Dell adds Nvidia GTX 880M / 860M, AMD R9 M290X to Alienware 17 & 18

Hi, I've just discovered that Dell has added the Nvidia GeForce GTX 880M / 860M and AMD Radeon R9 M290X to the specs sheets of the Alienware 17 and 18 on their German website. This means the new GPUs will arrive very soon to these notebooks. The specs also confirm the GTX 880M will have 8GB GDDR5 memory.

Links:

Dell Updates Alienware 17, 18 Gaming Laptops with Nvidia GeForce GTX 880M / 860M, AMD Radeon R9 M290X | Laptoping | Windows Laptop & Tablet PC Reviews and News

Gaming Notebook - Alienware Gamer Notebook | Dell Deutschland

 

Maybe this GPU refresh looming in the near future has influenced their delay in release of a good system BIOS and properly working fan tables for the Alienware 17 and 18. Let's hope so, anyhow. It will be very disappointing if they release new hardware options and still have not corrected the other issues that are far more important than a GPU refresh in the grand scheme of things.

 

It looks as though this may be what happens this year. Just throwing in some upgraded components leaving everything else the same. Although, it still may be a little too early to speculate on that. Since Maxwell was delayed until later this year, we may see changes then.

 

I couldn't help but notice there were two mentions of the 880M with 2GB and 8GB interesting what price range they will run when 8GB will not affect framerates at all.

 

It could affect framerates with 3K or 4K monitor(s), but it should not have any effect on performance with a 1080p display.

 

This year will be interesting for Alienware and NVIDIA, assuming NVIDIA does in fact release two high-end mobile GPU's -- 880M and 880MX. What would the pricing be like? This could be a great year to upgrade for those of you still running 680M's. I haven't seen them do this since I joined the PC gaming world (about three years ago). I'm hoping that Alienware offers the 8GB cards, along with NVIDIA releasing G-SYNC for laptops. The extra vRAM may be beneficial, if so.

 

I`m ditching this system the minute Maxwell 880MX is out. Gonna SLI them and hopefully rocking a 3K/4K display on the upcoming Alienware 18. G-Sync would be awesome too.
GTX 880MX SLI will be a major overkill for 1080p considering I can play any 1080p game maxed out on my GTX 770M SLI system.

I hope Alienware is aware of this.

 

What's the power consumption going to be like on these cards? Dell going to release a better power supply?

 

Nah, doubtful. They'll probably be the same or less. Everything is more efficient these days. Eventually, we'll be able to get 4930MX performance out of a CPU that consumes as much power as the 4700MQ does. What they need to do is offer an overclock package that includes the option of having dual PSU's, an unlocked BIOS, and maybe even an "overclocker's edition" vBIOS. That would be a sweet package, wouldn't it?

 

Honestly, do some research since maxwell isn't coming yet these upcoming cards are just rebrands with more VRAM :\.

 

Yes *10 chars*

 

So what is the general timeframe?

 

As far as I've seen, the 880M is just a rebranded 780. It does not use a Maxwell core.

 

GPU hysteria is always kind of fun to watch and the rebranding scheme seems to be at least somewhat effective as a marketing gimmick for AMD and NVIDIA. To some extent, even Intel does this--e.g. 2920XM/2960XM, 3920XM/3940XM, etc.--although there are some minuscule technical differences between those CPUs. I wonder how many people actually rush out and buy something on the assumption that newer means better without any knowledge that the GPU is just a rebranded knock-off of yesterday's product.

 

From what I have seen so far most people are pointing to about the same improvement we saw coming from the 680m to the 780m so not enough that people should consider upgrading their 780m's IMO. Coming from a 680m might be worth it if your having issues running games but even then it isn't a dramatic improvement I don't think

 

Just did a quick search on ebay and found these available already.

Nvidia Geforce GTX 880M 8GB DDR5 FOR MSI Clevo Alienware Upgrademonkey | eBay

Nvidia Geforce GTX 880M 8GB DDR5 FOR MSI Clevo Alienware Upgrademonkey | eBay

Cheers.

 

There's a thread at Techinferno for a week now that upgrademonkey decided to share few of his GPU's to forum members for additional testing. He did testing as well, but the card throttles like crazy and the results seems to be on par with stock 780M. It needs a custom vbios right from the start to operate as it should!

http://forum.techinferno.com/alienware/5734-upgrademonkey-gtx-880m-review-preview.html

 

Sounds like the same issue the GTX 780M had back at launch.

Cheers.

 

I think just about everything NVIDIA makes needs a custom vBIOS to not have throttling problems. They need to ditch the GPU Boost idea. It was a novel concept, but it just doesn't cut it like a real overclock. I'm really sick of all the "adaptive" and "efficient" garbage that is creeping into our space. It has no place here. Whoever thought that was somehow important for high performance systems needs to have their head examined, LOL. How stupid... save that silly stuff for tablets and Ultrabooks and spare us from participation in the "go green" agenda.

 

That throttling was with Furmark though right? They didn't show evidence of throttling in other scenarios as far as I can see. Throttling in Furmark is sensible (places an unnatural & artificially high load on the GPU), NVidia have devised their GPU's to throttle automatically in Furmark as soon as the card detects that it's Furmark that is running - I think they started doing this from Fermi onwards.

 

damn refreshes. i would only imagine 20nm runs so much cooler than 780m or 880m lol. i have waited 3 years to upgrade my graphics card and then this crap, time to wait another year!

 

Maybe... smaller die in Ivy was hotter than Sandy, and now Haswell is a real blast furnace. Overclocking and ultimately the potential keeps getting less with each generation of CPU. With less surface for heat transfer the same thing might happen on GPUs. AMD and NVIDIA may have to tone down their GPU performance to keep them from melting if they continue trying to cram more into a smaller space. Ah, but it will be "more efficient" LOL... yeah, right.

Yeah NVIDIA cards do that with a stock vBIOS. That started several generations ago and the desktop cards have the same nonsense with a stock vBIOS. They call it "adaptive" and "dynamic" behavior. I call it throttling because it impairs performance.

AMD and NVIDIA both throttle with Furmark and OCCT to keep people from burning up their video cards. That's actually a good thing.

 

wasn't that the excuse intel gave when they switched their desktop ivy CPU IHS from solder to paste? after IHS removed and crappy paste removed, all cpu ran cooler. which is why heat issues didn't really affect laptop at all, no IHS and no crappy paste.

 

Furmark is where the card should throttle.

Better that than a fixed 700mhz so the card does not burn when running a power virus.

 

That's not how miniaturization works. Smaller means denser, and denser means more heat, especially with increased speed. Assuming all else equal.

Nobody in their right mind should consider upgrading from a 780M. They're the same card. I've got my 780Ms clocked at 1020MHz core day to day, which is a significant improvement over the 880M's stock clocks. Unless the 880M has higher overclock potential, there's zero benefit.

 

I think the 880M with 2GB in the specs sheet of the Alienware 17 is a typo, it's most likely the 860M 2GB since the same GPU is also listed in the Alienware 18 specs on the same spot. Also, there's no mention anywhere on the net about the 880M 2GB.

 

but all else isn't equal cause smaller means less resistance means less heat. all due in time we'll see just how much the new CPU at 14nm and new GPU at 20nm will do in terms of heat. the trends so far is smaller nm runs cooler but it isn't always true though, especially intel doing stuff like adding more iGP units onto the CPU and add voltage regulator causes more heat.

 

This is true. The way Intel went about designing Haswell wasn't good. They gained more heat by moving to a SoC design and it might have turned out much better had they not crammed FIVR and more graphic processing power into the smaller package. That more than defeated any benefit from a die shrink and I think it was a pretty stupid thing to do.

 

Alienware Canada has listed one of their AW 17s with the AMD R9 M290X...a mobile platform with access to mantle? HECK YES!

 

Uh, smaller (width) does not mean less resistance (and the main source of heat in these processors is the transistors anyways), but more resistance. The distances we're dealing with in modern microprocessors means that (for all purposes) resistance is about constant.

 

no drivers for the R9 M290X

 

No need to stress over this too much. There were no drivers for 7970M available from AMD for a good while after it was launched by OEMs. The only ones available were those provided by OEMs and they were often obsolete by the time the product became available on the street. However, you can mod the INF to add your hardware ID to use newer drivers until AMD gets around to adding the new hardware IDs to their reference drivers.

 

The 880M will likely take some time to be added by nvidia too.

 

ah...i've set my mind to the alienware 17, 1080p display, and 16gb RAM as the mandatory requirements....and so I am stuck on which GPU to get: the AMD R9 M290X mainly for the use of Mantle or the NVIDIA Geforce GTX 780M for the sheer computing horsepower.

but I won't be ordering till early march when i arrive in canada so I suspect the specs will change in the meantime.

 

I'd go for the 780M and 120hz display myself.

 

If you gonna get an i7 cpu mantle is not worth going to amd, plus its not officially supported on mobile gpus..

 

strange cos it's mentioned on the R9 M290X's official page.

 

It should be supported on the non enduro setups iirc.

 

I thought this was a pretty decent GPU comparison for those that are curious. It was just published yesterday.

GeForce GTX 780M, 770M, And 765M: Scaling Vs. Radeon HD 8970M

 

Excellent combination. I loved mine. Too bad the motherboard failed, they had to replace it with what I'm selling in my signature. Once I sell it, I'll probably grab another 17" 120Hz Alienware.

I suppose that extra VRAM is helpful after all, eh? The 780M is a nice card. I'd love to see how the M290x performs in comparison to all four of those GPU's.

It's a shame that the 880M is an exact copy with even more VRAM...

 

Actually, the 880M GPU has the ability to overclock a little higher than 780M, so that might make the upgrade more worthwhile than having more vRAM than you know what to do with. Not sure what changed with regard to that, but there is something different that is not visible on the surface.

The R2 M290x should be closer to 780M/880M than the 7970M/8970M/M280x clones. I sure do hope it does not take AMD another 6 to 9 months to release a decent driver for it like what we saw with 7970M. I hope they have done something to make the hardware more reliable, too.

 

I was wondering how long it took AMD to do drivers for the 7970M so I hope it doesn't take THAT LONG for AMD to do driver support for the R9 M290X cos it's looking like that particular model is the one I'll be aiming for as the 780M is out of my price range.

 

The 780M has the same TDP limits as the 880M so I don't see how they would not be identical performance wise in more stressful titles, once you unlock the vbios they will be identical.

 

I love the price of the model with the M290x, but I am not a fan of AMD's mobile graphics lineup (mainly due to their poor driver support). I'm just glad they're back. If they stick around, perhaps the NVIDIA cards will be a little bit cheaper for 2014.

When I ordered an M17x R4 / M18x R2 a couple years ago, I remember the prices being like $200-$250 difference between the top end AMD and NVIDIA cards. Now it's $600 for the 780M over the AMD M290x, which is a little ridiculous. At that price, I can see why people would choose AMD over NVIDIA.

 

Yeah, but remember the definition of insanity, LOL. Let's see proof of driver quality, hardware reliability and performance before we validate a decision for anyone to act as a cheapskate. Retaining your sanity and having superior performance does come with a higher price tag.

 

nVidia says : "ALL YOUR BASE R BELONG TO US!"

 

and hence why i want to see how other people experience it before buying

 

I'm interested to see if the true next AMD chip will need an xfire cable and how the multi gpu performance will be.

 

so on the one hand AMD writes a driver for the R9 M290X in the AW17 with no log as to what is supported like mantle, but on the other hand it doesn't support it in their mobility drivers.....

W-T-H???

 

Without proper driver support, I'm willing to bet the M290x will perform about as good as a overclocked 765M or stock 770M in most of the latest games.

In a video I watched online about the M290x, the reviewer was like, "As you can see we're playing BF4 without problems... Let's check the settings and see what they're at. Oh, they're on Medium to High..." You could see the disappointment in his face, lol.

Hopefully they've got some decent drivers. The M290x should perform at almost 780M levels, for a fraction of the cost, but it probably won't because of drivers.