New M17x R4, M14X R2 and M18X R2 are coming - Speculation thread.

You can expect the 7990M to be on par with the 680M and cost way less

 

Alienware seems to lose a LOT of sales due to manufacturing Delays. I have seen this all of time. If they take a month to get something out the door, they take a huge risk on cancellations. You would think they could streamline their process and do better inventory management.

You can almost order a Car from the factory and get it quicker than an Alienware.

 

I'm tempted to ask them to just ship the parts to me so I can build it myself, although I know they'd never do that. I still don't see how it takes '3-5 days' to build a system.

I'm not being impatient (although I'd love to get the system faster), I simply need it to be delivered before 19th April - after which I'm away for a couple of months. I've made that clear to them, you'd think they'd prioritise my system to avoid cancellation (as selfish as that sounds). I still don't understand why they called me yesterday afternoon to say it had gone into production?

Anyway, maybe it's a sign I should wait for the R4. Can't wait to see what ATi can do, their 7870 desktop card is almost within the TDP boundaries for a notebook so they should be able to pull off strong performance as well.

 

There are some interesting developments coming in touch pads on the XPS side. One of our product planners eluded to it in a Google+ hangout back in January. I'm not sure if AW are planning on adopting the same implementation that we have planned, and wanted for XPS 13, but we were unable to give Cypress the time they needed to develop before launch. I don't know the ins and outs, but the big upshot is we are moving the touch pad over to the SMBus to give us dramatically more bandwidth and flexibility to do more with multipoint ahead of Win8.

True. Not quite true.

As far as availability and formal launch, I think it's time to get excited now, folks. Tomorrow at PAX East will clear up a lot. Tune in. When I said "not April" before, I was referring to ship dates, nothing else. Ship dates will come a little sooner than the consensus speculation is here. Beyond that, I'm going Sgt Shultz. "I know nothing." Tomorrow, you will know a lot more, I think.

 

Hmm...considering the delays with my current order, maybe I'll be considering cancelling it if the R4 is this close.

 

Would depend on how urgent your need is. You know there is a possibility for delays after launch. I have no feel for where we are, as Alienware is not one of my supported platforms. Two new major components means there is a higher risk of delay. Just sayin'.

 

If my current order isn't produced and shipped to me quickly (I need it by April 19th before I go abroad, current EDD is April 27th ) then I'd need to cancel it and wait a few months anyway. And then next time, I'd order it well in advance so it's there for when I get back

 

Hey Dell-Bill, will we see 7970M tomorrow?

 

i say cancel the order, for the same price you will get ivy bridge and a 680, but the sandy bridge, and 580 will drop to half the value it is now......

 

Can't wait to see the new machines presented at PAX

 

If I weren't in the middle of 2 crises right now, I'd embed this pic.

 

Wonder what the Price to buy two 7970M Cards will be.. and the resale vale of two 6990Ms?

 

The source I posted that leaked the 680M said 7970M is 65W which is pretty interesting. Some other sources say it will perform like the 675M. It makes a a little sense. AMD along with Nvidia have increased performance/watt with this new architecture, but not enough to combine 35W reduction AND get better performance. Either way what happens it is still great, but probably not enough to justify an upgrade for 580M/6990M owners.

So what these owners must wait for is the 100W 7990M. If the above turn out to be true. That we don`t know yet. Who knows. AMD could have some surprise up their sleeve

Dell-Bill: Its allright. I can understand you are feeling some pressure right now. Guess we will have to wait til tomorrow

 

Well.. For what its worth, if won the Mega-Millions, i was going to build and offer up a laptop chassis that took standard PCI express double-height cards with a 600w external Power brick and monitor pass-through..

 

600W? Thats a notebook sized brick in itself lol

 

6" x 6" by 3.5".. Only slightly thicker than the Alienware m18x one.. actually..

 

You'd have to pull a Clevo and piggy-back 2x330W, at least in the US. I think that's the max allowable wattage for a laptop AC adapter. Could be wrong. Nothing I've ever seen in print. Just something I heard one time. But there has to be a reason they did that, right?

*and I'm not sure I'm even right about Clevo using dual adapters. Don't want to spread FUD.

 

Why even release the 7970M if it's not meant to be significantly faster than the 6990M?

Talk about wasted potential. The desktop 7850 is already a 100W card, but they're going to gimp it down to 65W for no good reason? Disgusting, really.

Also, do I really have to say that the GTX 680M 3DMark11 score is worthless? P results are meaningless.

 

Don't worry: crisis = opportunity... double crisis = opportunityX2

 

Not really, since they gave P-Scores on the exact same rigs running the 675m, which we all know is just a 580m we can compare.

Thus, if the 680m scored 1000 points better than the stock 675m/580m we can say it gives a 1000 point boost. Not exactly upgrade worthy for anyone with a 580m (especially when we can hit the same scores just with OCing), but a respectable evolutionary step.

 

yeah why should we upgrade when GTX 680M can only stay at 1000 points higher then stock 580M. lmao

 

The results don't sit right with me. The 680m has twice the amount of shaders as the 675m. There should be at lease a 50% increase in performance. I was hoping it would break 5k in '11 at least. Maybe it is the drivers and this whole GPU boost thing.

 

Well, I suppose if 3-9 FPS average increase is worth $$$ to you then you should upgrade. Doesn't make any sense to me, especially when at stock voltage with OC my 580m already gets well over 4000, and absolutely no game is really gonna benefit from a sub-10 fps boost.

 

So..IB release date announced for April 29th, does that mean it's still under marketing embargo?

 

Kepler cores/shaders are less than half as powerful as the Fermi ones. Compare the desktop 680 vs 580. The 680 has 3x as many cores.

 

So the gtx 660m is rumored to have a TDP of 45 Watts whereas the Gt 555m is 30-35 Watts. If they keep the same Chassis in the m14x r2, would a jump of 10 Watts be too much?

 

Notebookcheck says 35W for the 540M, so I doubt the 555M is 30-35W. Not that there is reliable data anywhere it seems, but 30-35W sounds too low.

 

Comparison of Nvidia graphics processing units - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

Yeah I guess. The performance is good though similar to a overvolted 580m. I'm curious about the temperatures with regard to GPU Boost. With a good repaste and elevated back, we may be able to keep temperatures low enough to keep the boost running indefinitely. Coupled with voltage tweaks who knows, maybe 6k 3DMark 11? I'd certainly be willing to chase it.

 

In most cases the card will sit at its boost clock all the time. It's not thermally limited, it's power-draw limited. That's what the boost algorithms are based on, so elevating your laptop or repasting or whatever else you want to do with it won't help much.

As others have pointed out the GK107 stream processors don't have as much power per processor as the GF114's, so you can't determine performance like that (I don't know why you would really. It would be like determining CPU performance by L2 cache).

 

Thanks Serephucus, good infos

 

Pax Map


http://hw1.pa-cdn.com/pax/resources/PAX_East_2012_Expo_Map.pdf

 

Did anybody know if there are rumors of a blu-ray writer on the new M18x R2?

 

I notice the internal wireless HD is not in the config for the M18x R1 anymore. Anyone know if it will be brought back?

 

Yes, as far as I know embargo is still in effect, but then it's Good Friday, and I'm the only sucker on my team who didn't take the day off. So I can't verify. I'm pretty sure the minute embargo lifts, you're going to see all kinds of marketing from us and our competitors.

 

So, Bill are you @ PaxEast making a Good AlienDay there?

 

Nah. I wish. Alienware is not one of my supported platforms. I just dabble. XPS, Inspiron, Vostro are my babies. We do have some AW guys on the ground though. One of them is the new dedicated social media guy for AW. I plan on meeting with him next week to bring him up to speed on all the AW conversations here on NBR. After that it will be up to him where he goes out and engages. My guess is he will spend some time on this site, but I'm not sure. I know the AW execs and engineers he works with read this site all the time. So it's a good bet he'll be here soon.

 

He will be welcomed!

BTW: My Inspiron is my baby too... But "she" grows into a beautiful queen of my everyday...

 

F5ing this thread until m14x r2/m11x r4 pictures finally show up!

 

Yeah, the "pax live feed" doesn't work... and neither the Alienware Arena... buuuu!

 

So new models are shown at Pax?

Btw, both feeds work for me. But nothing interesting so far.

 

That's strange... they do not work here, can you send me the link you're using?

 

they are doing Dota 2 commentary =.=

 

Here you go:
AlienwareArena

PAX East - Boston, MA April 6-8, 2012

 

Don't know what's going on but I can't see nothing besides a pink square...:



Any ideas?

 

Works for me from behind the Dell firewall in the office. I just had to wait about 2 or 3 minutes for the stream to start.

 

Update Flash Player or use another browser like Chrome.

 

Well, it's very strange... I try in another computer with only windows 7ultimate in it, with chrome, last version of flash... no firewall, no antivirus in it... and still I just see the pink square... That's very strange indeed.

 

If you've got an iPhone, the TwitchTV app has the Alienware Arena stream also..

 

Thanks but I'm still attached to an old Motorola

Maybe is because I'm now in some south american country?