How far Alienware has gone backwards

Wow

10/10 psu dodge

 

Spoiler: Some Axiom from AW's CEO Mr. Azor.

 

I suspect that in the least he has an alias account here under a different name so we can't track him; at 1st I thought it was Rinneh, but, nah. Or perhaps our favorite GM possess a neurotic compulsion to eavesdrop over a one-hour lunch break w/out logging in, 'anonymous', which is why the need to keep the heat turned up in here, so he can feel the dead pulses, just in case.

I can't multi-qwote for some reason. @Mobius > your chance to strike your righteous dagger was here, post #100: "the Area-51 motherboard is cheapo, low quality & doesn't hold up really well against high overclocks (small mosfet & cap, small heatsink). Just chiming in".

GM Fazor post #144 (infamous): "Try it, if it fails let me know & I'll replace it for you. The Area-51 MB is anything but cheaply made, surprised you think so. No it's not a $500 MB but it certainly wasn't cheaply designed or built." Talking points:

• replaced with what, a refurb?
• R2's mthrbrd? gimped, no doubt
• chat with Dell in May? XJKKD is $550, not $500

- the irony is delicious-
​

The motto for Area-51 is 'Forget Everything You Know', but I ain't forgettin' post 144. Francis, in reply to u GroundHog Day 2015? He was in a position of luxury that month since we couldn't chat with Dell & get the price of the mthrbrd in order to do the obligatory fact-check of the GM's disingenuous reply; there a missed opportunity to collectively sink your dagger home as they did Julius Ceasar / Caligula. It wasn't long til we could chat in & get prices though:

• $250 mthrbrd priced at $550
• it goes nicely w/the $250 800GY psu priced at $465
• which goes nicely w/the $135 K31VH whimpy 25mm liquid cooler
• 50mm H80i GT's cost what fellas? 90 dolla
• Colonel Dell & Major Azor @ your no-warranty service

Buy all 3 & find yourself out +$560 w/scant 1year warranty. I'll do you one better. Each case side panel is $275. Normal wear & tear, scratch/ding/dent: panels + 3 typically replaced hardware items, grand total on just these 5 pieces?

$1700​

The cost of a new entry-level but fully eqwipped & warrantied desktop. If by some miracle you can even get those 5 typical parts to market-value in your mind at $850, find your 'other' $850 become their BGA slush-fund. This. @rinneh ? Cattle abductions. U know, milk the cows ...

a blood bath? In an actual Part Two, Mobius: hand him back his words & he'll be a grease spot. I promise to eavesdrop.

jilted masses: AMA F.Azor on AWA - Part Two!!​

Rinneh, I suspected if I used the words 'healthy fanboyism' & 'blind devotion' earlier you'd take it personal; mine was a general observation directed at 'everyone'. The fact is, earlier I accused u of being neither though I understand why & how it could be read that way; however, I will accuse you now:

as you scoff at desktop Kaby?, I already know you'll be the tip of the spear defending BGA Kaby to the death as you do BGA SkyLake / SkyFall, after 6th geners soon sell-off their Aliens at a loss & the inevitable new spat of 7th gen buyers paying their lusty premiums + warranties. The agenda itself is cute: not brand loyal to Intel per se yet our champion of BGA; not brand loyal to Snailienware per se yet here the venerable Defender of the Faith. Reminiscent of Don Quixote tilting at windmills, kind of.

today: don't feed Intel Corp $350 for desktop Kaby 'because'. tomorrow: do feed Alien Corp $450 for BGA Kaby 'because'. Hmph. My writing style, usually penned on a whim, is indeed eccentric. Yours seems, well, we'll see how you behave after Kaby BGA launches. I know you aren't FAzor in disguise, but I'll be looking for signs of a tilt of renewed fanboyism | blind devotion, or something in the middle let us say after the line-ups get their kaby's welded on in the refresh.

They may not debate 6700k vs 7700k here but they will certainly debate whether to 'upgrade' from 6th to 7th gen.

The eccentic sunglass wearer sees the Alien Agenda: produce a pretty case & a fine keyboard (Bovine Growth Hormones) & wait for all the milking cows to come home ... Bovine Growth Attraction

edit:: vvv *laughs* my penchant for humor calling you a potential Azor in disguise vvv

 

Hahaha funny you thought that but nah, i'm a 31 year old multimedia designer in the Netherlands that studied both design and IT technology and you might have spotted me sometimes on MTV back in the days if you followed metal music

Overall I am disappointed in Intel, I loe buying and trying new stuff. But now my gaming desktop is sitting for almost 6 years under the same desk by now with only a few gpu swaps because Sandy Bridge did so incredibly well. Everything after that followed only offered a max 15~20% extra performance on stock clocks but I could overclock this monster to 5ghz even with a big air cooler only! Ivy bridge was not worth the upgrade and Haswell was a disappointment with only offering better floating point performance. Now Skylake is here and the 6700K is a fair performer but also fairly expensive. At least it is a bit of a jump for a desktop CPU compare to SB/IB. But on a BGA level it is even worse. The 4720HQ is performing almost exactly the same as a 6700HQ with only a bit less heat. I think that is ridiculous how stale Intel became. I know it is also partly because they are stuck with the limits of sillicon. The onyl thing that Intel has going for them now is energy efficiency and that is why I buy BGA notebooks. The performance is fair (not the best) but it lasts a while on battery, this is a requirements on which I choose my laptop decision in combination with a good GPU.

Intel is ditching a large part of their workforce also, showing a lack of progression for the future in the process. There would be no reason to ditch them after just a slow year.

However Alienware is seriously dropping the ball with the latest bios update and they still didnt pull it from their website thus hurting maybe quite a few users.

 

Isn't the 7700K slower in terms of single thread performance compared to 6700K?

Also the 4xxx/5xxxHQ series have trouble running at max turbo 24/7 without undervolt, while the 6xxxHK/HQ can turbo 24/7 with a slight undervolt. That makes the Skylake series a bit better in terms of performance.

 

OT. Young sapling, my 1st rock concert was Scorpions, Love @ 1st Sting, Aug. 31 1984, Landover, Maryland Capital Centre, a week before I was a freshman in high school. The chick I dated as a junior married then divorced Snake Sabo from Skid Row (poor girl, moved out to Cali for the LA glam-scene bent on marrying a rock star & was one step away from Bon Jovi himself ...). While you were suckin' on a binky & messin' your drawers I was the air guitar king to Glenn Tipton & K.K. ... Defenders of the Faith was the ****. Unless you look like Riki Rachtman on HeadBanger's Ball, I missed you on MTV after Grunge & Kurt helped kill metal for us in the 90's ... good times man ... 80's were my hey-day. (ain't gonna kumbaya up in here with anybody but FoxRox & Poppy, but I'll air guitar some mutual fretboard luv your way to Dave & Marty)

​

@Mobius 1, I made you this adapter last year right? For your Aurora cooler 7pin? For your Alien, do ya recognize me man? Btw: Intel 7700k din't launch yet, just some pre-buzz leaks; dunno what it'll do shackled to W10.

 

Fully recognize you man.

I did use it in the aurora for a brief while. Cooler works but I've avoided AIOs since I moved into an Enthoo Luxe.

 

I didn't believe it at first, but it's true that none of the output from gpu is connected to main display (permanent retarded optimus mode). I checked at micro center today

I guess that's the compromise made, you need to route the AGA signal to the IGP if game were to be played on the laptop's screen



That said, you can spend a bit more and get a 3 (aga, full dgpu, optimus) or 4 (aga, full dgpu/igpu, Optimus). But well, production costs.

 

Do not forget that you must purchase this brilliant graphics amplifier and graphics card if you want g-sync. But work only on an external screen and not the internal. Welcome to the future solutions

 

That's because

1. Aga needs an igpu to display video internally (technically the aga is computing and the igpu is displaying)
2. Display is routed to igpu, as a consequence the dgpu passes through igpu and cannot do g-sync. If AW allowed the dgpu to bypass igpu, it's possible to get g-sync on internal monitor. But unknown if you can make a gsync lcd operate on two input sources properly (igpu/dgpu/igpu-aga)
2b. Allow the mdp port to connect dgpu exclusively, and run gsync on ext monitor without aga

In any case, aga g-sync on internal monitor is not possible on how the aga only communicates to the laptop via pcie (computation data only)

 

Be it whatever they pull off even give me a free GTX Titan X with that GA Leashbox I'm not buying that echo scrap at all, look at the old gen how they are left behind the AW18 throttling, AW17 0 support, after spending $$$$ ?, they at least should unlock the secure feces, and all the bugs, flaws, etc in the new EchoBGA machines..

AND WTF is iGPU doing in that 980M machine / GTX Titan X GA strapped machine ? The P770ZM doesn't even make use of that iGPU nor any of the Clevo laptops. That iGPU a.k.a iGimPU is worthless pile of trash...

Alienware is doomed, the BGA CEO & Co are trying to beat a dead horse.
Time to move on, Most of them are already on the bright side.

 

Right, and this is why Clevo and MSI have grown considerably.

 

IGPU is useful for flash after bad vbios

Although to be fair, iGPU does have uses. Some of us aren't plugged in 24/7 and don't always have access to a power plug

 

As you know, NVidia Pascal | 1080 GTX launched a few hours ago for six hundred dolla a pop. $700 Founders Edition.

Spoiler: Founders Edition Details

After numerous rumours and a supposed "several billion dollars" spent on R&D, Nvidia's first consumer graphics cards based on its Pascal architecture are here. GTX 1080 will retail for $599 (~£450) while GTX 1070 will retail for $379 (~£270) but only for cards made by partners like Asus and MSI. Those after Nvidia's stock cooler design have to pick up "Founders Edition" cards bought directly from Nvidia.com, which will sell for $699 and $449 respectively. The 1080 launches on May 27, with the 1070 following on June 10

thus it is time for some desktop vid-card book-keeping
or
'How far Alienware will set you backwards'​

Spoiler: Alien Watching

These are mean-spirited creatures, pitiless emotionless grey Aliens who when NVidia drops their suggested MSRP on old cards, they shan't blanch nor budge from the grift (a petty swindle). Milk & money tastes too good. See below. We're told that Alienware is NVidia's single largest buyer / customer for mobile products - if so - they get a pretty sweet deal on (all) gpu's when they buy in volume, where even the hand of Colonel Dell may slam a fist on the contract table to get extra leverage for the lowest possible prices. Add to that how they all but exclusively sell NVidia products to help sweeten their contract-purchasing pot.

What I'm saying is they source cards for dirt cheap

buy low | sell high
​

What I'll do here is record today's published Maxwell prices, then come back, oh around August or September when 1080 Pascal prices slam-down on the Area-51 sales page like Thor's Hammer, what we'll know as: rearing its ugly head.

$600 msrp today?

ooohhh la la. reared its pretty head today actually

Aliens will be bent on making it ugly though
​

Based on all of the above, things will get petty, & of interest will be its launch price, but of eqwal interest will be the cost of their old Maxwell cards which 1080 trumped today in spades. As I do every year, I go Alien Watching. Looking for what? Price drops (or the lack there-of) on old trumped cards like 970/980/980Ti/Fury/TX. 1080's will release at the end of May - & if it didn't do it today (shake up the Maxwell market) - it will soon. The qwestion of interest of course is (or will be): how will Colonel Dell & Major Azor respond to the bad news that the bottom just fell out of their entire (Maxwell) lineup because 1080's a TitanX /FuryX killer.

We'll see. We'll go Alien Watching.


click. prices captured May 6, 2016 from Area-51 sales page

• 
  
• $650 980 (x2 $1300 x3 $1850)​
• $800 980Ti (x2 $1600 x3 $2300)​
• $1200 TX (x2 $2300 x3 $2800)​
• $900 FuryX​
• $400 970​

​

Tier 1, base A51 = $1699, R9 370 standard, $100 (est) of the base price, included in price; add $100 to all gpu options to capture above 'actual' prices I posted

____________________
​

These prices should drop today, technically, as a response & acknowledgment of the inevitable things to come; but we'll cut them slack, & start the clock May 27 when 1080 hits the open market, then ask the qwestion: when will prices drop? Shouldn't they drop before 1080 hits the sales page in a few months? Or will the feelingless emotionless grey aliens keep the pedal to the metal the next few months, hold prices firm in the face of 1080 to milk the life out of Maxwell & therefore their human customers / cattle, turn them into cash cows at full price, huh?

Why do u think I whipped up this post fo?
​

'Cause I know, they're gonna keep full retail on Maxwell as if 1080 never even happened today: these foreign life forms do not understand the human word for depreciation.

​

When triple-1080's are available soon for $1800, of note will be the cost of triple 980Ti & their former Champion in the Triple-TitanX, now selling at $2800 (yes, they were $3700 at one point or 3600 + 100 for the 370).

​

Final thoughts. When 980Ti whooped the standard 980 on launch at NVidia's msrp of $650 ... did they budge on the price of 980? No. Held 980 at $650 & instead raised the price of Ti to $800. To this day, 980's are still $650. Discounts & depreciation are meaningless inside the mothership.

​

When Windows 10 launched & a slew of past Alien products weren't validated, Dell informs us: 'we do not have the resources to support your product'. Meanwhile, Colonel Dell makes the largest technology aqwisition in history, buy buying EMC² for 67 billion, with a B.

​

We is poor but you have to be rich. Uh huh. Don't kid yourself: they get these cards dirt cheap ... but you won't.

​

As always, opt for the base card(s) in your tier, (hold as spare or sell new on delivery) & buy your upgrade cards for cheap & with lasting warranties from the likes of NVidia.com. evga newegg / MicroCenter. Don't let them beat you:

spoil the right Alien, not the wrong one

To Be Continued

​

title caption: "NVidia & Alienware were busy clearing stocks of GK104 GPUs by giving away 1000 GeForce GTX 770 cards during Dreamhack (to celebrate announcement of GeForce 1000 series)"

- or -
the Aliens schmoozing up with nVidia, in prep for their steep 1080/1070 discounts
____________________
edit: 5.27.16 A Hi-Performance Card Trick: GeForce 1080​

Spoiler: MSRP + Debut

May 26 Article by Joe Olmsted director of product management. Choice nuggets: 'For Alienware users looking to get up & running, for under $800 you can package a new Alienware Graphics Amp ($199) with the new GTX 1080 ($599 MSRP); or for less than $580, opt for the 1070 ($379) ... we look forward to having the new Pascal cards in our portfolio as early as possible after they’ve gone through Alienware’s rigorous validation process. Our customers deserve nothing less'. Alien Watching will include how far off MSRP they go, and how 'early as possible' will they launch. 'Rigorous validation' could buy them time to milk Maxwell at full retail. To Be Continued

​

 

yeah and the Desktop 1080 takes less power then the 980 MXM they have in the P870GM or wtvr.,..

 

The 1080GTX gives quite a jump in performance. At least according to their own marketing materials. I wonder when the first Pascal chips will arrive in laptops.

 

What's the difference between founders edition and normal edition GTX 1080?

 

More overclockability and the upgraded NVTTM, vapor chamber cooler.

 

All we gotta do is wait for a good GTX1080M SLI. Then all clevo/eurocom gotta do is create and release a nice big 18inch version of that sky X9 (I want a worthy successor for my M18Xr2! ) and everyone will be happy!

 

I don't really understand "more overclock ability", what did they do aside from changing the heatsink to a vapor chamber?

 

Better parts on the PCB

 

I guess we'll see if that's true or not when reviews come up.

But if the performance is only 10-15% above a 1490mhz Titan X, I can hold out for EVGA's classified version.

 

I can't resist. This just in on AClub: Brand new X51 R3 - Liquid Cooled disaster averted > Even the 'fans' have gone backwards ... which 'fans' did I hear you ask? Both kinds ...

Spoiler: Hot Air

Hello all,

I apologize if this is the wrong place to post this story, but I just bought a new Alienware X51 R3 Liquid cooled and downloaded some monitoring software as well as stress testing (Prime95, ect, ect)

I was amazed that my proc would constantly get up to 85-100c and would scare me so I manually quit all stress testing.

My system proc would idle at 75c which is stupid for an idle. At first I thought it could be the pump, but I can hear it and the Alienware Thermal controls show that it is on.

I thought it could be my room I am in, but even with AC full blast to a chill in here, it would still get super hot under min-med-high loads.



I was about ready to call dell and start the troubleshooting process, but figured since I am pretty tech savvy, I will investigate the hardware myself.

• I took off the case and checked the pump hoses, both warm and tightly connected.
• I checked all the other cables in the unit and removed the graphics card to make sure nothing was unhooked, ect and couldn't find anything.
• Put the case back on and made sure all drivers, bios ect were all updated and the problem still existed.

Now we get today, I had enough, opened the case and if I couldn't figure it out would either call support or return it once and for all.

This time, opening the case I looked at the radiator fan, without touching anything I could see the fan blades and could stick my finger in to spin it.

I decided to remove the fan to assure that all was plugged in and as I was putting it back together, I noticed, hmmmm shouldn't the fan air escape go towards the radiator?

I was just able to fit my finger in a spin it, but i think it is suppose to go the other way

Jumped on my phone to look up x51 R3 liquid cooled to pull a picture and sure enough, IT WAS ON BACKWARDS!!!

*** - Factory installed the Processor Radiator fan backwards so it was not getting cooled at ALL!

What frustration and had to share....../end

( so much for pre-shipment qwality assurance testing ... like I said, couldn't resist)

btw: when I mention how they jack the price up on shhhtuff to go towards larger gaming trucks (plural) while simultaneously 'not' having resources to support 'older systems': Alienware Trucks! (that's what $1300 i7 5960x's need to help pay fo)

 

gg quality control

 

he has change the fan from pull to push it will make little to no diffrence

a picture for thous who are not used to water cooling

 

How do you set up the fans depends on how hot it is in the cabinet vs. ambient temp(low end kabinet can be the culprit). Very hot cabinet and the fans pull air out fom the cabinet will give warmer hardware.

 

in most regular desktop builds there will be that little ambient heat it would make a very small amount of difference also my post above was made before the post had pics added to show what the cooler was like was under the impression it was a normal AIO

 

Except in the case of the Alienware X51, the fan is blower style.



There should be no possibility that the fan inside the unit can be touched by hand, unless the outlet port is pointed in the wrong direction (also observe that the intake is facing DOWN).

 

as i said above

 

Smaller fabrication, so a less hot cheap to cool with the same size cooler. Also requires less power so there is more headroom with a standard set of VRM's available.

At least in theory, but the clockspeeds are so high on these chips that the TDP is even a bit higher than a vanilla 980.

 

Yeah, Alienware has definitely gone backwards http://forum.notebookreview.com/thr...-this-overvoltage-sotck.791410/#post-10254049

 

Thats not an alienware fault but the variance between Geforce GPU's. Cant blame anyone for that.

 

Except for poor QC on the people making them. We can blame them when the variance is more than a little bit, or when they use poor quality components that are an impediment to stability. Unfortunately, that is becoming more common and the frequency of GPUs that struggle to maintain stability even at stock clocks is the worst I have ever seen it for NVIDIA.

I have had four GTX 980M that did not overclock well enough to meet my expectations, and one that died for unknown reasons.

Edit: almost forgot... I also have a 970M that sucks at overclocking.

 

Or put it another way... If you had everything soldered on the motherboard, would this mean 5 motherboard svap... What about the sweet processor you bragged about that could down volt properly and gave you a power boost in the third mobo? This is what we can call the very big lottery

 

On my clevo 980M, the oc is limited to +135 and +140 without overvolt.

 

That's odd, unless you are using the stock BIOS. You should not have those limitations with a @Prema vBIOS.

The problem I have run into is not limited settings, but crappy 970M and 980M GPUs that won't behave correctly if you push them as hard as the better samples are capable of being pushed.

 

I am using prema vbios, but the card doesn't perform well without any voltage bumps.

Short term stability is somewhat ok though (+50mv, +255 / +180)

http://www.3dmark.com/3dm/11992911

 

You need to give it more voltage. Here is what I get with the single 970M in the Alienware 18.

http://www.3dmark.com/3dm11/11169131

http://www.3dmark.com/fs/8182099

http://www.3dmark.com/compare/fs/8182099/fs/8446304

 

At stock 1.062v, maximum fans, and back of laptop lift from the desk. The temperature reach 78-80c during sustained 120w+ load on games.

I don't think I'm comfortable with running anything higher than that, unless only for benches.

 

I only OC my GPUs for benching. For gaming and everything else I run them at stock clocks.

 

Ah alright.



Wonder what I should actually upgrade to when I sell the AW18, I already have someone who wants to buy it for 1.8~2k.

 

P870DM-G literally stomps everything else to death.

 

True.

But I'd prioritize some portability a little for a daily driver. Problem is that every single laptop with eGPU solution has too big of a compromise to buy.




Also, why are you buying the Eon15-x? What happened to your P570WM?

 

Nothing. It is and was still fine. I just decided I didn't want it any more because service parts are getting scarce and the last thing I want is to end up with an expensive machine that can't be fixed due to lack of parts. I know of one person that needs a simple ribbon cable and cannot buy one anywhere, so he is using an external keyboard. I don't want to find myself in that position. So, I stripped it down to barebones and sold the shell.

 

Yeah, I'm in a similar position with you. Alienware 18 parts is discontinued from production according to Raidriar, so it's a huge risk owning the machine.

Still unsure on what to buy tbh. P870DM is bulky as hell but the other alternative is the rMBP 15 with eGPU lol.

 

1.8-2k for your 18, it's 980m sli right? It's just sad how little we can get for these machines. I would sell mine if I could get more and I've only had my current one for 3 months but I'm not in the position to sell it and have to add more money to buy something else. I've already done that twice in the last couple years. Got to suck it up as a loss and a bad decision at this point. Good luck to you with it.

 

Single 980M, I'll be making a profit on this actually.

 

Only option http://www.hidevolution.com/evoc-clevo-p750dm-g-custom-built-gaming-desktop-replacement-laptop.html

 

I know, but I'll be buying the laptop on the end of summer, so no need to rush.

I'll keep in mind also that the P870xM can't use internal display for Razer core (TB over usb type c), since there's no way to switch the display input from mxm to iGPU.

There's also the option of rMBP + some external gpu device. But I'll need to see apple's upgrade to the 15" over wwdc 2016.

 

Prema and I discussed the idea of enabling the craptastic Intel iGPU in his BIOS mod and ultimately decided doing so would be a truly horrible idea and it would ultimately detract from the beast. So, that was disabled on purpose from the factory and it was deemed to be the best overall decision to leave it disabled on purpose.