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

ok, and we are doing this why?

 

Just showing clock for clock the two are identical.

 

Clock for clock huh?
You didn't think it was kind of important to actually show the clock speed?
Identical? You are running sli not single.
And as I did in my review I already showed that the 780M can keep pace with a 880M to a certain point. And after that point it's all 880M.
And if you were going to do that you would have been better off using 3dmark11 and not 3dmark. Since it's a proven fact that 3dmark11 can directly get double performance.

Which puts me at a bit of loss of that post.

Since no one said it was not the same chip, but it was in fact a better version of the chip.
And as to that compare. If you would have done that same test with 880M in sli. You would have been closer to 8K and not 7K. Clock for Clock. I bet if you tried that volt for volt it would not fair as well.


Edit:
Side note. What everyone seems to forget is the 880M is a re branded 780M which is a re branded 680M. According to all those that posted when the 780M hit the market. And the 680M was a major jump over the 580M. And this all took quite some time to see...Since we are now in 2014 and just starting to see the final full potential of kepler.

 

so 780m is like an unlocked version of 680m with more config cores? or is it just a new card? either way i still don't see how 880m will be much better than 780m. better yes as it probably will be better optimized like you said final potential as it is now 3 years old. GPU score they don't really mean as much as they would for gaming fps so I take it grain of salt, those can get manipulated by drivers and I am into real performance mostly for gaming.

now going back what you mentioned about 8gb vram will actually allow higher OC puzzles me. i'd like to take example of ram, or cpu here even though they are very different things but all electronics are similar in ways. take CPU for example iGP isn't used but electricity still goes through it thus generates more heat and i'd say that in itself plays a role prevent higher OC in cpu due to heat. for RAM, 8gb 2133 just came out and it took them this long, now I know for a fact that they didn't make this simply because theres no market for it and if it really comes down to difficulty of making 8gb at 2133+ it'd probably be tougher, as to why i do not know. another thing, running alienware on intel HD4000, disable GPUs in bios but with graphics card plugged in still generates heat on heatsink means current is flowing through the card which leads me to believe even unused 8gb vram would produce heat and prevent higher OC. now preventing higher OC is one thing, as to how high it can OC is another and thats based on the card you get so i guess my final question, or original question to make it clear was, why would 8gb vram enable/help higher OC on 880m than 780m? if not then its really just the card themselves, or like you mentioned better optimization (for 15%+). if so, how?

 

I think you are misunderstanding what is being said.

What original question?
What was stated was the 880M with 8GB Vram will over clock higher than 780M vram without being volt modded. This should be self explanatory? Now if you volt mod it, you may be able to get say 1800 to 1900 mhz (speculation of course)
You only need to look at the over clocked benchmarks and check the memory for the card. You will see that almost all test we're ran at 1600 to 1650 mhz on stock memory voltage. 1500 mhz on stock voltage for 780M. 1650 to 1700 on volt modded vram.
Thats how...

 

lol the short answers you provided is your bad habit for invoking people but i'll just leave it as it almost seems irrelevant and doesn't answer anything ive asked.. as for this last part it says so much more.

iirc 780m runs at 1250mhz came with card on default, so with modded bios it will do 1500 on default, and with modded bios it will allow more voltage and higher OC, correct? also for the short answers you gave with bold letters to my speculations, where did the 1800 to 1900 came from? speculation comes from history/examples/facts/similarity, care to share?

original question was, and after all you have said. why would 880m with 8gb vram oc higher (your speculation included too would be great) even if its just a rebrand other than reason being full potential/ hardware + software optimization.

 

I did share plenty.

Now you must keep up unityole.

 

for the last half part, starting from "hard" mod i recall seeing a post meaker mentioned about pencil mod. now finally it comes down to, how high the cards can OC as to how practical it can be. if hard mod is simple for you to do then 780m/880m value sky rocket because card itself allows such high frequency but at no cost? first i'd like to think dual PSU mod is needed, 2nd one would have to be comfortable modding their GPU which cost hundreds, 3rd high volt means temp will sky rocket, would damage the card/memory module and 4th not a laptop anymore if constantly having to use AC to cool it off, 5th fan noise, so loud 24/7 6th vbios flash etc and so on. now im not bringing battery in here because I personally believe even 15 mins battery is good enough at this performance and used for power loss prevention purpose.

so with all these mods and risks, people would start to bring down how high it can OC, with or without hard mod. with all said what you're saying is 880m a rebrand with almost exact same of everything will OC way better than 780m with a hard mod? what happens when theres no hard mod cause majority of people can't do it.

take a look of my mods. i have joined CPU heatsink with 2ndary GPU to share heat off my CPU running dual fan and radiator to max cooling and I have also mod my wifi to run on DMC slot instead of mini pcie and use wifi slot for extra SSDs running at 400MB/s. now if someone ask me if its worth it i say no, but only worth it for me cause i care about OC CPU and storage.

a GPU at that frequency would or would not function with this heatsink, it'd work better in clevo machine but not in alienware. i don't see people running their xtreme cpu 4.8/4.9ghz 24/7. im running mine 4.7 24/7 though at below 85C.

 

so, anyone has a clue when dell/alienware will release the new 800-series cards?

oh and, don´t know if it´s been said already, but the 780M is not just a 680M rebrand, but actually the full GK104-chip (1536 cores and gpuboost 2)^^

 

June 2014, most likely at CES, like last year.

 

Brother Unityole, This has all been covered many many times already in many different threads. So we go back to the short answers.
1: You do not need a dual psu to run decent over clocks on the M18X R1/R2. You wouldn't need a dual PSU for the new AW18/AW17 if dell fixed what we asked them to fix before they even came out.
2: Dual psu and a/c are for "numbers chasing" only. With far better than average over clocking.
3: I did not say way better over clock with a hard mod. What I said was you can over clock the memory a bit higher with a hard memory volt mod. (Seriously, you have to quit ad-libbing here my friend. )
4: No one needs to hard mod any of the mobile cards to get more than what they paid for, but you will need to flash a working vbios to find that out first.
5: Your mods are pretty darn cool to the geek in me!, but in reality they are not needed.
6: You buy 16 gb of ram, but never max it out, so why buy it? This would compare to some of the earlier comparisons you made. So why go 32? For bragging rights? You will never use it every day. And don't try to start making stuff up to justify an answer. . (Just using this as an example, not another topic of discussion. )
Edit- Now a ram disk is a useful tool for running with drives. Just seen your post in the benching thread. Disregard upper post.

7: All that added stuff you add would take away from a single psu over clock. You only get 440W (330W rms) max power before the psu shuts off, but this only matters when numbers chasing. Not every day use.
8: This is a biggie. Your room temp plays a major role in how you laptop runs. So the cooler the room the more head room you have to work with.
And you running at 4.7 every day clocks...I only need to see you run 1 of many different test and that will tell me if you are actually efficient or non efficient. (Meaning you would get more out of a lower over clock)
Now if you are running it the smart way, where it's allow to use what it needs, then you sir are doing things right for normal every day usage.
I can run mine at 4.7/ 4.8. I can run a 2960XM at 5.0/5.1/5.2. But do i do it? Nah. When Im done benching I put everything back to stock and run it as is. I showed where you dont need an extreme cpu or over clock to play any number of games. Just like most do not over clock theirs either. (laptops). They just want to play and not worry about breaking or bricking a 3000 dollar machine.


Edit:
Just got some interesting news on the AW18...we shall see how it pans out.

Re-branding comes from using the same gk104 chip. Not what they did to the chip itself. And since it shows up in a 680M but is disabled, kind of backs that line of thinking. And we disabled gpuboost 2 in the 780M vbios.
Me personally. Don't care if it's a re-brand or not. I'm a If i want it i'll get it type of guy. But that's just me.

 

Damn, June?! So far behind MSI and Clevo....

 

Well, look at it this way. If the other guys go first you'll at least know how high your Alienware with similar specs will need to jump to be better. If you're going to upgrade your M18xR2 you don't need to wait. You can buy them now.

And, while 880M SLI will be the best GPU upgrade to go for M18xR1/R2 owners, this isn't going to fix anything for those with the 18. At least the new 17 can use the 330W AC adapter designed for the M18xR1/R2/18. Alienware is going to have to do something about the power handling limitations on the 18 or the 880M SLI will have the same functional ceiling as the 780M SLI currently does. It's already impossible to push 780M SLI very hard on the 18.

 

Yeah, good point. Does the new Alienware 17 share the same power limitation as the Alienware 18? Or do you have more watt to play with since its a 17" computer?

 

Negative, simply because the 17 has the single card whereas the 18 has dual cards. Don't forget that bigger screen, more lighting, etc. drains more power as well. Correct me if I'm wrong.

 

I talked to a manager at Alienware and they said that they should have them out before the end of April. Also, I remember reading somewhere that all launch Nvidia partners (which Alienware is) have to release products with the new cards prior to 3/21/2014. If this is true, then it is possible they will release an AW 17 in the next few days (the laptop listed on the Nvidia slides) and an AW 18 shortly thereafter.

 

right now, dell.de (germany) lets you configure both, the 860M and 880M for the AW17 and AW18

 

Yup mrm2x is right just went over there and saw the options for the 14 as well for the 860 which should make that a much more desirable laptop.

 

Dell US site just updated. However the 14 has not changed yet. Would be dumb not for them to update today or tomorrow with the 860m. That should make that a more capable laptop now.

 

Good! The Alienware 18 has 880M SLI in 2x8GB cards. I was hoping that would be the case. It would have sucked if Dell had gone with the lower vRAM option like they did with 680M cards being only 2GB instead of 4GB like Clevo 680M.

The Alienware 14 is not going to be changed without a motherboard revision. It's unfortunate that they cannot enjoy a simple bolt-in upgrade using an MXM slot.

 

If they had attached 4GB of 1.75Ghz rated ram instead you would have had no complaints from me

 

Would have been fine with me, too. But, we value overclocking a lot more than the average gamer seems to. 880M with 4GB might actually overclock better than 8GB will. That seems to have been the case with Dell 2GB 680M cards versus 4GB Clevo cards. Might have been something else, but that was the most obvious difference between them.

 

Alienware is having a sale too, so I cancelled my 780's and saved over $200 with the discount and added 880's instead. Well worth the extra week wait.

 

No reason not to get the 880M instead of the 780M. Dell are using decent chips at least.

 

Yup, would be silly to get the older GPU considering they are almost the same. Buying 780M would simply decrease the resale value of that new machine instantly compared to the identical new machine with 880M. I'd want the 880M for the extra vRAM, too.

 

I can't see going from 4GB to 8GB really helping even in games like skyrim with mods.

 

I used a bit of the savings to add a year of enhanced warranty but still ended up paying less and getting a newer card. Gotta like that!

 

For this little price difference it would be silly not to go with 8GB 880M no matter if it doesn't provide a benefit over 4GB 780M. At the very least you are doing more to hold the value of a laptop by choosing the newer GPU. They are not selling 780M now anyway so that's kind of a none issue. The folks that waited a week or two to get 880M were pretty smart for doing that and there was nothing to be lost. The limitation is going to be more or less the same with either GPU... one 330W AC adapter on the 18 is going to cap the performance long before the SLI setup ever gets within a mile of being maxed out for overclocked performance.

 

Is Skyrim 64bit?
32bit games support max 2gig Vram.
Even at 4K gaming in 64bit there are less than 5 games today that is over 2gig in Vram.

Vram is interesting for GPU compute and 880M is not a compute card.
Maybe one day PC gaming will see a huge performance leap by having an OS+dev tools that support 1-2 graphic card for rendering and one card dedicated for compute.

A high end compute card have 35times the raw compute power over the fastest 4core Xeon.
(thats why MacPro have a dedicated compute card. Largest performance leap in 10 years with programs that support it. We even see this in XboxOne/PS4 where they use the internal APU as a compute cluster)

I wish PC had a more standard approach so that developers could optimize code instead of brute force. Brute force worked when X86 doubled in performance every 18 months, but since 2006 desktop Intel have just increased 130%.

In every single Alienware laptop today there is an idle powerful Intel graphics card. Imagine if developers could use it for compute during gaming/or other stuff like rendering,

 

Skyrim modded will use more than 2gb RAM and VRAM even though it's 32bit.
As mentioned the extra ram is likely for work purposes.

 

Yea I saw that Dell was having a sale and was also able to apply my mil discount as well for over 22%off! So it allowed me to go full max on the specs even with warranty...glad I waited...Ill post the specs in the owners thread...thx Mr. Fox for suggesting waiting! (This is RogerWilco from the other forum btw :hi2

 

anything over 5% discount.. only in the states LOL

 

Yes what is going in with the UK store, you don't even get free shipping and you can't even configure the laptops, I'd be better off getting a clevo, problem is I want an alienware I just hope they sort the UK store out soon.

 

You can configure the laptops again now, still no free shipping though.

 

On Polish Dell site there is 15% promo till 13.04.


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Are the 880 SLI that Alienware has on the website, Maxwell architecture?

I'm really debating upgrading from my laptop- 680 sLI. Does anyone see them upgrading the processor soon?

 

What's the point of a minimum 3500 dollar m290x build lol

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i believe all 880Ms are on the old kepler architecture with the 860M being a true maxwell GPU.

 

The mxm options will be kepler 860m.

 

If we wait long enough in 2014, will 880 be updated to maxwell architecture? Don't understand why Nvidia went this way.

 

If it's the most powerful mobile GPU I find myself wondering why it would make any difference? I mean, it's performance, not branding, that truly matters, right? On that basis, if you have the most powerful option who cares whether it's Kepler or Maxwell?

 

Because they sell far more mid range cards than high end.

 

I'm sure they do sell more mediocre stuff because it's cheaper and a lot of gamers are kids with limited budgets that can't afford to buy the good stuff (or parents that refuse to spend top dollar on the good stuff for their kids, or themselves).

Brother Meaker, are you replying to someone else, because I don't see how your response has anything to do with my comment about not caring whether it's Kepler or Maxwell if you already have the most powerful GPU. When you have the best it is more or less irrelevant what it's called, or what product family it's part of.

 

Yes, the 880M will be replaced by a Maxwell variant of some sort.

 

Responding to the same question.

Also the 860M is a great design for 13" class machines.