How far Alienware has gone backwards

http://cpuboss.com/cpus/Intel-Core-i7-4710HQ-vs-Intel-Core-i7-3940XM

How could they let themselves go 30% BACKWARDS in performance from 3 years ago.

I just went on their site, and found these crappy models being offered 4710HQ...
I quickly just did a simple google of that and compared it to my CPU I've rocked for a few years now, the 3940XM.

I paid less for my laptop years ago, they they are charging today, for the equivalent model, yet the equivalent model is not only MORE EXPENSIVE, it is also about 5 years behind in performance.

Sorry for my rage and rant, but there is this other forum called Tom's Hardware, that doesn;t know its arse from it's front page, and so many people there don't get it...
I read this one article about people explaining the 980M with 4GB is slower because of the CPU being a 4710HQ, which sure, marginally affects your FPS, as opposed to another system being 4970K and using 980M 8GB.

No one seemed to know what they were speaking about, but i knew right away it was an Alienware piece of garbage with a soldered on 980M with 40% of its cache disabled among other impairing handicaps added by DELL...

Anyways, this all brings me to the conclusion, people are not quite aware of how BACKWARDS Alienware has gone in terms of performance. To even equal the performance of what you had THREE YEARS AGO, you need to be using a graphics amplifier .... Lets all just stick that in our backback and go to a coffee shop and compare my old-school playing, vs any moron who has one of these news pieces of garbage.
man I'm so livid everytime I think about Alienware....

 

You should be blaming Intel and AMD. Alienware will wise up. They gave some hope with the refreshed 18. F. Azor is aware we won't stand for that crap. He's aware we think the soldered notebooks are complete garbage. He's aware he's losing business to Clevo.

BTW That comparison isn't really fair at all. Unlocked vs. soldered, and all the unlocked processors in the past, to now, do 4ghz+.

 

True. but that is what i got in my Alienware when i got the fastest GPU/CPU combo. Today they only offer the 4710HQ at the same tier, and it is for even MORE then I paid a few years ago. SO - the comparison is perfect ! If it is unfair, it is unfair to the predecessor M17X-R4 with the extreme CPU in it, for making it stood down to being compared to soldered on bullcripe or technically speaking - comparing it to a more expensive model. My old 680M can beat the 980M they have soldered on in there. And now that I have a 980M inside, I can even beat the 980 Desktop card with thier graphics adapter by a decently large amount, like I come out 10-15% higher on 3DMark then my frie4nd does. He gets around 8500 on firestrike, and I get 10,000. Yet his laptop cost him 4500 with the whole setup, and mine cost me $2500 3 years ago, and then $900 for the 980M I use today. so... 10,000 score @ $3400 VS 8500 score @ $4500, 2 videocards, one not even portable.

Just how is it not fair to the newer model ?!?!?!? Its not fair to ANYONE WHO GOT TRICKED into buying the new Alienware's

All they did was put this inside : http://www.ebay.ca/itm/111682179200?_trksid=p2060353.m1438.l2649&ssPageName=STRK:MEBIDX:IT

i can get that for my M17X-R4 and use a 980 Ti, and guess what !!! my score goes to about 10500 (Because the bandwidth is limitted by the mpcie abit) soooo....that thing has been out for 4-5-6 years or something, i forget, i have one collecting dust somewhere. Its even smaller then the graphics adapter/amplifier, and its been around for a half decade, and it much cheaper. THOUGH*** not limitted to a graphics card, I can use it for a sound card if I want or an I/O drive, or whatever. So technically speaking, its superior, then the backwards thinking DELL does.

noticed they didn't even change the shape or design, that even the Alienness theme of the whole company - Alienware, is just not as strong either. They damaged thier own brand. They can throw more and more money at marketting, but its only mainstreaming mediocricity, and we - the hardcore gamers/enthusiasts, who made the brand successful by buying it and supporting it on these forums, are not going to let poor cunsumers buy that crap. This is why I started to sell Clevo's, because I belieev in it so strongly.

I will give a 20% discount to anyone sending me in their old alienware's from 2012- present, or 10% discount if its an older Alienware, on ANY EUROCOM Clevo
(Eurocom's are better because they won't charge you for the extra special unlocked bios's, and we use PREMA bios as default, because WE ARE GAMERS FOR GAMERS!!!)
But seriously. We care. Lots . A lot of lots. Unlike DELL. They only pay someone to care, and he only cares from 9am-5pm mondays through fridays, except on holidays. We care ALWAYS. I wake up when my phone sends me a beep saying someone messages me for support.
Dozens of you know this, cause your always asking me, "why you up , its 5am where you are etc.." Cause I care. Try calling DELL at that time. Or sending them an email. Tell them your willing to pay for a product - RIGHT THEN AND THERE.. to the answering machine.

I'm just so pissed everytime I think of Alienware and DELL, I've been in that boat, waiting for replacement parts, or RMA or a tech coming over. I have even been one of their techs on the road, repairing things. Nearly half the time, DELL sent me the wrong parts, or didn't tell me what I needed to know from the ticket, or conversation with the consumer - you - you know, the guy who is reading this saying WTF. I got annoyed, quit, starting working for BMO. Then I started noticing BMO spent 88,000$ on a small rug in one of the office... and I found them laundering money everywhere to some random no-name artist in BC for "Royalties".. I quit, screw that corporate ****. Worked for Ford. These guys have directors of their sites, hiring their 80+ year old cousins to work their servers, guys who - that when I show up, tell me they've never touched a computer before . No joke. Ford wastes money like its no ones business. BMO steals money and writes it off, and doesn't tell their investors. DELL tries to pawn garbage off to its loyal followers and treats us like crap. Big corps man. They all do it, unless they get called out, they then try it a different way or wait a year.

 

When did you guys start using Prema's bios mods by default? I had bought a Eurocom Panther 5 last year and my Xeon wouldn't even keep turbo speeds until I installed Prema's bios mod.

 

Firstly, if you're looking at CPU Boss for any meaningful comparison, you're looking in the wrong place, and any fool would tell you the same.

Secondly, no one cares for any kind of eGPU if they want a powerful laptop.

Thirdly, there's no point whining about how much your machine cost you three years ago and comparing it to Today's machines - that's just the bleeding edge.

Fourthly, I cant help but think that this whole rant of yours has something to do with your now being a seller of non-Alienware machines.

Fifthly, who the hell is "WE" in all of this 'we care lots' speech. I don't see you registered as a reseller.

Finally, pointless thread - needs to be closed.

 

Its effects like that, that convinced us to do so, but not all models, go for the gamers models with extreme in the name or like unlocked this and that. We use PREMA's vbios on our cards though, for a majority of them, maybe only recently, but PREMA's work took a few years before we undoubtedly don't think twice before giving him a gold standard of credit and appeal. Now his bios's are second nature, and help us differentiate ourselves from the other vendors selling Clevo's even further. Other vendors, try and charge you an exuberant fee' for that unlocked bios, whereas Prema gave it for free, and would have given it to you for free. I say go to his site, or find his donation links on T|I and buy him a round !


Steve don't hate ! I do not have to be listed as a reseller, to use the word "WE", and no need to be all forum-nazi on us, the thread has the point of someone (me) expressing themselves. What I wonder, is who complained and pointed this thread out to you, for you to say it needs to be closed ?

And CPU boss is not a place to check out benchmarks, they hardly by any standard regulate what is the fare number for something. But that STATISTICS are right. If it says something has 32ROP then it does. If something is 256BIT wide bus, it will be accurate, in so far as I know.
So - go and insult someone else, and maybe take your Alienware's with you, lol
(j/k relax man)

My point was, though mostly emotionally displayed, that Recent Alienware's are no-where near the quality of previous generations. We are being sold junk, thats made to look - casual/classic. It not only doesn't pull off the hardcore Alien theme for us, it also is not as great in performance, as generations past, and it costs even more then they did years ago ! This is MULTIPLE STEPS BACKWARDS! ( IMO that is)

This is what i wish to discuss here, if I had to re-iterate the point of this thread. so- discuss!

P.S.

sure there are threada galore out there and sentiments all over them about this same topic, but so many people come and complain to me about falling for the new Alienware trap, they have all expressed they wished they knew before hand, more about Clevo's and older generations of Alienware, almots all the people confused are confused by buying a AW17R2 and getting a 980M to only find it sucks , and it less performance then the 680M they had in the laptop they sold to pay for 1/3rd of the new one. Imagine how ripped off you would feel ! Dell, grossly took advanatge of this little trick and didn't let ANYONE know there was a difference, that it not only was 4GB but also has cache cut out, and other specifications are much less appealing too. YET - they charged a premium as if they were selling a 1500$ MXM 3.0 card.

And when I say "WE" I meant Eurocom and other people Selling Clevo's. Mind you, so much of the choice in how things are created, is out of our control, but right now, it is a very proud time to be affiliated with Clevo in any sense.

 

Okay, maybe I was a bit harsh, so apologies for that, Bro.

It's just that I think we ALL know that Alienware of Today is NOT the same as Alienware of before - at least most people who read these forums should find that sentiment sticks out like a sore thumb, right?. People also know the alternatives, such as Sager/Clevo rebrands.

It just sounded like you were rubbishing Alienware (and maybe rightly so) but with an added motive of reselling other machines yourself. Nothing wrong with that, I guess.....I just didn't see the point in a thread to point out the obvious and have a bash at the same time - not like we haven't seen enough Dell bashing of late, myself included.

At some point, it becomes repetitive and boring.

 

Glad we're all friends, you're both good blokes. Let's hope that all our AW disappointment is enough to make them step things up a notch and learn from their mistake - let us always upgrade our machines, unlock our bios, support bios updates for at least 5 years or at least make it more open, more cores, give us more AC, 120+ hz, give us more power, give us more power, give us MORE POWER!

 

Alot of this is INTEL's fault. They're the ones making the chipset. However, a large company like DELL could easily get what it wants, they could easily have worked like companies like ASUS which do alot of in house production and research and development.

on a side note, I was browsing Tom's Forum, and I coudn't get some people to understand the issue they were having when comparing two setups, one had a 4790K CPU and the other had a 4710HQ, now guess which one has a 980M 8GB and which one has the 4GB one.

They came to the conclusion, to answer the OP "Why do I lose FPS on one laptop in this game, but not in the other" they all said it was the CPU, one guy said to blame the GPU RAM but it was still overkill...
Then the thread populated, dozens and dozens of responses from people with tens of thousands of messages and rep and star unicorn moderator power -wtvr.

It was as if they didn't realise, those soldered on GPU's were different, as if they had the same stats, run at the same speeds. This is a fault of ALIENWARE/DELL. For misleading people. It has got to be intentional. They put them in their flagship , and market it like its 10x more badass then the previous Gen with SLI 880M.. etc.. meanwhile the 980M they have should be labelled 950M or something because its really, IMO, like the GPU's you would find in the old M14X-R2 and like series.

I tried to point it out to people, that the largest factor was not CPU bottlenecking, but the GPU being so vastly inferior. They didn't get it, and called me a TROLL. Then they went into details to explain to me like a child the difference in the cpu's - that one was a LAPTOP cpu and the other was a DESKTOP cpu.... no one mentioning that the 4710HQ was a BGA soldered part. Very very annoying. I blame DELL again for this confusion, and people who talk without knowing what they're talking about.

So, i so adamantly stand against DELL and what has come to my view, as only a deception, to the general public, I love them - for the older products, but I am relatively sure that was from some other people who used to be known as Alienware employee's before DELL bought them.

 

Yeah I tend to keep my notebook related posts here and discuss here. On almost every other forum it's completely different and it's amazing how little people know about laptops despite building their own rigs and what not.

NBR is the place to be.

 

It's really frustrating. Not so much because of being treated like you are a troll by a litter of snot-nosed kiddies that have mistaken themselves to be experts as much as the exact opposite. You really want to help enlighten them and help them learn something valuable and they turn on you like swarm of retarded little gnats. I'm pretty fed up with that kind of nonsense and my tolerance for stupid has never been lower.

To make it further frustrating, I think it is less than fair to single out Alienware for going backwards. Save for a couple of exceptional Clevo models using socketed desktop CPUs, essentially the entire industry is going backwards and all OEMs are primarily producing crippled BGA trash now. It's extremely sad what is happening across the industry.

 

this couldnt be more true, its incredible, but its really pisses me off being on other forums. No place is as home as NBR, just what a godsend!

 

You said it better then me, Kudos on being more to the point haha ! But yeah, that was exactly my problem afterwards, when they started responding. But this was not just a single incident, I also use another account as "Rage Gaming Zone" and I give a lot of advice for networks and VPN connectivity and various DELL server stuff how-to's like for the T310 series and such, and even the knowledgeable people do that same, meanwhile I installed maybe 140 of these servers North America-wide ? Just silly when a 10 paragraph detailed tpost/thread on how to configure the thing and migrate from the previous poweredge gets deleted. I've done posts not nearly half as in detail here, and I've seen dozens and dozens of people thankful for having it, and asking me for help or to re-interate on certain parts - which is cool - helping out etc.. Its a thankful contribution, really. Which I am grateful for having. I can't wait for the day , DELL pays us some similar attention - and addresses their fans/consumers with something like " Finally we listened to you, and finally we delivered this..." and turns out to be what we've been saying for years we wanted... you know ?

 

alien owners is not the best forum for the hardcore/enthusiast.

 

what is then ? LOL

 

Clevo owner's lounge.

 

i meant the forum linked below :

http://www.alienowners.com/forums/alienware-17-owners.60/

 

haha

 

Hi Woodztack, do you have gtx 970m? how much? its for MSI GT70 2oc

 

Yes, I do, private convo is best though.

as for your MSI, you will require the latest system bios for the laptop to see the 900 series, and function correctly. The rest is easy as Pi

 

So, while looking around, found the i7-6700K to be a pretty crappy CPU. Yet the next gen AW18 might be offering it ??? Its about the same performance (at best, if its desktop cooled) as a 4940xm. So, it will probably not be the same in terms of performance, but maybe very very close.

Last year they came out with a cheap 300$ CPU i7-5820K for the X99 chipset.. 2011 v3 LGA though, but it has 8 core(16 threads) and 15MB L3 Cache, and is crazy fast/powerful. So, i do not see how DELL fools people into wanting a 6700K which is 50% as powerful, 2 years newer, produces just as much heat, is nearly the same size, and costs 3 x as much.

**** like this just pisses me off.

 

5820k is 6-cores not 8, I have one

But you are right about it being fast.

5960X is the only X99 8-core cpu, even 5930k is 6 cores.

 

Oh sorry, yeah i don't have one, but I will soon. 15M L3 vs 20m on the 5960X right ? something like that 6 vs 8 cores too.. either way its 2.50 which is 25% increase right there, compared to say the 6700K.....

 

Well, we should keep this in perspective in spite of our desire for something more amazing. While I'm not 100% thrilled about it, I don't think the 6700K is even remotely intended to compete with Hexacore or Octacore processors though. The 6700K is more like on the higher-end of average as an ordinary consumer Quad core desktop i7 CPU that is unlocked, much like a 4790K. It should be a fine gamer CPU, but I doubt their prime target for this CPU is hardcore performance enthusiasts. For mobile applications, being about the same as a 4940MX is a much better option in a laptop than having a crappy BGA turd CPU though. 4940MX was worse than 4930MX, so maybe it will be a shade stronger than a 4930MX with the right person doing the tuning and some extra good thermal management. Just getting rid of the stupid SoC design with on-die memory controller will be a nice bonus if all other factors are equal. That was a real mess and a architectural hindrance that kept Haswell Extreme mobile CPUs from being all they could be.

I'd like to have a better option in a laptop than a run-of-the-mill i7 Quad, but not going backward on the CPU with BGA can only be viewed as a positive thing. No self-respecting enthusiasts wants their stuff welded to the mobo. So, in the grand scheme of things it is a better option than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick (BGA) don't you think?

Now, if we are going to go for something special, we need an X99 5960X powered laptop as a legitimate successor to the Panther (P570WM) in order to qualify as something truly amazing. Until that happens, reaching the status of "very nice" or "better than average" is probably the best we outcome we should expect for a laptop with 6700K... same as what we got with a Haswell blast furnace with less furnace and a little more blast.

 

Your right, we're basically retracing out steps to undo the damage done and start over. Just when Laptops were catching up to desktops - they pull that cfrap with the BGA soldered on ****e.

 

IMC was added way back in Nehalem. You're thinking of FIVR, which was added in Haswell. Yeah, FIVR increased power consumption and heat a bit, but if anything, it made Haswell more enthusiast friendly than previous mobile chips since it gave you more access and granular control over various voltages on the CPU.

 

Yeah, LOL. FIVR is exactly what I meant. I don't know what I was thinking when I posted that. Thanks for catching it.

The granular control on notebooks didn't add much value for overclockers because of the thermal management challenges with Haswell Extreme CPUs. If you can keep them from melting the 4930MX is pretty amazing. 4940MX has seemed to be a real dud for some reason. On liquid cooled desktops it is probably less challenging to deal with.

 

I can attest to that. I can get 4.6Ghz on a small 120mm radiator on my 6-core 5820k haswell-e.

Anymore however and I need better cooling. 4.7ghz is possible for me, but I need to wait for winter.

 

Lucky you though. I can only get 4.5. I have temperature overhead to spare too

 

Yeah, 4.5GHz is actually better than average for a 4930K or 5820K CPU. Many are not able to run 4.5GHz stable.

 

Interesting I guess my CPU is a decent bin then, I run 4.5Ghz as my 24/7 clock lol

 

Luckily, I've never been given a below average CPU from Dell.

Oh wait, the 4940MX is below average by default, even though that's statistically impossible. It's such a garbage CPU. lol.

 

I agree... very puzzling that the 4930MX and 4940MX could be so dramatically different, but they certainly are. I don't know why it is so crappy, but I've never seen even one example of a good one.

 

Bro, I use Prema's mod by default so hard that when I bought my computer it was using a custom Prema BIOS for Mythlogic.

I don't know why Clevo doesn't just hire Prema.

 

@D2 Ultima - Clevo does not believe in overclocking. That's why most of their stuff is crippled from the factory. It's the select resellers (such as Eurocom and others) that support it, not Clevo.

 

Yeah, it isn't. The 3930K/3960X/3970X/4820K/4930K/4960X and 5820K/5930K/5960X are all -E versions of their respective generations; Sandy Bridge, Ivy Bridge and Haswell in that order. Mainstream stuff like the 4790K and the 6700K isn't meant to compete with the enthusiast stuff. In fact I've heard through a mediator that even intel employees don't consider those mainstream chips to be for people who game, and expect them to get the -E versions, which is why the -E chipsets are a lot more robust with memory/overclocking/multi-GPU/etc. When Skylake-E comes out? THAT'S when you'll be impressed, Mr. Fox =D.

As much as I'd love to see the 5960X in a laptop, I think it's physically impossible. I think at some point it just starts drawing way too much power to be practical. I've heard of 400W on the CPU alone without even getting all that high in clockspeed; hell the CPU comes at 3GHz base clock (and I don't know what the default 8-core turbo is... if it has one). We would need far larger power bricks (assuming we got cooling down) to even think about running one of those with a single high end GPU, far less two of them XD.

I don't know about that one. Maybe for the laptops like the P570WM where they expect it will work like a workstation it makes some sense; it'll explain the limited BIOS too. But I know for a fact that all the PxxxSM and PxxxSM-A laptops come with XTU as part of their official driver spec (it's on Clevo's website too) and the XM/MX chips have been considered part of the official supported CPUs as well. The P7xxZM laptops having the 330W brick option as well denotes that they expect more performance to be pulled out of it; it should be impossible to max a 230W brick with a stock 980M and stock 4790K no matter what you ran.

Also this might be another reason: the P570WM might've simply been so old that Clevo's stance for OCing changed after it was released? Prema said he unlocked everything he could but it was mostly threadbare; however even the P370EM had a lot more options with his unlocked BIOS if I remember correctly.

 

A little more on Clevo overclocking.
http://forum.notebookreview.com/thr...-to-the-batcave.767105/page-777#post-10069229
GPU Performance Scaling
http://forum.notebookreview.com/threads/gpu-performance-scaling.780051/
My Control Center
GPU OC window

 

what control center version are u running @Bullrun? mine doesnt seem to show that gpu oc icon

im on 5.0000.0.8 btw

 

The warranty is a joke today. I predicted it would change two years ago, and it did. Sometimes I hate being right.

I recently bought an AW 13 (R1) from Amazon and it had a couple dead pixels and was having issues with the USB ports not working. Amazon told me they would not give me a system replacement because they were out of stock, and could only provide a refund... They referred me to Alienware Tech Support. So, I spoke with Alienware Tech Support and they basically didn't want to help me because my system was older, like from April, even though I bought it in September. The warranty was valid until August 2016. They told me to just send it back.

Since when do companies refuse to provide support for their own products?

P.S. I did end up returning it, mostly out of disappointment.

 

well what did u expect? 5 month old system is EOL

 

@jaybee83 Hovering the tray icon shows v3.20.35 It's stock, about 5 weeks old. I'm on W8.1. You're on W10, correct? Also mine is called Mythlogic Control Center. What about the CPU Memory Over Clocking icon? Nothing happens when I push it Work in progress.

 

interesting, thats the version clevo provides on its website. i got mine off the XMG website and yeah, im on win10. i guess thats where the difference lies...

when i click the CPU Memory overclocking option intel xtu opens

 

Ah, XTU was already open here.

 

Howdy Folks,
I was wondering if someone could shed some light on what is meant by BGA processors being *bad*. Other than the fact that you can't jus swap them out (due to lack of a proper socket), what is so terrible about these processors? In the end it should be the architecture, clock speed and cache sizes that dictate performance, not processor packaging. Thanks in advance...

Rich S.

 

They perform worse than PGA/LGA CPUs due to TDP limitations

 

Indeed, and they also usually are horribly binned so you get high voltages, greater power consumption and even more throttling..

Sent from my LG-H811 using Tapatalk

 

Thanks for taking the time to respond . That is curious, other than the binning (which is bad from in my opinion), wouldn't the TDP be related to the physical installation? Meaning if the vendor put it in a cramped location with poor air-flow, vices putting it in a location with good air flow and a high quality cooling solution.. Or is there something inherent to the packaging that causes problems? Thanks again!

Rich S.

 

No, the TDP is in a sense Power (VoltageXCurrent)... There is a Current limit which is too low and this doesn't help and the Voltage which is so high that you reach the power limit and get power throttling and then current throttling.. Not an issue with PGA chips which Intel doesn't limit TDP so you can adjust everything and get better performance...

 

Ahhh, I think I get it. It is more that TDP is controlled (or limited if you will) in BGA vices being a problem in and of itself. So if I am tracking, the issues with BGA lie pretty much in the controls and procedures that Intel uses to build the parts, not an inherent problem with BGA package itself.

 

Agreed this is a large part of the problem and the binning of the chips is another problem, some BGA chips have horribly high voltages at stock clocks and would probably not be used if it was PGA CPUs...

Sent from my LG-H811 using Tapatalk