of trouble with 4870M or 5870M. In fact, the 4870M CrossFire in the M17xR2 is still going strong. Since there are two working together, it still holds its own against many newer single GPU gaming machines. To be fair, those were ATI, not AMD products. AMD can't take any credit for those products.

 

Well I'm maxing out my gaming needs for now.. I would love to get a better GPU but honestly don't have the money and don't need it.. If the R9 390MX trounces the 970M and I get some money and Clevo releases a desktop CPU laptop + dual slots, I will definetly upgrade... Also a 17.3" IPS screen preferably 3K

 

Hopefully, R9 390MX will stomp 980M. I doubt it, but I still hope so.

There is very little reliable information available on the R9 M295X in spite of laptops already having shipped with it. I don't know if that is because most people that bought it are value-shopping noobs that don't know anything about benching, or they are having issues with it already, or something else. Part of it may be mis-identification as 8970M or Generic VGA making it hard to isolate in online results. It makes it further difficult to compare because most NVIDIA results in "official" (aka professional paid shill review) form is with a stock vBIOS, which bears no resemblance to actual real-world performance once NVIDIA's crippling tactics have been circumvented.

What little bit there is out there doesn't solicit any compelling reason for excitement or enthusiasm.

AMD Radeon R9 M295X Core Clock Throttling, Heat, and Performance

AMD Radeon R9 M295X

RADEON R9 M295X vs 780M vs 970M

 

My guess is 390x/395x mobile will be another Tonga, simply because if there was something to stomp the 980M, it would have been unleashed on the desktop first as a 980 killer when it comes to perf per watt.

Since Hawaii (R9 290X desktop) is getting a rebrand with possible Tonga updates (better tessellation performance and other things) there won't be anything for the mobile sector.

AMD straight up ignored designing for the mid-range market for whatever reasons. Money, laziness or waiting on TSMC. Who knows...?